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The Suffering of Fallujah
Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Fallujah . . .
And so it turns out that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, though not until we arrived and started using them.
Along with whatever else we did to Fallujah - exacted collective punishment on a defiant city (a war crime) in November 2004, killed thousands of civilians, shattered the infrastructure (nearly six years later, the sewage system hasn't been repaired and waste flows in the streets) - we also, apparently, nuked the city, leaving a legacy of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality and genetic abnormality.
Freedom isn't free. Remember when that was the go-to phrase of the citizen war zealots among us, their all-purpose rebuttal when those of us appalled by this insane war cited civilian casualty stats? Discussion over. Thought stops here.
This is the power of language. Call it "war" and along come glory, duty, courage, sacrifice: the best of humanity writ large. The word is impenetrable; it sets the heart in motion; God makes an appearance, blesses the troops, blesses the weapons. Operation Iraqi Freedom: They'll greet us with open arms.
At what point do we learn our lesson, that "war" is a moral cesspool of horrific consequences, especially, and most troublingly, unintended ones?
Thus last November, a group of British and Iraqi doctors petitioned the U.N. to investigate the alarming rise in birth defects at Fallujah's hospitals. "Young women in Fallujah," they wrote, ". . . are terrified of having children because of the increasing number of babies born grotesquely deformed, with no heads, two heads, a single eye in their foreheads, scaly bodies or missing limbs. In addition, young children in Fallujah are now experiencing hideous cancers and leukemias."
The official U.S. response was that the doctors' letter was anecdotal: There have been no studies to verify that anything is truly amiss in Fallujah, beyond the devastation caused by U.S. troops and bombs. Now that has changed.
The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health has just published an epidemiological study, "Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009," which has found, among much else, that Fallujah is experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia and infant mortality than Hiroshima and Nagasaki did in 1945.
Perhaps most eerily, the study, conducted by a team of 11 researchers this past January and February, in 711 households, found a radical shift in the ratio of female-to-male births. Under normal circumstances, the human constant is approximately 1,050 boys born for every 1,000 girls. In post-invasion Fallujah, 860 boys have been born for every 1,000 girls - similar to a shift seen in Hiroshima after the atom bomb was dropped.
Dr. Chris Busby, one of the study's authors, said only "some very major mutagenic exposure" could account for such an aberration. The most likely culprit, he said, is depleted uranium, a dense metal with extraordinary penetrating ability used in the manufacture of missiles, shells and bombs. DU explodes on impact into an extremely fine, radioactive dust that settles on the ground or is carried by the wind. While the U.S. military continues to deny that breathing it is harmful, many scientists insist that it is highly toxic and a likely contributor to Gulf War Syndrome - that it is, in short, a nuclear weapon, with fallout as dangerous as a nuclear bomb.
To read about this is to grow increasingly sickened and disturbed at who we are and what we are doing: still debating "the war," still dignifying this ongoing hemorrhage of national values with the term; still murdering civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and resolutely fleeing from any responsibility for the ecocide we have committed in Iraq; and still silently, inevitably, preparing for the next one.
Would that we could bring the suffering of Fallujah to the heart of America, or at least to the heart of Congress, which just OK'd another $59 billion to "fund the troops" (notice the delicacy of the Pentagon's phrasing) in Afghanistan.
Enormous, future-devouring numbers turn over in Congress with such ease, if the money is demanded by the war machine. Money dedicated to building the future, or repairing the damage from old, dead wars, is another matter entirely: Suddenly it's real, like a pound of flesh, and meted out only with howls of anguish.
To help clean up our legacy of Agent Orange in Vietnam, for instance, Congress has appropriated $9 million since 2007. We sprayed 19 million gallons of this highly toxic defoliant on the country between 1962 and 1971, causing harm to at least 3 million Vietnamese in the process. Our sense of responsibility amounts to $3 per person. And such money becomes available only after decades of denial that we have any responsibility at all.
I think again about Fallujah. The city's suffering will haunt our national dreams for decades to come. It is our future. In a generation or so, our children will face the consequences of what we have done there; but in the meantime, we'll keep trying to buy "victory" and ultimate justification in multi-billion-dollar increments until our financial bankruptcy equals our moral bankruptcy.
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52 Comments so far
Show Allhail to the empire! heil bush!
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who will guard the guardians, watch the watchers, etc?)
Hello Johnny u,
Love the sentiment especially the last part. The only consolation I have is that the empire is winding down and will end soon possibly in our lifetime. The downside of this is the empire is most dangerous like a wounded animal just before it collapses.
"... the empire is winding down and will end soon possibly in our lifetime ..."
I am glad that you qualify what you mean by soon. I hope I get to see it in my lifetime. The British empire was a spent force immediately after WW2. People didn't know it at the time, but looking back that was the really end of it and Britain became just a sycophantic arselicking country after that, pretending to be so big by sitting on the US rhino's back.
Picking the end might be bit like picking peak oil. You only know it for sure a decade after it happened.
I've tried to look at the images of babies born deformed in Fallujah. I can't.
As these stories flood into alternative media, they are conspicuously absent in the mainstream. The US military has managed to pull off a Hiroshima without the vast majority of the public even hearing about it. I continue to be shocked but not surprised, over and over.
If you can't look at the images, why should the MSM? Everyone should look at the images and listen to the witness of the screaming horror of mothers with still born mutants in their arms. An effective campaign would have bumper stickers with a picture of a DU Baby and a phrase like: Your Tax Money At Work -- Deforming Babies And Enriching Oil Executives Around The World. It would be well to plaster the images extensively until the US pukes itself to it's better human sensibilities.
I agree. I've seen several--just can't look at more, but those several were quite enough. You can be sure my students will all read about this come fall, and be privy to the fact that the photographs are out there. The bumper sticker is a good idea--I like your copy.
As the little coffin was lowering into the soil, the gathering took great comfort in my words: "I voted for Nader."
These atrocious deformities, the human indignity, the immense sorrow of these mothers(fathers), and women in parts of Iraq being advised not to concieve children...and your words of wisdom are "I voted for Nader" -- it's an attempt to unit in human compassion, for as I see it now, we are divided.
Hail the new "improved" bush OilBomber !
Do USA Presidents get extra points for squinting?
The good news is the same USA taxpayers that fund these wars end up breathing the DU dust as thunderstorms and jet streams distribute it worldwide.
You get what you give!
A horrific but most necessary article. Unfortunately one suspects that this will be basically ignored by the corporate media the same way that the study that was published by The Lancet in 2006 was which revealed that at least 600,000 Iraqis had died since the United States invaded their land in 2003 or how the mainstream media turned a deaf ear to the findings by the British organization Opinion Research Bureau which disclosed in 2007 that approximately a million Iraqis had perished since the U.S. stormed into Iraq.
Obama is scheduled to appear today on that insipid program called The View. Will any of those women discuss the atrocity of Fallujah with Obama? In all likelihood no as to do so might be considered in poor taste as the last thing the network executives would want would be to embarrass the president of the United States with revelations that the citizens of Iraq have been maimed and deformed and have become victims of a war crime perpetuated upon them by the United States.
"You can't say civilizations don't advance... for in every war they kill you in a new way."-Will Rodgers [1879-1935], American humorist and social commentator
"It is hard for me to understand a culture that spends more on wars and weapons to kill than it does on education and welfare to help and develop."-Dan George [1899-1981], Canadian actor and chief of the Tsleil-Waututh people
Fallujah was a crime against humanity. US forces used phosphorus and cluster bombs on a civilian population. Some call US the "Great Satan". With the largest military on earth and the Bush Doctrine, the claimed right of preemptive strike, we are feared by all. The world must be wondering what the largest arms buildup in world history is leading to. Our moral imperative from WWII was squandered long ago. Pax Americana includes the Right of Conquest. Submit or be crushed.
Genghis Khan salted the earth after he raped and pillaged a land. At least he left the land he raped and pillaged. Genghis Khan did not build military bases and embassies in the lands he conquered. He did not plan to rape and plunder in perpetuity. He was simple enough to know that holding a conquered land was not possible. Holding a conquered land simply drains the treasury of the conqueror and in the end failure.
Fallujah was a crime against humanity and I agree with most of your comment. But maybe the idea of American exceptionalism makes us think we are different from other conquerors along with the fact that invading, conquering and occupying white Europeans took this land from indigenous native Americans and still control this global empire known as the United States of America.
Fallujah was a crime against humanity and I agree with most of your comment. But maybe the idea of American exceptionalism makes us think we are different from other conquerors along with the fact that invading, conquering and occupying white Europeans took this land from indigenous native Americans and still control this global empire known as the United States of America.
"At what point do we learn our lesson, that "war" is a moral cesspool of horrific consequences, especially, and most troublingly, unintended ones?"
When we listen to our own intelligence: "This is the power of language" -- and stop deflating our arguments with ending statements like: "we'll keep trying to buy "victory" and ultimate justification in multi-billion-dollar increments until our financial bankruptcy equals our moral bankruptcy."(getting over our false need of having the Bigger Better/the First amd Most(est) opinion over letting the facts play out).
...and stop repeating the mantras of insanity: "Call it "war" and along come glory, duty, courage, sacrifice: the best of humanity writ large. The word is impenetrable; it sets the heart in motion; God makes an appearance, blesses the troops, blesses the weapons. Operation Iraqi Freedom: They'll greet us with open arms" -- and stick to a focus of the facts(which includes a constant, though vomit inducing, witness of DU Babies, of the "cesspool of horrific consequences" until it penetrates The Mob consciousness.
The Middle East/South Asian/African Oil war(s) are not for democracy, freedom or women'a rights, they are for the management profits of a very small group of people epitomized by BP's Tony Hayward -- Help Protect The Troops and All Of Humanity, Help End The Oil War.
weapons of mass destruction have been used in Iraq
please don't white wash saddam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_poison_gas_attack
( this does not mean I support the Coalition of the Willing )
It just annoys me when an article starts with an "inaccuracy"
How are you "sure" unless the author states it explicitly? It's a much stronger argument if the accepted behavior of the time (US/Saddam relations) is presented, contrasting it to today's behavior would show little has changed, Obama for Bush I or II, Karzei for Hussein...this to me is a much more convincing argument for new aciton.
To overcome the insane nuclear usage momentum at hand, let's not dither at "may or may not": it is or is not a stronger argument in your opinion. Koehler starts with Nagasaki, Hiroshima and Fallujah: all places where the US has used uranium and atomic based weapons - there is no inference, it's a clear action statement. Though he muddles his argument as I critique elsewhere, he goes on to depict the atrocities of US uranium weaponry actions.
Dear Morticia
Atomic weapons, specifically, is the point. So is the poisoning of people's water supplies for a religious war.
Bush and the American neocons should be tried for war crimes.
These birth defects have been increasing ever since the Invasion of Iraq. I tried to post before that the use of DU munitions was the likely culprit in other forums and was shouted down with claims that "You are just posting the enemies propoganda" and, "the US Military claims they are safe" and "no studies demonstrate DU Munitions can cause such".
This nothwitstanding all the links that existed EVEN THEN that contradicted the claims of the US Government.
The truth is that much the same objections were made over Agent Orange in Vietnam with the US Government once again claiming that it no threat to humans. (Papers released indicate the US GOvernment knew ALL ALONG that this was not the case)
Siouxrose made an excellent point about "forgiveness" wherein she pointed out that it not a blank cheque to commit crimes and wrongs into perpetuity.
The United States of America and any other nations that commits such crimes can NOT be forgiven nor can the soldiers that press the buttons or the generals that give the orders if they are simply going to find other Fallujahs to bomb with these monstrous weapons.
Since 1945 and the war crimes committed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States of America has had some 60 years to learn from these "mistakes" and stop committing such crimes against humanity.
When will they ever learn?
America committed genocidal atrocities well before Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the genocide of the American Indian and the enslavement of the African of whose people millions perished in the horrific trip across the ocean cramped in squalid slave ships. Fallujha is only the latest horror in a string of horrors. Are there still doubts about the illegitimacy of the USA and white privilege?
GW: Thank you for the acknowledgement. I often get flashbacks of movie scenes where organized criminals go to church, do their confession thing, and then go right back to the banal crimes that fund their personal fortunes... and enterprises. That's another case where the adage, "Go and sin no more!" comes into play. Or should!
I remember the shock I felt when I watched a documentary about Rosewood. That community is not far from where I live; and since some of the progeny of the attackers still live in this area, I have crossed paths with them. I certainly cannot speak for all, but I do know that some pretty harsh racist rhetoric is still commonly heard--and felt. I've mused on this and concluded that this species of prejudice is passed down because most children retain the walls of hatred they've been taught. To reverse course would mean a total invalidation of their parents or grandparents. To many, it's a question of loyalty. Also, for anyone to own their own serious misdeeds constitutes an act of courage, a fearless moral inventory. And not many are up for the task. I think it's the same with military families. The oath for most goes unquestioned. It's the American equivalent of, "I was only following orders."
This is one reason I believe we must expand our definition of family to include all tribes.
Those who plan and execute war crimes are the ones that won't learn because to face the calamitous footprint of American foreign policy that they've helped to implement is to come face to face with the enemy who's never been "over there," but rather, is the one gazing back at them from the mirror. That's a moral abyss that few can look into while retaining intact minds (or souls).
As for the citizens, what percentage really went along with these aggressive wars? And is fair to qualify that number when we realize the extent to which a very sophisticated psy-ops media went to work 24/7 to manufacture consent? Given that the 4th estate so thoroughly compromised its intended role and dis-information was abundantly served as the main food for thought (to be digested by "the masses"), how then can we speak of alloting consent? What does such a collective nod mean if it merely reflects back the beliefs so falsely (and expensively) come upon?
Ah, America! it is a ponderous chain you are forming...
An Iraqi Mother
An Iraqi mother with love and anguish cries
For she has experienced her newborn's first day,
Another Iraqi baby is born without eyes.
Purpose of war's destruction was to "democratize,"
By imposing the might and right of the Western way,
An Iraqi mother with love and anguish cries.
Depleted Uranium munitions of the Western allies
Spread radioactive dust that never goes away
Another Iraqi baby is born without eyes.
Before us tough truths tower above smooth lies
No matter how polished our propaganda array,
An Iraqi mother with love and anguish cries.
As another human tragedy unfolds in such reprise
Myth and magic made real by modern war today,
Another Iraqi baby is born without eyes.
All the death dealing machines that we devise
For vaunted Christian Crusaders in deranged display
An Iraqi mother with love and anguish cries
Another Iraqi baby is born without eyes.
Love the poem...except of course for part of it being another example of the poor and dangerous statements about the goal(s) of the Middle East/South Asia/African oil war(s) used by those whose sentiment is seemingly about ending such war behavior. Show the poem to 10 15 and/or 25 year olds...what will be their response to the question of what the goal was in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., "oh, ah...to democratize!" "Very good children, now here's your daily serving of soylant green...now, head on home, and to bed for your cozy warmth and dreams of sugar plum fairies."
KEAN: Well done. Your poem is quite moving. Thank you for sharing it.
Instead of just that prick puck...how about:
"Purpose of war's destruction was to "democratize,"
...obfuscated by oily eyes,
...oil theocractize,
...oil fears stained eyes,
"By imposing the might and right of the Western way,
An Iraqi mother with love and anguish cries."
"For vaunted Christian Crusaders in deranged display"
...4 chared and on display
...on oil/blood stained display
" An Iraqi mother with love and anguish cries
Another Iraqi baby is born without eyes."
Civilized nations of the world must unite against the barbaric crimes of American corporate imperialism.
But the legal scope of prosecuting war crimes must go beyond the leaders who start the wars of aggression and those in the military responsible for executing the crimes.
"National defense" is not the primary cause of crimes such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The bottom line is corporate profit when the invaded countries are exploited. And there is also war profiteering
Corporate figures who participate in the commerce of war crimes must also be prosecuted.
A prime example is someone like Cheney who started a war while holding investments in Halliburton which profits from war and the resulting oil commerce. In his case, the corporation and the state have become united in crimes against humanity financed with public taxes.
By some accounts the secret energy meetings Cheney held with Big Oil leaders included plans for corporate exploitation of Iraq's resources which of course would require an illegal invasion and endless occupation.
The corporate veil must be torn down.
And how do we deal with members of the U.S. Congress who approve and fund wars of aggression and also hold military industrial complex investments ? This is a deadly conflict of interest at the least.
Congress is actually as liable as a President for war crimes as they must sanction and fund the war crimes.
Yet, while history puts most of the blame on a figure like Hitler for Nazi crimes, he was in fact backed by powerful German corporations, some of which are still in business having capitalized on war crimes.
Etc...etc...
'The Art of War is winning without fighting.'
Just saying.
Just prior to 9/11, my friend got married and her new husband left for National Guard Training. Then it was evident that he was being sent to Afganistan. Depleted uranium shells were being used, so I warned about his exposure to them. "Don't become a gunner or be anywhere around those shells", I told him.
The information about depleted uranium was VERY available. It's effects were known prior to the decision made to use it. The Military denied that there was a problem, kinda like they did with Agent Orange.
It is sickening that some one's made a decision to expose both humans and the land itself to horrible devastation that will end lives, twist bodies and remain in the environment for generations. This was a premeditated decision that no one will be made accountable for.
Accountability is yet to be determined. I do not give up hope. There are still sane parts of the world from which justice can come. The tide of opinion is turning.
Joe
"the fear to bring children into the world..."
Mission Accomplified.
that line keeps running through my head.
breaks my heart and fuels my anger.
"It is sickening that some one's made a decision to expose both humans and the land itself to horrible devastation that will end lives, twist bodies and remain in the environment for generations."
Very true.
And one of the primary figures in the decision to expose civilians and our military to DU radiation was none other than Dick Cheney who has also profited from starting "Operation Iraqi Freedom" through his Halliburton investments.
Cheney is one of the worse war criminals of the 21st century.
He should be tried convicted and then spend the rest of his miserable life in a 6'X12' cell with his ill-gotten wealth confiscated and used to reduce the suffering of the victims of his crimes.
Interesting read:
We Are Not In Kansas Anymore
Dick Cheney Is Not The Wizard Of Oz
http://www.notinkansas.us/du_1.html
But if we are lucky, his heart will stop beating very soon.
"But if we are lucky, his heart will stop beating very soon."
I want him to live a long, long time, but I'm afraid my reasons are not very Christian.
Suffer victim, just in case there is no hell, suffer. Suffer until you've felt the combined suffering of Fallujah.
God forgive me, and may God forgive our nation.
"a 6'X12' cell"
way too roomy.
I say put him up in front of a firing squad.
http://sfbayview.com/2010/ptsd-infertility-and-other-consequences-of-war/
an excerpt from a Bob Nichols article of 4/7/2010:
One milligram (mg) of uranium oxide poison gas is about the size of one of the periods at the end of these sentences. When soldiers can absorb UO through their skin, there is nothing to limit their exposure to one milligram or a thousand. That goes for civilians too.
Each tiny milligram shoots about 1,251,000 powerful radioactive bullets a day with a range of about 20 cells of the human body for thousands or even billions of years. This is according to noted mathematician and radiation expert, Rosalie Bertell, Ph.D., GNSH.
She should know, Dr. Bertell serves on several Pentagon radiation committees and has for decades.
Uranium munitions, containing weaponized uranium oxide gas and aerosols, are used by presidential order in U.S. war zones. Privates and corporals do not decide to use these poisonous uranium gas weapons on their own. No, that order comes from the American president.
Uranium oxide gas weapons are called “genocidal weapons.” They maim and kill millions of people, their animals and their land. The actual targets by the U.S. Expeditionary Forces are the populations of Central Asia and the Middle East, about a billion people.
The U.S. Expeditionary Forces are quite successful in targeting and dosing these large populations. In so doing the soldiers poison themselves with depleted uranium too. The American presidents don’t care. Should we care if the president doesn’t?
There is a Middle Eastern country that requires all 18-year-olds to join national service for several years. This country even has a roughly comparable health care system to America for a population of 7,233,701, according to the CIA World Factbook. The country is Israel.
All Israeli soldiers donate a sperm sample that is immediately frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored in a sperm bank at University Hospital in Jerusalem. Recent professional analysis shows Israeli sperm concentration has declined by 40 percent in less than 10 years.
This is a dangerous and precipitous collapse in human sperm concentration. While opinions differ as to the causes, Israel is swimming in a sea of uranium oxide gas partly from its own and American uranium oxide weapons. The DU attacks the sperm and eggs of male and female soldiers. Civilians and animals too.
In addition, Israel borders the Mediterranean Sea, as do 21 other countries. For 20 years, a branch of the Italian Mafia called ‘Ndrangheta in the South of Italy, next door to Sicily, have grown a thriving nuclear waste disposal business into an estimated 2007 US$65 billion a year “legal illegal business,” as Mafia operations are called in Italy.
The infamous “EcoMafia” load derelict cargo ships with high level nuclear wastes and used reactor cores, then sink them in the Mediterranean and along the African coasts. As a result, Israelis swim in a radioactive sea.
Since 20 percent live sperm is considered to be the beginning of infertility, Israel will be sterile in less than 10 years at this rate of decline. The estimated 7 million Israeli Jews will have no more children soon after that. This catastrophic development has already occasioned legislative hearings in Israel’s Knesset. The hearings were covered by Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Israeli sperm concentration is just an example of what is happening to human sperm all over the Middle East and Central Asia, by the choice and force of will of successive U.S. presidents.
The American war machine has consequences. PTSD is just one of them. The poison gas cannot be contained, undone or recalled. There is no antidote; there is no cure. There is no escape.
"War is Peace" - George Orwell
"At what point do we learn our lesson, that "war" is a moral cesspool of horrific consequences, especially, and most troublingly, unintended ones?"
The same time we realize that those who get us into wars are the only ones who profit. When Bush/Cheney/Rice/Clinton/Obama are on the docket for war crimes, I will smile and say all is right with the world.
Fallujah will not 'haunt our national dreams' anymore more than 2 million dead vietnamese or one million dead latin americans in the dirty wars from JFK to the present did.
Until we attack the 'nation' and destroy the hierarchy that represents the USA and controls it, our dreams should be not be 'national' in any sense. Keep trying to reach across to psychopaths and the ruling class.....and they roll over top of you.
they must be gotten rid of, as well as the economic system they represent.
As long as you believe in 'national' renewal, you are doomed....as is the planet.
only liberation socialism....or whatever you want to call it....only bottom up anarchism...or whatever you want to call it....only bottom up complete democratic international social revolutions will free us. We cannot have these capitalistic global systems stay in place.
most of the rest of the world,....the people anyway...understand this....how we do it is another question.....but if most americans are not even considering it......christ...do you need a third ball bat in the face?
I hated reading about the DU weapons and their effect on civilians and troops back in the first gulf war and sanctions. I never dreamed that the public would ever allow a president to send troops to the gulf to fight in a war again or to ever allow the military to use DU weapons again. The children were being born deformed and suffered from cancer in the first gulf war. I have a letter from D'Amato dated Oct. 9, 1990 that admits the U.S.sold the chemicals used in the production of poison gas to Saddam Hussein. I read a statement from Rafil Dhafir who was and still is in prison for Helping the Needy in Iraq in violation of the sanctions, which Dhafir stated:" What can I tell you about the horrors of man's injustice and cruelty to his fellow man that you are not aware of.58 years have passed since the first use of nuclear weapons against humanity took place, and to date the suffering of the victims continue with the immediate loss of life and property and the everlasting effects of radiation in the form of cancer and birth deformities. You would think that humanity learned its lesson, but NO!!! Some felt that the bombs were not good enough so they kept researching until they came up with the depleted uranium used for the first time on a massive scale against the children, women and men of Iraq. The horrors of a slow painful death for these innocent victims cannot be ignored or hidden. 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 it a boy or a girl, except the Iraqi women. Their first question, is the baby deformed or healthy." Rafil Dhafir August 6, 2003
"I never dreamed that the public would ever allow a president to send troops to the gulf to fight in a war again or to ever allow the military to use DU weapons again."
Why, pray tell? The DU scandal from G.H.W. Bush's war never penetrated the USan conscience. Foreign journalists covered it; the citizens of the U.S. didn't care, just like we didn't care about the toll exacted by a decade of sanctions after the first gulf war. We cared about our good economy, and bought SUVs galore!
Nor did we remember that Colin Powell told the world in the late 90s that the sanctions had contained Hussein; that Iraq was no longer a threat. Not when the illustrious general held forth in lies before the U.N. in 2003.
Most USans wanted this war. They do not have the conscience you attribute to them. Even now, as the evidence of our failure becomes irrefutable, we cannot leave "because it will send the wrong message." Apparently, we prefer the message, "We don't care if we DO fall apart just like the U.S.S.R., we're stayin'!"
Anyway, don't be surprized when DU (and worse) used yet again, and soon.
And the general responsible for Fallujah is now in charge of the US Central Command.
"Petraeus, in turn, was replaced at Central Command by General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, who played a key planning role in the US assault on Fallujah in 2004. Mattis revels in killing, telling a public gathering in 2005 “it’s fun to shoot some people.... You know, it’s a hell of a hoot.”"