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IRAQ : Human Cost.........

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bigron
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« on: July 26, 2010, 12:56:22 pm »

Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009 (Full Report)

by Chris Busby, Malak Hamdan and Entesar Ariabi



July 24, 2010
http://uruknet.info/?p=m68241&hd=&size=1&l=e


Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009

Report here :

http://www.scribd.com/doc/34158205/Cancer-Infant-Mortality-and-Birth-Sex-Ratio-in-Fallujah-Iraq-2005–2009



 
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« Reply #1 on: July 26, 2010, 12:59:14 pm »

Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009 (Full Report)

by Chris Busby, Malak Hamdan and Entesar Ariabi



July 24, 2010
http://uruknet.info/?p=m68241&hd=&size=1&l=e


Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009

Report here :

http://www.scribd.com/doc/34158205/Cancer-Infant-Mortality-and-Birth-Sex-Ratio-in-Fallujah-Iraq-2005–2009


We are dropping depleted uranium bombs on the population and going back for long-term studies of the effects. This is Dr.Mengele's dream in action: live human experimentation in broad daylight, sanctioned by the silence of the progressive 'left' and the rationalization of the neocon right that it's all 'for our safety'.

And it's happening in Fallujah, in Gaza, in Somalia and God only knows where else.
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« Reply #2 on: July 26, 2010, 02:07:41 pm »

USA-WMD: America's Covert Hiroshima in Iraq


by Chris Floyd



July 25, 2010

http://uruknet.info/?p=m68278&hd=&size=1&l=e

Years ago, I wrote about the use of chemical weapons in the American assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004. I was attacked at the time for my "wild accusations" by many people, across the political spectrum, even by stalwart dissidents, who felt that such "exaggerations" undermined the "effectiveness" of the anti-war movement, preventing it from being taken "seriously" by the "serious" players in the power structure. Later, of course, American military officials -- and serving soldiers -- admitted using white phosphorus and other chemical weapons in the assault.

Over the years, small-scale medical studies have pointed to the horrific effects of these USA-WMD attacks. Now, a new comprehensive medical study has shown that the "dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukemia" in Fallujah since 2004 have "exceeded those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945," The Independent reports.

The Independent story follows up on an initial video report by top BBC journalist John Simpson last week -- a story that was almost universally ignored, not only in the fawning corporate press but also across the "dissident" blogosphere (except by a very few, such as Winter Patriot).  Both stories make clear that the chief victims of the American WMD are, overwhelming, children:



Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.

Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait.

Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster and one of the authors of the survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah, said it is difficult to pin down the exact cause of the cancers and birth defects. He added that "to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened".

US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions.


The background here is good as far as it goes, but it omits the salient point of that mutilation of American mercenaries; it followed a series of security shoot-em-ups that killed a number of innocent civilians in Fallujah. The attacks on the Blackwater mercenaries were a violent reprisal for murders committed by foreign agents in the midst of an illegal act of military aggression. But, as always, the American revenge for the attacks was vastly disproportionate: an entire city destroyed, thousands of people killed -- and generations of terrible suffering for innocent children -- all to get "payback" for four mercenaries.

The Independent continues:



In the assault US commanders largely treated Fallujah as a free-fire zone to try to reduce casualties among their own troops. British officers were appalled by the lack of concern for civilian casualties. "During preparatory operations in the November 2004 Fallujah clearance operation, on one night over 40 155mm artillery rounds were fired into a small sector of the city," recalled Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, a British commander serving with the American forces in Baghdad.

He added that the US commander who ordered this devastating use of firepower did not consider it significant enough to mention it in his daily report to the US general in command. Dr Busby says that while he cannot identify the type of armaments used by the Marines, the extent of genetic damage suffered by inhabitants suggests the use of uranium in some form. He said: "My guess is that they used a new weapon against buildings to break through walls and kill those inside."


The effects of these secret "wonder-weapons" were astounding:



The study, entitled "Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009", is by Dr Busby, Malak Hamdan and Entesar Ariabi, and concludes that anecdotal evidence of a sharp rise in cancer and congenital birth defects is correct. Infant mortality was found to be 80 per 1,000 births compared to 19 in Egypt, 17 in Jordan and 9.7 in Kuwait. The report says that the types of cancer are "similar to that in the Hiroshima survivors who were exposed to ionising radiation from the bomb and uranium in the fallout".

Researchers found a 38-fold increase in leukaemia, a ten-fold increase in female breast cancer and significant increases in lymphoma and brain tumours in adults. At Hiroshima survivors showed a 17-fold increase in leukaemia, but in Fallujah Dr Busby says what is striking is not only the greater prevalence of cancer but the speed with which it was affecting people.

Of particular significance was the finding that the sex ratio between newborn boys and girls had changed. In a normal population this is 1,050 boys born to 1,000 girls, but for those born from 2005 there was an 18 per cent drop in male births, so the ratio was 850 males to 1,000 females. The sex-ratio is an indicator of genetic damage that affects boys more than girls. A similar change in the sex-ratio was discovered after Hiroshima.


I have written about Fallujah over and over for a long time. In many respects, these stories are like the ones I've written about the American-abetted horrors in Somalia: no one gives a damn. Well, I don't give a damn that no gives a damn. I'm going to keep ringing this bell until my arm falls off. We -- Americans -- have committed and countenanced a great evil in Iraq. I can't change that -- and it's obvious that I cannot prevent the "continuity" of such hellish atrocities by the progressive Peace Laureate now in the White House, and by whatever similar blood-soaked poltroon comes to lead the never-ending Terror War for Loot and Power after him. But by god I will not let it be said that I stood by and failed to bear witness to this raging filth.

From 2004 (see original for links):

"The inferno…is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."  -- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities.


There is of course no space, nowhere to move or breathe in the sealed chamber of the American Infoglomerate – the vast entanglement of corporate media and government propaganda that smothers the body politic with hysterical outpourings of diversion, drivel and deadening white noise. Here, events occur in a total vacuum: they have no history, no context, no consequences. Stripped of the heft and scope of reality, they can easily be molded and distorted to fit the prevailing political and business agendas. Amnesia, ignorance, confusion and fear are left to rule the day: excellent fuel for the stokers of the inferno, who use the heat to work their alchemical magic – transforming human blood into gold.

"There are more and more dead bodies on the streets and the stench is unbearable. Smoke is everywhere. It's hard to know how much people outside Fallujah are aware of what is going on here. There are dead women and children lying on the streets. People are getting weaker from hunger. Many are dying are from their injuries because there is no medical help left in the city whatsoever. Some families have started burying their dead in their gardens."

This was a voice from the depths of the inferno: Fadhil Badrani, reporter for the BBC and Reuters, trapped in the iron encirclement along with tens of thousands of civilians. It was a rare breath of truth. The reality of a major city being ground into rubble was meant to be obscured by the Infoglomerate's wall of noise: murder trials, state visits, Cabinet shuffles, celebrity weddings – and, above all, the reports of "embedded" journalists shaping the "narrative" into its proper form: a magnificent feat of arms carried out with surgical precision against an enemy openly identified by American commanders as "Satan," the Associated Press reports.

One of the first moves in this magnificent feat was the destruction and capture of medical centers. Twenty doctors – and their patients, including women and children – were killed in an airstrike on one major clinic, the UN Information Service reports, while the city's main hospital was seized in the early hours of the ground assault. Why? Because these places of healing could be used as "propaganda centers," the Pentagon's "information warfare" specialists told the NY Times. ...

So while Americans saw stories of rugged "Marlboro Men" winning the day against Satan, they were spared shots of engineers cutting off water and electricity to the city – a flagrant war crime under the Geneva Conventions, as CounterPunch notes, but standard practice throughout the occupation. Nor did pictures of attack helicopters gunning down civilians trying to escape across the Euphrates River – including a family of five – make the TV news, despite the eyewitness account of an AP journalist. Nor were tender American sensibilities subjected to the sight of phosphorous shells bathing enemy fighters – and nearby civilians – with unquenchable chemical fire, literally melting their skin, as the Washington Post reports. Nor did they see the fetus being blown out of the body of Artica Salim when her home was bombed during the "softening-up attacks" that raged relentlessly – and unnoticed – in the closing days of George W. Bush's presidential campaign, the Scotland Sunday Herald reports.


I will not forget Artica Salim. I will not forget Fallujah. I will not "move on."  I will not become part of the inferno.



 
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« Reply #3 on: July 27, 2010, 03:39:53 pm »

U.S. Treats Iraqis Like 'Well-Trained Lab Mice'!


By Mahdi Qassem, Sotal Iraq



WORLDMEETS.US, July 26, 2010

http://uruknet.info/?p=m68318&hd=&size=1&l=e

As the saying goes, "One man's misfortune is another man's blessing." Judging from the repeated calamities of Iraqi life, with its lot of violence, bloodshed, organized devastation and the impact that Iraq's reckless politicians are having on the people by practicing authoritarian "democracy," the great American centers for strategic studies will certainly benefit. Out of these calamities, disasters and horrific atrocities, they are gleaning information of untold value to benefit themselves politically, potentially for use against people in other places whenever America's strategic, security, political or economic interests call for new horrors and catastrophes.

There's no doubt that Iraq and its people have suffered terribly, their country transformed into an active and effective laboratory. Strange and fantastic events beyond the imagination occur every day in Iraq. These include organized killings, untold physical damage and destruction, a growing scarcity of public services and bottlenecks in their delivery, the mockery by powerful politicians (though political mafia gangs) regarding the most basic humanitarian and national values and commitments, as well as a complete disregard for institutional responsibility. Iraqi leaders have turned their backs on a suffering population, allowing the unending expansion of chaos and destruction until it has spun completely out of control into something bigger than Iraq itself.

All of this will provide great material for strategic studies at the institutes of Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, which will gain new and unconventional political expertise from the horrors of Iraq and the dark and surreal bleakness it has endured for the last seven years.

Because Iraq has been transformed into a unique American laboratory, its people are like mice fighting one another for survival or to escape slow extinction. They compete, agitated and disturbed, as if they were aboard a ship listing and about to sink. There seems no hope for a near- or long-term breakthrough because of the dominance of criminal gangs and quasi-politicians. Meanwhile, the American administration also observes Iraqi suffering with no apparent urgency to intervene and put an end to the contempt of Iraq's political mafia gang leaders and the organized destruction of Iraq materially, morally, spiritually and culturally.

And the pain still seems to have a long way to go, since a majority of Iraqis, despite some impatience, discontent and loud protest, continue to suffer the catastrophe that has befallen them with patience, like mice bred in laboratories especially for this purpose! So there's no need for a rapid intervention to put an end to the recklessness of these politicized criminal gangs wreaking a havoc and destruction unseen anywhere else in the world!

Truly: it's as if Iraq has become an effective laboratory, as if its people have become domesticated mice for an experiment, after being injected with heavy doses of religious and sectarian serum that turns rational thinking into ignorance, compelling them to accustom themselves to living in primitive caves under the conditions that have been imposed on them.

Iraq - Sotal Iraq - Original Article (Arabic)

 

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« Reply #4 on: July 29, 2010, 06:21:05 am »

Published on Wednesday, July 28, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

Worse Than Imagined: Consequences of the Iraq War


by César Chelala

In 2003, several weeks before the start of the Iraq war, I wrote an article on the impending war in which I warned against the terrible humanitarian consequences that a war against that country would unleash. I never imagined that they would be much worse than the nightmarish scenario that I painted in my article.

A recent article by Drs. Busby, Hamdan and Ariabi in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health describes the consequences on the civilian population of the coalition forces’ attack on Fallujah in 2004. Their conclusions are based on a study they conducted in January and February of 2010, in which a team of researchers visited 711 houses in Fallujah and obtained responses to a questionnaire in Arabic on cancer, birth defects and infant mortality.

Among their findings are dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukemia years after the attack on that city. The infant mortality rate was 80 per 1,000 live births, more than 4 times the rate in Egypt and in Jordan, and some 9 times the rate in Kuwait. After 2009, the infant mortality rate increased even more markedly, to 136 deaths for 1,000 live births.

Already in 2005, Iraqi doctors in Fallujah stated that they were being overwhelmed by the number of babies born with serious defects, and they also reported on the high number of cancer and miscarriages suffered by the city’s population. The rate of babies born with heart defects is said to be 13 higher those born in Europe.

Professor Chris Busby, an expert in the effects of radiation on humans said that uranium particles can alter the DNA of sperm and eggs from contaminated adults and cause a multitude of birth defects in any baby they conceive. A doctor in Fallujah quoted by Inter Press Service stated, “I can say all kinds of toxic pollution took place in Fallujah after the November 2004 massacre.”

The U.S. military, which at first denied it had used white phosphorus as an anti-personnel weapon in Fallujah, later retracted that denial and admitted using it. However, the Pentagon argues that white phosphorus doesn’t poison people but burns them. In consequence, it is covered by the protocol on incendiary weapons, which the U.S. hasn’t signed. While Saddam Hussein’s use of white phosphorus against the Kurds was severely criticized, the same criticism should apply to the use of white phosphorus against civilians in Fallujah.

In addition to white phosphorus, depleted uranium (DU) munitions, which contain low-level radioactive waste, were extensively used in Fallujah. According to the Pentagon, 1,200 tons of DU have been used thus far in Iraq.

Reports covering the U.S. offensive on Fallujah state that widespread human rights abuses were committed, including indiscriminate violence against civilians and children.

Writing for The Independent Patrick Cockburn says, “In the assault US commanders largely treated Fallujah as a free-fire zone to try to reduce casualties among their own troops. British officials were appalled by the lack of concern for civilian casualties.”

A documentary produced by RAI, the Italian state TV, shows a series of photographs from Fallujah corpses with the flesh burnt off but clothes still intact, a finding consistent with the effects of white phosphorus on humans. I am reminded of a poem by Yusef Komunyakaa “You and I are Disappearing,” whose first stanza says,

The cry I bring down from the hills
belongs to a girl still burning
inside my head. At daybreak
she burns like a piece of paper.

 César Chelala, MD, PhD, is a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award. He is also the foreign correspondent for Middle East Times [1] International (Australia).


Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/07/28-1

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