The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison
Nonviolent Struggle: 50 Crucial Points
George W. Bush, War Criminal?: The Bush Administration's Liability for 269 War Crimes
Nonviolence: Twenty-Five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea
A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict
Waging Nonviolent Struggle: 20th Century Practice and 21st Century Potential
A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.
The 35 Articles of Impeachment and the Case for Prosecuting George W. Bush
The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld
The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder
Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law
United States v. George W. Bush et al.
The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders' Cure for Royalism
Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush
The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens
The Case for Impeachment
Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney
George W. Bush versus the U.S. Constitution: The Downing Street Memos and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Cover-ups in the Iraq War and Illegal Domestic Spying
Verdict and Findings of Fact
Impeach Bush: A Funny Li'l Graphical Novel About the Worstest Pres'dent in the History of Forevar
Pretensions to Empire: Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Administration
The Twilight of Democracy: The Bush Plan for America
Babies born in Fallujah are showing illnesses and deformities on a scale never seen before
By Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail, Inter Press Service
FALLUJAH, Jun 12 (IPS) - Babies born in Fallujah are showing illnesses and deformities on a scale never seen before, doctors and residents say.
The new cases, and the number of deaths among children, have risen after "special weaponry" was used in the two massive bombing campaigns in Fallujah in 2004.
After denying it at first, the Pentagon admitted in November 2005 that white phosphorous, a restricted incendiary weapon, was used a year earlier in Fallujah.
In addition, depleted uranium (DU) munitions, which contain low-level radioactive waste, were used heavily in Fallujah. The Pentagon admits to having used 1,200 tonnes of DU in Iraq thus far.
Many doctors believe DU to be the cause of a severe increase in the incidence of cancer in Iraq, as well as among U.S. veterans who served in the 1991 Gulf War and through the current occupation.
"We saw all the colours of the rainbow coming out of the exploding American shells and missiles," Ali Sarhan, a 50-year-old teacher who lived through the two U.S. sieges of 2004 told IPS. "I saw bodies that turned into bones and coal right after they were exposed to bombs that we learned later to be phosphorus.
"The most worrying is that many of our women have suffered loss of their babies, and some had babies born with deformations."
"I had two children who had brain damage from birth," 28-year-old Hayfa' Shukur told IPS. "My husband has been detained by the Americans since November 2004 and so I had to take the children around by myself to hospitals and private clinics. They died. I spent all our savings and borrowed a considerable amount of money."
Shukur said doctors told her that it was use of the restricted weapons that caused her children's brain damage and subsequent deaths, "but none of them had the courage to give me a written report."
"Many babies were born with major congenital malformations," a paediatric doctor, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. "These infants include many with heart defects, cleft lip or palate, Down's syndrome, and limb defects."
The doctor added, "I can say all kinds of problems related to toxic pollution took place in Fallujah after the November 2004 massacre."
Many doctors speak of similar cases and a similar pattern. The indications remain anecdotal, in the absence of either a study, or any available official records.
The Fallujah General Hospital administration was unwilling to give any statistics on deformed babies, but one doctor volunteered to speak on condition of anonymity -- for fear of reprisals if seen to be critical of the administration.
"Maternal exposure to toxins and radioactive material can lead to miscarriage and frequent abortions, still birth, and congenital malformation," the doctor told IPS. There have been many such cases, and the government "did not move to contain the damage, or present any assistance to the hospital whatsoever.
"These cases need intensive international efforts that provide the highest and most recent technologies that we will not have here in a hundred years," he added.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) expressed concern Mar. 31 about the lack of medical supplies in hospitals in Baghdad and Basra.
"Hospitals have used up stocks of vital medical items, and require further supplies to cope with the influx of wounded patients. Access to water remains a matter of concern in certain areas," the ICRC said in a statement.
A senior Iraqi health ministry official was quoted as saying Feb. 26 that the health sector is under "great pressure", with scores of doctors killed, an exodus of medical personnel, poor medical infrastructure, and shortage of medicines.
"We are experiencing a big shortage of everything," said the official, "We don't have enough specialist doctors and medicines, and most of the medical equipment is outdated.
"We used to get many spinal and head injures, but were unable to do anything as we didn't have enough specialists and medicines," he added. "Intravenous fluid, which is a simple thing, is not available all the time." He said no new hospitals had been built since 1986.
Iraqi Health Minister Salih al-Hassnawi highlighted the shortage of medicines at a press conference in Arbil in the Kurdistan region in the north Feb. 22. "The Iraqi Health Ministry is suffering from an acute shortage of medicines...We have decided to import medicines immediately to meet the needs."
He said the 2008 health budget meant that total expenditure on medicines, medical equipment and ambulances would amount to an average of 22 dollars per citizen.
But this is too late for the unknown number of babies and their families who bore the consequences of the earlier devastation. And it is too little to cover the special needs of babies who survived with deformations.
(*Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who has reported extensively from Iraq and the Middle East).
©2008 Dahr Jamail
http://dahrjamailiraq.com
www.VelvetRevolution.us
These are the kinds of things that WMD's do,...
have always done, and what those who spend our fortune developing and testing for better ones, do--every chance they get. "We can't outgun them, so we have to outthink them." I heard that (or something close to it) recently, and it makes sense to me--outthink them, outact them, and outlast them.
I think the founders (many of whom, in my opinion, were not much better than those who followed them--right up to this current crop, including Obama and McCain) managed to come up with a document that became the law of the land, eventually--in spite of themselves. Eventually, blacks got the vote; eventually, women got it; and so on with other good things. I suppose even Native Americans got some good out of it, eventually.
I think that those of us who long for real change will get it, eventually, because we think better and act better than our nation's leaders do, or have ever done--and, we won't go away.
R Ap
How to kill more efficiently ?
We send soldiers to war too often for the wrong reasons ( money, oil , power, insanity) but civilians , regular men women & children, are the ones who overwhelmingly pay w/ their lives & most people conveniently forget that our WMD's also kill our soldiers. My brother who served in Gulf War 1 as a tank commander is dead due to Depleted Uranium shells that WE use ( don't believe the crap that DU is "safe", it's nuclear waste) We should send only presidents or their equivalent to fight wars , they start the wars let them fight their wars.
Amen, brother.
Always nice to hear from you, Mike. Hope to get up there one of these days to lay a little of my skin in yours--it's not that far. I'll let you know if it ever looks like it's going to happen.
R Ap
Roy,how about the VFP convention..
in Bloomington this year? We can put you up.
From Tour Guide on Mt McKinley to Savant ?????
Dahr Jamail never actually learned how to dig for facts as a journalist and now he copyrights outright propaganda. This story is predominately false, based on the photos taken under Saddam Hussein's government's supervision that CDC can't be bothered to even review. Were they willing to do so, they could be shown to be rare recessive genetic diseases, ones that require both mother and father to have the same rare recessive gene. That is not due to anything that was done by US forces. The thing that drew the Depleted Uranium Google Alert to here, though, is this claim about heavy use of DU in Fallujah. That's totally false. There were no Al Quaeda or Sunni Insurgent tanks in Fallujah so there was no need to use armor piecing kinetic energy penetrators to destroy tanks. So, then, what exactly do all you armchair peace activist experts think that the DU was used for? The answer is that it wasn't there and once again Dahr is back to being mountain tour guide taking in the scenery instead of actually digging for news. It's been amazing to me that he has been received so enthusiastically, but for some reason truth matters little to any of you, only that it makes Bush look even worse. I helped fly the original Citizens for Legitmate Government banner over the Rose Bowl in 2000 that claimed that the Selection of 2000 was not really an election and that Gore really won the Presidency until the Supreme Court selected Bush. I was just as rabid a supporter of John Kerry, but I do not agree with filling the internet with bigger lies to fight the Bush Adminstration's failure to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Try it, truth trumps lies all the time and bigger lies just mean that you are no more moral than the other liar.
Roger Helbig
The following is word on the street, not news, and it surely is not truthful or verified
The new cases, and the number of deaths among children, have risen after "special weaponry" was used in the two massive bombing campaigns in Fallujah in 2004.
After denying it at first, the Pentagon admitted in November 2005 that white phosphorous, a restricted incendiary weapon, was used a year earlier in Fallujah.
(there are no restrictions against the use of white phosphorus and it never was denied -- the original report that talked about "bake and shake" which was to follow artillery bombardment with white phosphorus to force deeply entrenched enemy forces out of holes then follow with high explosive to kill them was in the Artillery magazine by a battery commander. Artillery is not bombing, it is artillery fire, it is fired from guns on the ground not dropped from aircraft from above.
In addition, depleted uranium (DU) munitions, which contain low-level radioactive waste, were used heavily in Fallujah. The Pentagon admits to having used 1,200 tonnes of DU in Iraq thus far.
This is flat out false - there has been no reported use of DU since the last tank battles on the run into Baghdad in 2003 and there have been no significant effects reported of the use of DU in Southern Iraq - Iraq would have been substantially cleared of DU if the teams necessary to do the job could work there without fearing for their lives - no one wants to have their head chopped off while clearing DU -
Many doctors believe DU to be the cause of a severe increase in the incidence of cancer in Iraq, as well as among U.S. veterans who served in the 1991 Gulf War and through the current occupation.
This is false - some doctors, heavily influenced by propaganda have that belief - many implies that a large number do - and that is false. Most doctors know that DU has not been a cause of cancer - and that none of the people with these cancers have the kidney damage that heavy contamination by uranium would cause.
"We saw all the colours of the rainbow coming out of the exploding American shells and missiles," Ali Sarhan, a 50-year-old teacher who lived through the two U.S. sieges of 2004 told IPS. "I saw bodies that turned into bones and coal right after they were exposed to bombs that we learned later to be phosphorus.
Again, this is Dahr repeating the street propaganda - he made no effort to ascertain the facts - there were no phosphorus missiles or bombs, just artillery shells and they were only used on heavily dug in, well entrenched insurgent and Al Qaeda positions -- We lost a lot of good men and women in Fallujah because we attacked it house by house, block by block and did not level the city like the Russians levelled the capitol of Chechnya. They deserve to have the truth, not a pack of lies.
They say that this organization includes veterans groups, why do you stand for such slander and calumny of your fellow soldiers and Marines?
See the following to learn about DU
www.depletedcranium.com - watch dinner on bright orange, DU-glazed Fiesta Ware plate
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/DUStory/message/76 has links to the UNEP reports from Boznia-Herzegovina, Afghanistan and Southern Iraq along with the IAEA report from Kuwait and many other links about radiation, radiation sickness (the Goiana incident that killed 4), uranium, etc.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/DUStory/message/77 has a guest user name and password so that you can visit the Files Section and current links (new ones are added when they are found)- the Files Section has records for Douglas Lind Rokke, Leuren Moret, Asaf Durakovic that disprove their claims of expertise in DU.