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TechnoratiThe Cost of War: Disturbing Story of Fallujah's Birth Defects
Six years after the intense fighting began in the Iraqi town of Fallujah between US forces and Sunni insurgents, there is a disturbingly large number of cases of birth defects in the town.
Fallujah is less than 40 miles (65km) from Baghdad, but it can still be dangerous to get to.
As a result, there has been no authoritative medical investigation, certainly by any Western team, into the allegations that the weapons used by the Americans are still causing serious problems.
The Iraqi government line is that there are only one or two extra cases of birth defects per year in Fallujah, compared with the national average.
'Daily cases'
But in the impressive new Fallujah General Hospital, built with American aid, we found a paediatric specialist, Dr Samira al-Ani, who told us that she saw two or three new cases every day.
Most of them, she said, exhibited cardiac problems.
When asked what the cause was, she said: "I am a doctor. I have to be scientific in my talk. I have nothing documented. But I can tell you that year by year, the number [is] increasing."
The specialist, like other medical staff at the hospital, seemed nervous about talking too openly about the problem.
They were well aware that what they said went against the government version, and we were told privately that the Iraqi authorities are anxious not to embarrass the Americans over the issue.
There are no official figures for the incidence of birth defects in Fallujah.
The US military authorities are absolutely correct when they say they are not aware of any official reports indicating an increase in birth defects in Fallujah - no official reports exist.
Mothers warned
But it is impossible, as a visitor, not to be struck by the terrible number of cases of birth defects there.
We heard many times that officials in Fallujah had warned women that they should not have children.
We went to a clinic for the disabled, and were given details of dozens upon dozens of cases of children with serious birth defects.
One photograph I saw showed a newborn baby with three heads.
While we were at the clinic, people kept arriving with children who were suffering major problems - a little girl with only one arm, several children who were paralysed, and another girl with a spinal condition so bad I asked my cameraman not to film her.
At the clinic we were told that the worst problems were to be found in the neighbourhood of al-Julan, near the river.
This was the heart of the resistance to the Americans during the two major offensives of April and September 2004, and was hit constantly by bombs and shells.
River water
We went to a house where three children, all under six, were suffering from birth defects.
Two boys were partially paralysed, and their sister clearly had serious brain damage.
Like all the other parents we spoke to, their mother had no doubt that the American attacks were responsible.
Outside, a man who had heard we were there had brought his four-year-old daughter to show us. She had six fingers on each hand, and six toes on each foot.
She was also suffering from a number of other serious health problems. The father told us that the house where they still lived had been hit by an American shell during the fighting in 2004.
There may well be a link with drinking-water, especially in al-Julan.
After the fighting was over, the rubble from the town was bulldozed into the river bank, and most people in this area get their water from the river.
The true causes of the problem, and the question of the effects of the weapons the Americans used, can be resolved only by a proper independent inquiry by medical experts.
And until the security situation in and around Fallujah improves, it will be difficult to carry that out.
71 Comments so far
Show AllIt seems that one our primary tasks is to spread depleted uranium all over the planet. There are increasing measurable amounts everywhere as a result of our psychotic rampages. The birth defects and diseases being observed in Iraq and elsewhere lie in store for for all of us if we do not stop these monsters.
DU, the bullet that keeps on killing long after it's been shot...
Someone should mail boxes of the stuff to the Bush Family, scatter it around their homes...every one of them...
DU, the 'gift' of nuclear power and Ike's Atoms for Peace. DU, WP, Cluster Bombs and Napalm are illegal weapons, that's why international war criminals use them.
George and Dick had a very good time with their killing spree, breaking into homes of people they didn't know, killing people at random, using DU to poison the whole area for generations to come, and making torture the new American National pastime.
If one of their homes were broken into and one of their children or grandchildren killed they would be dumfounded. They would be in shock. Who in the world could have a motive for such a senseless crime? They would demand justice, revenge, and torture would be the obvious place to start.
Shades of South Africa. The great USA has become stupid, careless, lazy, and ruthless.
For God's sake when the next terrorist attack comes, let's not let anybody get away with whining:"Why do they hate us? These people must be insane. Who would do such a thing?"
Obama and the entire legislative and judicial branches of this illegal government are hardly less culpable.
When will the defects start showing in Marja?
A generation;20 years? An American poisoning for how many generations to come and does anyone care but the Iraqui's?Tony
Obama has started making more nuclear weapons so there will be more Dirty Uranium waste to make into dirty nukes. Obama is abandoning pushing for long term storage of DU in this country because he is using it as a weapon.
The Zionists found out the folly of this tactic because they are getting a rise in DU associated disease in the areas down wind from Gaza. Much of Gulf War syndrome is DU associated illness. Paul Erlich has said that we are more likely going to poison ourselves out of existence before Global Warming gets us.In this country the ruling elite don't care about the masses and our daily corporate press is part of the imperial elite and so doesn't care.The problem with the elite is that in the Middles Ages they died from the Black Death as much as the Commoners. There is no escape from environmetal poisoning or Global Warming.
It would be bitter justice if we get what we deserve. But ours are not the only innocent children.
The corporations are like malevolent aliens loosed among us. Arriving with tempting gifts filled with poison. Poisoning others' bodies as they poison our souls.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Sick, American weapons of mass destruction. The gift of death that keeps on giving.
Remember Agent Orange used by the U.S. military in Vietnam?
It has been maiming the Vietnamese for decades.
Absolutely, Oikos.
Plus, many of the people who served in the U. S. military during the Viet nam war ended up with children who had birth defects as a consequence of Agent Orange, also.
Google R.A. the Rugged mans "Uncommon Valor" track.
Dudes dad went to Viet nam, 2 kids born handle cap one died at age 10.
Keep in mind the blame is not only on america.
Saddam was contaminating his own land for generations...
What gets ignored here is the problem of hunger, severe mal-nutrition can be just as a harmful to a child as a birth defect.
Now we have a situation where the 2 have been combined...god forgive us.
my previous comment was deleted...
we are all these women...
these chemical reactions will kill us all...
Global Start Date: September 22, 2012...
unanimous, worldwide rejection of the modern world, cessation of industry...acoustic, agrarian life...
we can make this world better...we must...
time is running out...
Keep in mind modern tech allows us to produce enough food to substain a population which grows at a very fast rate.
Without this tech we would quickly exceed the carrying capacity of the earth and starve.
I blame all of it on the mentality of congress. The MIC only exist to fulfill a demand for weapons. The day congress wants to allocate 700 billion to feed the worlds hungry, i can guarantee you Lockheed Martin (and every other defense company) will start working on more nutritious food packets.
Efficiency will be measured by how many people one B-52 can feed in a hummanitarin run.
Would congress support such a large allocation of our budget to helping people... probably not.
http://info-wars.org/2010/01/01/uranium-weapons-low-level-radiation-and-deformed-babies/
http://www.umrc.net/uranium_and_weapons.aspx
The monstrosity of these crimes (use of uranium weapons - "depleted" is a complete misnomer)can only fully sink in, when we are forced to SEE the deformed babies. Send Obama and his nuclear cronies to Iraq and confront them with their painful and criminal legacy:
- there is NO PEACEFUL USE of nuclear energy and every nuclear power plant will increase the cancer incidence, especially among children
- DU: this is a crime against humanity if there ever was one; not only are these weapons indiscriminate but their effect is to poison the DNA of its victims FOREVER and the genetic damage will get worse ..(DU was also used in the Balkans, (still used)in Afghanistan, in Lebanon and of course in the "prime laboratory" for new inhumane weapons: Gaza)
The Pentagon "underestimates" the dangers of D.U. because it measures them in the wrong way: by calculating the average amount of D.U. radiation produced throughout the body. A report the Department of Defense issued in 2000 concludes that even vets with the highest exposures from embedded shrapnel could expect over 50 years to receive a dose of just five rem, "which is the annual limit for [nuclear industry] workers." The dose for those who inhaled dust from burned-out tanks would be "far below the annual guideline (0.1 rem) for members of the public."
But to measure the effect of D.U. as a whole-body radiation dose is meaningless, because the dose from D.U. is intensely concentrated in the cells around a mote of dust. The alpha particles D.U. emits-high-energy clumps of protons and neutrons-are harmless outside the body, because they cannot pass through skin. Inside tissue, however, they wreak a havoc analogous to that of a penetrating shell against an enemy tank, bombarding cell nuclei, breaking chains of DNA, damaging fragile genes.
In the potentially thousands of hot spots inside the lungs of a person exposed to D.U. dust, the same cells will be irradiated again and again, until their ability to repair themselves is lost.
D.U. steadily migrates to the bones. There it irradiates the marrow, where stem cells, the progenitors of all the other cells the body manufactures in order to renew itself, are produced. Bombarded with alpha particles, the DNA of stem cells will fall apart, potentially affecting every organ.
More about "High Risks and Low Doses"
http://uglyrumors.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/nucliar-flat-earth-news/#_ftn1
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5146778547681767408&ei=me6PS6rOHpbt-QbA4_W0Ag&q=depleted+urani...
(See also "GULF WAR SYNDROME - Killing Our Own" on Google video and the chilling "introduction" by JFK - by the way, JFK strongly opposed the secret development of Israel's nuclear weapons .. after his assassination .. the policy changed ...)
While you are making a lot of important points about inhaled DU dust, there is no association between DU munitions, their use in Iraq, and commercial nuclear electricity generation. Using the horrible US war-crimes in fallujah, past and ongoing, to argue for a position on domestic nuclear energy is a bit insensitive.
But, at risk of going off topic myself, there have been many studies on the matter of nuclear power plants and cancer rates, and no connection between the two have ever been found:
Here is a US study:
www.idph.state.il.us/cancer/pdf/nuclear%20study%20final%20report%20ERS06_1.pdf
and a study done in Finland:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/qp5446740wn53012/
Uh, yeah, how bout Chernyobal and Three Mile Island. You make me want to call you an idiot and an ass over and over. That would be wrong so I would never do it.
You are totally lying! See above, the sources I cited came from the same google page that you got your sources saying that nuclear power plants don't cause cancer. So... You are straight up a liar because you say "no connection between the two have ever been found", a patently false statement shown to be so by the 5 minutes of research I did on the topic.
I would say that on other topics you are in-line with most CDers, but on this one you must be getting paid, and what better way to blend in and be effective than to say everything right except your one paid for subject. Unfortunately you have to lie to make nuclear sound good, so you are easily exposed.
pjd 412 has stated he is a federal Coal Mine inspector and has proven to have intense knowledge of coal mines.
He also has shown a complete and unscientific bias for nuke power.
Shame on you pjd 412! Promoter of childhood cancer.
Is not the DU from commercial nuclear generation.
And there are studies which show childhood cancer rates decline appreciably when plants are decommissioned.
Can you cite them?
At any rate, I feel a little uncomfortable that the use of the suffering of the people of Fallujah being used to incorrectly make a point about nuclear power generation. Commercial nuclear power has as much to do with military DU munitions as urine has to do with gunpowder.
the relevant point here is that both official sources on the dangers of DU and official sources on the dangers of nuclear plant radioactivity appear to seriously under-estimate those dangers. Why would they do this? Because a true estimation of the real dangers of those policies would most likely lead to their discontinuation. This would not be in the best interests of those policies proponents, most notably the nuclear industry associations and corporations. I think it is ridiculous that you are still advocating for domestic nuclear power production given all the many discussions we have had about its obvious dangers and externalized costs. I guess you will never discontinue your robotic "Zieg Heil!" to the nuclear industry.
Here you go, some cited sources, all it took was a simple google search, which implies that either you didn't do such a simple act of research and speak from complete assishness. Or you did do such a search and lied, thinking that everybody else is too oblivious to perform a simple search themselves.
A German study documenting higher incidences of leukemia between 1980 and 2003:
http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X1342&site=rverzola.wordpress.com&url=http%3A%2F%2Frverzola.files.word...
A US study documenting the increased incidence of cancers in the US near nuke plants:
http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X1342&site=rverzola.wordpress.com&url=http%3A%2F%2Frverzola.files.word...
A US study of the cancer effects of the Three Mile Island incident:
http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X1342&site=rverzola.wordpress.com&url=http%3A%2F%2Frverzola.files.word...
These citations come from:
http://rverzola.wordpress.com/2009/02/09/no-to-bnpp-more-leukemia-around-nuclear-plants/
So what the hell? Are you actually trying to misinform people or did you just not actually perform a search for studies highlighting the dangers of nuke plants?
This statement is disingenuous. Of course DU has EVERYTHING to do with commercial nuclear power: enriched uranium comes from separating U-235 from natural uranium. U-235 is the isotope usable in nuke reactors and it comprises about .7 percent of natural uranium. What is left over IS depleted uranium! Now, how you can say that "Commercial nuclear power has as much to do with military DU munitions as urine has to do with gunpowder", when the process of making fuel for commercial reactors PRODUCES DIRECTLY depleted uranium, is beyond me. The only answer I can think of is that you are either a bold-faced liar or a complete fool.
While you cannot literally make gunpowder from urine, as you need several other ingredients to produce gunpowder, urine can certainly be used to produce one necessary element. In addition to saltpeter, however, people also need charcoal and sulfur. These ingredients are both readily available, unlike saltpeter, so the popular stories about making gunpowder from urine do have a rational basis. Until the First World War, before people learned to reliably synthetically produce niter, urine, guano, and manure were all collected to produce gunpowder.
Initially, saltpeter was scraped from the walls of stables, but this source quickly proved to be insufficient, so people started collecting urine and dung to access the valuable nitrates. To extract saltpeter from urine historically, gunpowder manufacturers set up “niter beds” of straw, filtering the urine through the straw, which would concentrate the salts in the urine for easy collection. Urine has also had a number of other uses, and competition for available resources could sometimes be fierce, which may explain why many nations continued to use bladed weapons after the development of firearms, as making gunpowder from urine was expensive and time consuming.
During various times of war historically, citizens have been asked to collect urine and dung so that gunpowder manufacturers could use these products in the manufacture of gunpowder. Making gunpowder is a hazardous practice, and not recommended for people who are not experienced, although some people do make their own black powder at home, for hunting and historical re-enactment. Some historical societies sometimes offer demonstrations which involve making gunpowder from urine, among other things.
http://www.wisegeek.com/can-you-really-make-gunpowder-from-urine.htm
From the excellent description you give of the mechanism of action of DU I find it unlikely, as I have said before, that DU is responsible for an increase in birth defects. I would expect it to increase cancer rates.
To produce birth defects germ cells in either parent need to be mutated. So I have concluded that munitions were used in this attack that have a sytemic effect more like Agent Orange.
"There it irradiates the marrow, where stem cells, the progenitors of all the other cells the body manufactures in order to renew itself, are produced."
You are mistaken about bone marrow stem cells which produce all the different types of blood cells but no others,
Would not high doses of some radiations break the parents germ cells? Gamma?
Prof 10:17 ------- Glover 10:51 states DU has a strong affinity for DNA phosphates that would explain the breaking of germ cell DNA and birth defects from DU.
P.S. If the last Google video link I posted does not work search for:
"The Doctor, the Depleted Uranium, and the Dying Children"
There's a corporate criminal Empire that's doing this and they are sociopaths. We either kill them or they will kill all of us. There's DU on the winds of the world now.
signalfire...right on. scary..TS Eliot.."This is how the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper."
I looked at the pictures on my tv this morning, and listened to reporter John Simpson's report.
Sometimes I see and hear info that makes other things seem trivial.
I feel betrayal when I see and hear militaristic displays of patriotism, or whinging about the terrors we might be attacked with by the evil 'others.'
While I agree that DU in munitions is horrific and should be banned, something else is also going on in Fallujah as well. Has everyone already forgetten about the criminal seige of Fallujah - a number of chemical agents wer also used on the people of Fallujah.
DU = Death
Oh, BTW, our Troops are also affected.
Support the Troops...My Ass!
Our Leaders are Cosmic Environmental Criminals.
On another board I once involved myself in a back and forth discussion on the dangers of DU Munitions. This was several years ago shortly after the Invasion of Iraq.
Of several dozens on the boards that posted I was the only one suggesting DU harmful. I posted any manner of links to the Science including the Pentagons own cautions against exposure to the same.
The overwhelming response was revealing.
The United States of America would never use such munitions if they were "harmful". There was no concrete evidence that such munitions affected the health of peoples exposed to the residue. Any pictures or science I posted was "propaganda" and from sites that could not be relied upon.
My posting of such was because I was "anti-american".
One would be hard pressed to separate their mind set from that of the most extreme of Zionists.
It a distinct minority of people that seem concerned with this issue and that the weapons are used against the third world peoples rather then against the much more "Decent Americans" it highly unlikely the United States of America will ever stop using such.
Why is everyone so worried over a little collateral damage? We're building an EMPIRE. We don't have time to consider our actions effect on everyday people. Peasants! Bleh!! Suck it up, Fallujah, we brought you democracy.
Yeah, Amerikkka is winning the hearts and minds of those souls in the Middle East by its benevolence. And the psychopaths who run our country do these atrocities in our name. It makes me vomit.
I hate the corporate pigs who control our nation.
The war against Iraq was a war against the children. The first gulf war caused the same thing, birth defects. Dr. Rafil Dhafir asked in a letter he wrote from prison Aug. 6, 2003: " What can those who used depleted uranium against innocent people say to the children dying in the thousands day in and day out from cancer. What can they say to the pregnant women who lose their babies to miscarriages. What can they say to appease mothers with deformed children who look like Hollywood movie monsters. Any where in the world when a mother delivers a child her first question is, is it a boy or a girl, except the Iraqi women. Their first question is, is the baby deformed or healthy." Rafil Dhafir was much too brave and compassionate to be allowed to be free. He was dedicated to saving the lives of starving children in Iraq during the sanctions.He was sentenced to 22 years for violating the sanctions. The same economic sanctions that killed and deformed (from starvation, polluted water and malnutrition) hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. Now we hear that Officials in Fallujah are warning women not to have children due to birth defects caused by U.S. weapons.My God, my God, what have we done?
"You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world"
dylan - masters of war
the attack on fallujah made hitler smile from hell. that's what we should remember and repeat. the army and marines waited until after bush carried ohio. it wsa 2004, early november, and our troops had been amassing around the city for weeks. before attacking, our marines turned back all males over 12 and under 55, so as to make sure that men of fighting age would be trapped in the city that they were about to devastate. doubtless,, such a maneuver was a war crime. no civilized country forces civilians to stand in the way of a lethal attack, to boil in the cauldron of war. then, as previous writers have suggested, the army and marines attacked with white phosphorous as well as with uranium tipped shells for maximal killing and devastation, compounding the war crimes they had already committed. then, we just tore the city to hell, leaving death and destruction everywhere, with clouds of uranium dust hanging over the battlefield, leeching into anything organic. little w. proposed this revenge attack because 4 american contractors had been burned up and then hanged on a bridge outside of fallujah, so, we avenged one thousand-fold, the savage furies of w's little mind totally unleashed. the 4 contractors met an unfortunate and cruel fate, but how many mexicans would we have hanged here had they killed hundreds of thousands of us with their bombs and then sent their civilian specialists to work here, doing jobs for $90,000.00 per year that we americans, poor and starving, would prefer to do ourselves? all that, and we didn't even attack mexico. not in the last century or so, anyway. but, i'm sure we'll be returning sometime in the not too distant future. khan, attila, hitler, and franco are all proud us, the emerging fourth reich with a third world society. looking up at us, i hope.
And the first targets were hospitals and medic stations.
And later the USA shot ambulance drivers.
And the hung contracters were the murderous Blackwater mercenaries who habitually slaughtered innocent civilians.
what makes fallujah even more criminal is that we had fired the same uranium tippped shells in the 1991 war against iraqi tanks, easily shredding them because, compared to lead, uranium is so much the thicker and more penetrative force. soon enough, veterans all around the country caught what was named "gulf war syndrome". we denied then that the uranium dust clouds over the battlefields had anything to do with the veterans' clusters of illness, but the soldiers' symptoms were too common and too pervasive to attribute the illnesses to anything but this highly toxic uranium fallout. ironical that the country most worried about chemical weapons sold saddam all his, and now pays monthly disability checks both to vietnam veterans for the damage union carbide's agent orange caused them and to our iraqi veterans for the awful illnesses our uranium manufacturers caused them.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Stories like these and the depleted uranium stories are where my news toxicity levels max out, my eyes blur and I get nauseous enough to pass out. If the U.S. is damned from the Bush era forward for a century (if homo sapiens even survives that long) we will be justifably damned for our anti-environmentalism, our resource wars and our use of these chemical and radioactive weapons. This is the core cancerous running sore of the run amok military-industrial beast that the American people most WILLFULLY refuse to look at, and which our disgusting corporate media most avidly helps to cover up. This is the sort of stuff that should make progressives call up "their" representatives and senators in Congress and cuss out their aides every effing day.
metal and johnny u,
How fitting is it that this nightmarish report is found only on Commondreams?
The rest of the USA willfully denies that these atrocities happened, that unimaginable brutality was visited upon these people and their children, then and now.
These war crimes are our shame, and this report should disgust all of us.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
There are other indie and alt news venues, mostly online and radio, that report such stories but the mainstream media won't touch them. The vast majority of Americans will never hear details of them but only rumors they will dismiss out of hand. Most Americans are still in denial that their government resorted to torture of terror suspects--some of whom turned out to be terrorists but most of whom were innocent--and that over a hundred of these people were tortured to death. Americans in general don't know and don't want to know. They prefer to focus on materialist minutia and their collections of toys, their media-inculcated self-image modeled on this or that manufactured notion of masculine or feminine McNorms and their "attitude." They are mostly a nation of infantile sheep.
wc652: you're right on! three other things the mainstream media can never say; that israel has hydrogen bombs, probably even neutron bombs; that noam chomsky is a serious intellectual, who, if given 15% of the media coverage that rush limbaugh gets, would probably cause multitudes of americans to change their opinions on many important issues, especially those regarding american miitary and economic predominance; that germany with 80 million people exports more than the united states does, though germany has the dreaded single payer that the u.s. right says is so destructive of productive economies. germany exports more than we do in actual dollars and euros, and by about 5:1 if you want to use a per capita measure. anybody want to add to the verboten list?
"...no official report exists."
but you can be sure there is an official cover-up.
I've read articles positing that prior to the introduction of man-made chemicals into the environment, that radiation from the plentiful uranium in the earth's crust was responsible for most mutations causing cancer in children.
PaiaGirl 7:57 ------- Wherever large amounts of manmade radiation is introduced into the enviornment childhood cancer increases by an appreciable amount.
Radiation breaks DNA strands
The killing effect of the radiation belt around the earth is one factor that makes some claim man never went to the moon.
At least one, of the very first nuclear scientists died within minutes of exposure to a handful of enriched uranium.
Hundreds of thousands died and were born deformed in Japan from radiation introduced by the USA military.
See EricGergory and Toqueville posts below.
These crimes against humanity are fully supported by America's elected officials and Christian churches.
Another sweeping generalization regarding Christian churches which is consequently inaccurate and revealing of the author's bias and ignorance of the facts. The Catholic Church did not at any time support, indeed it actively opposed, the Iraqi war. In 1991, Pope John Paul II opposed the Gulf War and publicly appealed to U.S. President George H.W. Bush not to wage it. In 2003, he once again opposed a war in Iraq and appealed to U.S. President George W. Bush to refrain from going to war.
In March 2003, just hours after the first American cruise missiles hit Baghdad, the Vatican proclaimed the conflict a "defeat for reason and for the gospel." It was a war, said Cardinal Roberto Tucci, that was "beyond all legality and all international legitimacy." The church's opposition to the war began long before the 2003 invasion. As noted Pope John Paul II also opposed the 1991 Gulf War and the U.N.-imposed sanctions that followed, and he remained one of the most ardent opponents of the current Iraq conflict until his death in 2005.
Yeah right, MamaQC. The poor victimized Catholic Church has been peggged wrong once again. They're always working for peace and blah, blah, blah. I know that I have seen hundreds of thousands of Catholics mobilized by Pope Rat in the streets protesting all the US wars, all this activity due to Catholic teachings on Peace. Hah-hah-hah.... Poor Catholic Church. So misunderstood.
And to think that the hierarachy of this church have even been accused of helping the fascists along in WW2, participating in genocides against Native peoples, and harboring a squadron of pedophiles for centuries inside their organization. It is all so very unjust! And as we know, the Pope never speaks with forked tongue! In fact, he is a general at the head of an army of Saints!
Why bury your nuclear waste inside a mountain, when you can manufacture a war, and shoot your nuclear waste at civilians?
I have long suspected that all the cruise missiles launched into Yugoslavia in '98/'99 were in danger of being rendered obsolete because of the "millenium bug".
This suggestion will of course be debunked as preposterous, but it does fit the MIC mentality.
The endocrine disruption by so many chemicals used in warfare, the burning of many things upon explosion by missiles containing DU, all leads to a travesty against humanity. It is disturbing that the United Nations is not seeing fit to prosecute the use of weapons that cause these things. But this has been going on for many years, long enough even for a generation to now be having their own children. This is a violence against humanity that goes beyond comprehension. If you think those leaders like Hussein caused it, where do you think he got his weapons??? yup, USA, sold to them for many years with DU. You better have some deeper knowledge of the US MIC before pointing fingers. USA is guilty as hell.
Google birth defects in Iraq...201,000 links listed
"The brutal irony is that the most likely origin of this gene-twisting force is not Iraqi, but Western. During the 100-hour ground war of February 1991, coalition planes fired at least 1 million rounds of ammunition coated in a radioactive material known as depleted uranium, or DU.
"There is another explanation for this genetic plague: the environmental pollution caused when chemical and biological centers were blown up in an effort to "degrade" the Iraqi arsenal. But radiation from depleted uranium rounds remains the most plausible explanation.
"We know that depleted uranium is toxic and can cause diseases," says Dr. Howard Urnovitz, a microbiologist who has testified before the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses.
"This is the beginning", says Dr. Jawad al-Ali, a pediatrician and fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. He is based in southern Iraq's largest hospital and has spent three years researching congenital defects and cancers in children.
"Something happened to our environment in that war. Maybe it was DU or maybe it was the chemicals that were released when we were bombed -- we can't say for sure yet, but something has happened to our environment. We even see it in the plant and agricultural life. ... Huge tomatoes -- it's clear that there has been some sort of genetic modification since the war."
Maggie O'Kane Guardian Weekly 1999
The United States, I'm sorry to say, was not the only country to supply (the late) Saddam Hussein with the weapons and the gas that he used to gas his own people, and to arm him. The west, generally helped arm him, as did the (former) Soviet Union.
The only question is why did main stream media take so long? I have in front of me a printout from an article on Truth Out dated 8/23/2004 - "Deleted Uranium: Dirty Bombs, Dirty Missiles, Dirty Bullets" by Leuren Moret. That's over 5 years ago! Wow, with that kind of speedy reporting, just think, after the world ends, we'll have a 5 year grace period before we get to find out about it!
Note: Was also reported about on this crazy left-wing site you've probably never heard of called Common Dreams:
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0809-33.htm
Yeah, I've also been reading about this for years. Why doesnt the MSM report it?
Because to do so would make our Imperial Power Elite look like psychopathic monsters, which, of course, is what they are.
I think it would be hard to get the public to go along with war if they knew.
Like Bush/Cheney now admit if the truth about WMD's not existing in Iraq was known, the Congress would not have gone along.
very pitiful tragedy.
usa should consider humanitarian
assistance and determine this
never happen again
hall 7:08 ------ Your comment implies that the military was unaware of the consequences.
There is no mystery or trajedy here, only intentional war crimes by monstrous "humans"
Afghanistan is being covered with DU as we speak it is an irrevicoable escalation of the cruel "salt the earth policy", but in this case it never ends and is many times more hideous.
Anybody involved in DU should be imprisoned for life.
Create a monster, and sooner or later it turns on you.
Now we know the open secret that it is ruining lives in the war Zones of those people who live there.
From an article by Leuren Moret on Common Dreams, in 2005 I wrote this tune.
Deleted Uranium blues is no joke with a half life over 2 billion years
It's dust is blowin now over the planet, while the Chicken Hawks cheer..the Chicken Hawks cheer
It's the nuclear weapon of US choice in every war every day
With a strong affinity for phosphate structures in our DNA... in our DNA
Depleted Uranium Blues.......... Depleted Uranium Blues....
It's a heavy metal chemical radio active poison with a particle too small to see
Every country the US fights in, its blowin back to you and me... You and me...
There's no way to clean it up and it keeps on killing, that's what the experts say
If we don't stop it who the Hell will, who do you think is gonna pay?... Who's gonna Pay..
Half a million Gulf Vets are now disabled and their babies are being born deformed
missing eyes brains arms legs and blood diseases and they were never warned... never warned...
It started with a memo from the Manhattan project addressed to General Groves
"Dirty bombs dirty missiles , dirty bullets is now the way to go"... the way to go...
new verse today:
Now babies in Fallugah are born with these very same defects that we have seen
They try to keep it secret but all they do is prove what war really means... really means
When is Mr Human Rights O'Bomber going to begin to pay reparations to the child victims of US use of Agent Orange in SE Asia and death squads in South America and Central America, let alone what they are now doing in Gaza, Afghanistan, Somalia, Lebanon, and Iraq to children? The US really is a nation of child abusers and bullies, not human rights promoters.
I'm a little miffed at why the article never mentioned DU. DU in Fallujah was used extensively, as well as in many other towns and cities in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since a projected gestation period of 6 or 7 years, birth defects and cancer rates have risen dramatically in places where DU was used.
U238 is a metal, and as a metal, it oxidizes, flakes off, and becomes part of the soil. It easily becomes airborne especially when people like farmers or construction workers disturb it. That type of Alpha radiation is like Arsenic, ...in the sense that it's accumulative. Years ago they used to make paint from U238, and coat dinner plates with it. After a few years people began to get sick after literally eating the oxidized particles. We had one of the plates where I used to work at a radio-isotope lab, and we used to test our monitoring equipment against it. Soldiers have no risk because they're not there long enough to inhale or ingest the radioactive particles in the soil over a period of time. It's true also, that U238 has a half life about as long as the age of the earth, so what we've done is poison these lands and guaranteed the suffering of untold future generations forever. Obviously this is something you could never clean up. What are you going to do, ...remove all the dirt in Iraq? You know, ...this kind of reminds me of the end of Exodus in the bible, ...where all all the aa-rabs were exiled into the desert, and all their future generations to suffer disease and pestulence till the end of time. Who the hell wrote that, Ariel Sharon's great grandfather?
Does anyone out there have money for billboards that show the photos of the babies born to mothers who had been exposed to DU? The caption on the billboards should read, "THIS IS WHAT USA TAXPAYER FUNDS HAVE BOUGHT".
The billboards are all owned by MSM, good luck.
It might be time to "support the troops" by bringing them all home.
Then when they're sitting around on domestic bases getting bored and term out, we can reduce the Defense portion of our fed spending and stop the US bleeding of red ink. Americans back home, budget problems improved, sounds good to me.
Maybe we can take some of that money saved from the Pentagon budget and black program-fund the CIA to actually find Osama Bin Laden. After more than 8+ years, and countless Billions/Trillions of Dollars that F*** is still out there somewhere. The Pentagon has failed to get him, so downside the Pentagon and let the CIA try. (all off the books of course!)
Thousands of birth defects among the Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians because of the US use of dioxins (Agent Orange), napalm, 15,000 lb. 'Daisy Cutters, and cluster bombs, and now hundreds of dozens of birth defects in Falluja, Sadar City and Af/Pak, Somalia and now Yeman and other towns that were victims of US' DU, white phosphorus, Mk-77 Napalm and D.I.M.E. (tungsten based) anti-personnel munitions and the US calls it their 'War on Terror?!!!!'
Bastards shouldd be 'hog tied' and shipped overnight 'collect' by FedEx to the World Court at the Hague for further dispositon and hopefully a quick hanging with a 'new' rope.
TheAZCowBoy
Tombstone, AZ.