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fallujah
Cancer Is 1 More Weapon In Israel’s War on Gaza
As current cancer patients die slow deaths with no access to the care they need, future patients, who will acquire cancer thanks to Israel’s genocidal mania, will no doubt meet the same fate unless there is significant intervention.
Sep 04, 2025
A week after the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, a large explosion incinerated a parking lot near the busy Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, killing more than 470 people. It was a horrifying, chaotic scene. Burnt clothing was strewn about, scorched vehicles piled atop one another, and charred buildings surrounded the impact zone. Israel claimed the blast was caused by an errant rocket fired by Palestinian extremists, but an investigation by Forensic Architecture later indicated that the missile was most likely launched from Israel, not from inside Gaza.
In those first days of the onslaught, it wasn’t yet clear that wiping out Gaza’s entire healthcare system could conceivably be part of the Israeli plan. After all, it’s well known that purposely bombing or otherwise destroying hospitals violates the Geneva Conventions and is a war crime, so there was still some hope that the explosion at Al-Ahli was accidental. And that, of course, would be the narrative that Israeli authorities would continue to push over the nearly two years of death and misery that followed.
A month into Israel’s Gaza offensive, however, soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would raid the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, dismantling its dialysis center with no explanation as to why such lifesaving medical equipment would be targeted. (Not even Israel was contending that Hamas was having kidney problems.) Then, in December 2023, Al-Awda Hospital, also in northern Gaza, was hit, while at least one doctor was shot by Israeli snipers stationed outside it. As unnerving as such news stories were, the most gruesome footage released at the time came from Al-Nasr children’s hospital, where infants were found dead and decomposing in an empty ICU ward. Evacuation orders had been given and the medical staff had fled, unable to take the babies with them.
For those monitoring such events, a deadly pattern was beginning to emerge, and Israel’s excuses for its malevolent behavior were already losing credibility.
Shortly after Israel issued warnings to evacuate the Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City in mid-January 2024, its troops launched rockets at the building, destroying what remained of its functioning medical equipment. Following that attack, ever more clinics were also targeted by Israeli forces. A Jordan Field Hospital was shelled that January and again this past August. An air strike hit Yafa hospital early in December 2023. The Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis in southern Gaza was also damaged last May and again this August, when the hospital and an ambulance were struck, killing 20, including five journalists.
While human-rights groups like the International Criminal Court, the United Nations, and the Red Cross have condemned Israel for such attacks, its forces have continued to decimate medical facilities and aid sites. At the same time, Israeli authorities claimed that they were only targeting Hamas command centers and weapons storage facilities.
The Death of Gaza’s Only Cancer Center
In early 2024, the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, first hit in October 2023 and shuttered in November of that year, was in the early stages of being demolished by IDF battalions. A video released in February by Middle East Eye showed footage of an elated Israeli soldier sharing a TikTok video of himself driving a bulldozer into that hospital, chuckling as his digger crushed a cinderblock wall. “The hospital accidentally broke,” he said. Evidence of Israel’s crimes was by then accumulating, much of it provided by the IDF itself.
When that Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital opened in 2018, it quickly became Gaza’s leading and most well-equipped cancer treatment facility. As the Covid-19 pandemic reached Gaza in 2020, all oncology operations were transferred to that hospital to free up space at other clinics, making it the only cancer center to serve Gaza’s population of more than 2 million.
“This hospital will help transform the health sector,” Palestinian Health Minister Jawad Awwad said shortly before its opening. “[It] will help people who are going through extreme difficulties.”
If Fallujah teaches us anything, it’s that Israel’s destruction will cause cancer rates to rise significantly, impacting generations to come.
Little did he know that those already facing severe difficulties due to their cancer diagnoses would all too soon face full-blown catastrophe. In March 2025, what remained of the hospital would be razed, erasing all traces of Gaza’s once-promising cancer treatment.
Before October 7, 2023, the most common cancers afflicting Palestinians in Gaza were breast and colon cancer. Survival rates were, however, much lower there than in Israel, thanks to more limited medical resources and restrictions imposed by that country. From 2016 to 2019, while cases in Gaza were on the rise, there was at least hope that the hospital, funded by Turkey, would offer much-needed cancer screenings that had previously been unavailable.
“The repercussions of the current conflict on cancer care in Gaza will likely be felt for years to come,” according to a November 2023 editorial in the medical journal Cureus. “The immediate challenges of drugs, damaged infrastructure, and reduced access to specialized treatment have long-term consequences on the overall health outcomes of current patients.”
In other words, lack of medical care and worse cancer rates will not only continue to disproportionately affect Gazans compared to Israelis, but conditions will undoubtedly deteriorate significantly more. And such predictions don’t even take into account the fact that war itself causes cancer, painting an even bleaker picture of the medical future for Palestinians in Gaza.
The Case of Fallujah
When the Second Battle of Fallujah, part of America’s nightmarish war in Iraq, ended in December 2004, the embattled city was a toxic warzone, contaminated with munitions, depleted uranium (DU), and poisoned dust from collapsed buildings. Not surprisingly, in the years that followed, cancer rates increased almost exponentially there. Initially, doctors began to notice that more cancers were being diagnosed. Scientific research would soon back up their observations, revealing a startling trend.
In the decade after the fighting had mostly ended, leukemia rates among the local population skyrocketed by a dizzying 2,200%. It was the most significant increase ever recorded after a war, exceeding even Hiroshima’s 660% rise over a more extended period of time. One study later tallied a fourfold increase in all cancers and, for childhood cancers, a twelvefold increase.
The most likely source of many of those cancers was the mixture of DU, building materials, and other leftover munitions. Researchers soon observed that residing inside or near contaminated sites in Fallujah was likely the catalyst for the boom in cancer rates.
“Our research in Fallujah indicated that the majority of families returned to their bombarded homes and lived there, or otherwise rebuilt on top of the contaminated rubble of their old homes,” explained Dr. Mozghan Savabieasfahani, an environmental toxicologist who studied the health impacts of war in Fallujah. “When possible, they also used building materials that were salvaged from the bombarded sites. Such common practices will contribute to the public’s continuous exposure to toxic metals years after the bombardment of their area has ended.”
While difficult to quantify, we do have some idea of the amount of munitions and DU that continues to plague that city. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United States fired between 170 and 1,700 tons of tank-busting munitions in Iraq, including Fallujah, which might have amounted to as many as 300,000 rounds of DU. While only mildly radioactive, persistent exposure to depleted uranium has a cumulative effect on the human body. The more you’re exposed, the more the radioactive particles build up in your bones, which, in turn, can cause cancers like leukemia.
With its population of 300,000, Fallujah served as a military testing ground for munitions much like those that Gaza endures today. In the short span of one month, from March 19 to April 18, 2003, more than 29,199 bombs were dropped on Iraq, 19,040 of which were precision-guided, along with another 1,276 cluster bombs. The impacts were grave. More than 60 of Fallujah’s 200 mosques were destroyed, and of the city’s 50,000 buildings, more than 10,000 were imploded and 39,000 damaged. Amid such destruction, there was a whole lot of toxic waste. As a March 2025 report from Brown University’s Costs of War Project noted, “We found that the environmental impact of warfighting and the presence of heavy metals are long-lasting and widespread in both human bodies and soil.”
Exposure to heavy metals is distinctly associated with cancer risk. “Prolonged exposure to specific heavy metals has been correlated with the onset of various cancers, including those affecting the skin, lungs, and kidneys,” a 2023 report in Scientific Studies explains. “The gradual buildup of these metals within the body can lead to persistent toxic effects. Even minimal exposure levels can result in their gradual accumulation in tissues, disrupting normal cellular operations and heightening the likelihood of diseases, particularly cancer.”
And it wasn’t just cancer that afflicted the population that stuck around or returned to Fallujah. Infants began to be born with alarming birth defects. A 2010 study found a significant increase in heart ailments among babies there, with rates 13 times higher and nervous system defects 33 times higher than in European births.
“We have all kinds of defects now, ranging from congenital heart disease to severe physical abnormalities, both in numbers you cannot imagine,” Dr Samira Alani, a pediatric specialist at Fallujah General Hospital, who coauthored the birth-defect study, told Al Jazeera in 2013. “We have so many cases of babies with multiple system defects… Multiple abnormalities in one baby. For example, we just had one baby with central nervous system problems, skeletal defects, and heart abnormalities. This is common in Fallujah today.”
While comprehensive health assessments in Iraq are scant, evidence continues to suggest that high cancer rates persist in places like Fallujah. “Fallujah today, among other bombarded cities in Iraq, reports a high rate of cancers,” researchers from the Costs of War Project study report. “These high rates of cancer and birth defects may be attributed to exposure to the remnants of war, as are manifold other similar spikes in, for example, early onset cancers and respiratory diseases.”
As devastating as the war in Iraq was—and as contaminated as Fallujah remains—it’s nearly impossible to envision what the future holds for those left in Gaza, where the situation is so much worse. If Fallujah teaches us anything, it’s that Israel’s destruction will cause cancer rates to rise significantly, impacting generations to come.
Manufacturing Cancer
The aerial photographs and satellite footage are grisly. Israel’s US-backed military machine has dropped so many bombs that entire neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble. Gaza, by every measure, is a land of immense suffering. As Palestinian children hang on the brink of starvation, it feels strange to discuss the health effects they might face in the decades ahead, should they be fortunate enough to survive.
While data often conceals the truth, in Gaza, numbers reveal a dire reality. As of this year, nearly 70% of all roads had been destroyed, 90% of all homes damaged or completely gone, 85% of farmland affected, and 84% of healthcare facilities obliterated. To date, Israel’s relentless death machine has created at least 50 million tons of rubble, human remains, and hazardous materials—all the noxious ingredients necessary for a future cancer epidemic.
From October 2023 to April 2024, well over 70,000 tons of explosives were dropped on Gaza, which, according to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, was equivalent to two nuclear bombs. While the extent and exact types of weaponry used there are not fully known, the European Parliament has accused Israel of deploying depleted uranium, which, if true, will only add to the future cancer ills of Gazans. Most bombs contain heavy metals like lead, antimony, bismuth, cobalt, and tungsten, which end up polluting the soil and groundwater, while impacting agriculture and access to clean water for years to come.
In due time, Israel will undoubtedly use the cancers it will have created as a means to an end, fully aware that Palestinians there have no way of preparing for the health crises that are coming.
“The toxicological effects of metals and energetic materials on microorganisms, plants, and animals vary widely and can be significantly different depending on whether the exposure is acute (short term) or chronic (long term),” reads a 2021 report commissioned by the Guide to Explosive Ordnance Pollution of the Environment. “In some cases, the toxic effects may not be immediately apparent, but instead may be linked to an increased risk of cancer, or increased risk of mutation during pregnancy, which may not become evident for many years.”
Given such information, we can only begin to predict how toxic the destruction may prove to be. The homes that once stood in the Gaza Strip were mainly made of concrete and steel. Particles of dust released from such crumbled buildings can themselves cause lung, colon, and stomach cancers.
As current cancer patients die slow deaths with no access to the care they need, future patients, who will acquire cancer thanks to Israel’s genocidal mania, will no doubt meet the same fate unless there is significant intervention.
“[A]pproximately 2,700 [Gazans] in advanced stages of the disease await treatment with no hope or treatment options within the Gaza Strip under an ongoing closure of Gaza’s crossings, and the disruption of emergency medical evacuation mechanisms,” states a May 2025 report by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. “[We hold] Israel fully responsible for the deaths of hundreds of cancer patients and for deliberately obliterating any opportunities of treatment for thousands more by destroying their treatment centers and depriving them of travel. Such acts fall under the crime of genocide ongoing in the Gaza Strip.”
Israel’s methodical destruction in Gaza has taken on many forms, from bombing civilian enclaves and hospitals to withholding food, water, and medical care from those most in need. In due time, Israel will undoubtedly use the cancers it will have created as a means to an end, fully aware that Palestinians there have no way of preparing for the health crises that are coming.
Cancer, in short, will be but another weapon added to Israel’s ever-increasing arsenal.
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Warnings as US and Russia Threaten to Deploy Depleted Uranium Weapons to Ukraine
"Look at Fallujah. Look at Yugoslavia. Long after the end of the Ukraine war, the use of depleted uranium will give Ukrainians cancer and birth defects for decades," said one journalist.
Jun 14, 2023
The Biden administration is expected to equip Ukrainian homeland defenders with armor-piercing depleted uranium munitions for their U.S.-supplied Abrams main battle tanks, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, prompting Russian President Vladimir Putin to threaten to retaliate with DU rounds—which are linked to birth defects, miscarriages, and cancer.
Citing an unnamed senior Biden administration official, the Journal reported that "there appear to be no major obstacles to approving" the shipment of the highly controversial ammunition to Ukrainian forces as they launch a counteroffensive against Russian troops entrenched along a vast front in the eastern and southern regions of the country.
The new reporting comes four months after The Redacted's Dan Cohen reported the U.S. would send DU rounds to Ukraine.
In February, a top British defense official announced that the United Kingdom would supply Ukrainian forces with DU rounds, dismissing warnings from Moscow that the Russian government would regard the deployment of such weapons as an act of nuclear war.
Reacting to news that the U.S. will likely supply Ukraine with DU munitions, Putin said Tuesday that "we have many such weapons, and if they use them, we will also reserve the right to use similar munitions," according to the state news agency TASS.
"There's nothing good about it, but, if need be, we can do it," he added. "We don't need to do it."
The Journal report prompted warnings from anti-war voices about the dangers of DU munitions.
"If you love Ukraine, if you care about Ukraine, depleted uranium is the last thing you would tell them to use," British journalist Richard Medhurst said on his video podcast Tuesday. "If you look at what the United States has done, everywhere they've used depleted uranium, it's like dropping a nuclear bomb."
Medhurst added that in Fallujah, Iraq—where U.S. forces used DU rounds during two attempts to capture the city in 2004—"you have higher rates of birth defects and congenital heart disease... than you did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
DU rounds are highly effective at penetrating the armor of most modern tanks and armored fighting vehicles. The U.S. Abrams, British Challenger 2, and German Leopard 2 main battle tanks, along with U.S. Bradley Fighting Vehicles that are being sent to Ukraine, can all fire DU munitions. The ammunition can also be fired from warplanes or field artillery.
However, exploding DU shells produce radioactive dust that contaminates soil, water, and air for many years after their use. U.S. Army training manuals caution that DU contamination "will make food and water unsafe for consumption" and require soldiers to wear protective clothing when in or near contaminated areas.
U.S. and allied forces used DU munitions during the 1991 and 2003-11 invasions of Iraq, and in Syria during the war against Islamic State militants. Miscarriages, birth defects, and cancers soared in Iraq after both wars.
According to one study, more than half of the babies born in Fallujah between 2007 and 2010 had birth defects. Among pregnant women in the study, over 45% experienced miscarriages in the two-year period following the battles for Fallujah. Geiger counter measurements of DU-contaminated sites in Iraqi cities have consistently shown radiation levels 1,000 to 1,900 times greater than normal.
The U.S.-led NATO coalition that waged the 1999 air war against Yugoslavia also used DU munitions, which experts believe are responsible for a surge in leukemia in the region, both among the local population and foreign troops deployed in the war zone.
Peace groups have long campaigned for a ban on DU munitions. Last September, the United Nations General Assembly approved an Indonesian draft resolution urging further research of the "health risks and environmental impact" of DU weapons and calling for a "cautionary approach" to their use.
The resolution was approved by 147 nations. The U.S., U.K., France, and Israel voted against the proposal.
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'Shameful': Critics Denounce US Warship Named 'Fallujah,' Site of Civilian Massacres in Iraq
"Some of the most heinous U.S. war crimes committed during the Iraq War took place in the city of Fallujah," said journalist Jeremy Scahill.
Dec 14, 2022
Peace advocates responded with disgust to the Navy's decision to name its new warship after the two battles of Fallujah, during which U.S. troops massacred Iraqi civilians.
"Fallujah was a giant American war crime in Iraq."
"The future America-class amphibious ship will be named the USS Fallujah, LHA-9," Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro announced Tuesday in a speech at Marine Barracks Washington, D.C. "The future USS Fallujah will commemorate the first and second battles of Fallujah, American-led offenses during the Iraq War."
Del Toro called it "an honor for me, and for our nation, to memorialize the Marines, the soldiers, and coalition forces that fought valiantly and those that sacrificed their lives during both battles of Fallujah."
U.S. troops slaughtered approximately 600 Iraqi civilians--including more than 300 women and children--along with 200 insurgents during the First Battle of Fallujah. Code-named Operation Vigilant Resolve, the battle was launched in April 2004 to avenge the deaths of four Blackwater contractors. Twenty-seven U.S. soldiers were killed during the retaliatory siege.
The Second Battle of Fallujah, known as Operation Phantom Fury, was fought from November to December 2004 to recapture the city from insurgent forces. In the process, U.S.-led occupation forces killed between 581 and 670 civilians across nine neighborhoods, according to Iraq Body Count.
"With over 100 coalition forces killed and 600 wounded, Operation Phantom Fury is considered to be the bloodiest engagement to the Iraq War and the fiercest serving combat involving U.S. Marines since the Vietnam War's battle of Hue City," said Del Toro. "This namesake deserves to be in the pantheon of iconic Marine Corps battles, and the LHA's unique capabilities will serve as a stark reminder to everyone around the world of the bravery, the courage, and commitment to freedom displayed by those who fought in those battles."
Critics called the Navy's commemoration of the battles of Fallujah "shameful."
"Some of the most heinous U.S. war crimes committed during the Iraq War took place in the city of Fallujah," The Intercept's Jeremy Scahill, who reported from Iraq during the U.S. invasion, wrote Wednesday on social media.
In a 2007 appearance on the Bill Moyers show, Scahill described the siege of Fallujah as "one of the most brutal and sustained U.S. operations of the occupation," telling Moyers that the Pentagon's murderous response to the killing of Blackwater contractors set a dangerous precedent.
In 2016, journalist Hope Hodge Seck wrote about what she called "the whisper campaign for a USS Fallujah."
"At the time, it seemed unlikely to ever happen," she tweeted Tuesday. "But now it has."
Construction on the 45,000 metric-ton vessel, the first U.S. warship named after a post-9/11 battle, is set to begin this month at the Mississippi-based Ingalls Shipbuilding, which secured a $2.4 billion contract in October.
Civilians in Fallujah, meanwhile, continue to suffer from a sharp rise in birth defects that has occurred in the wake of the 2003 invasion.
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Escalating US Air Strikes Kill Hundreds of Civilians in Mosul, Iraq
May 01, 2016
USA Today revealed on April 19th that U.S. air forces have been operating under looser rules of engagement in Iraq and Syria since last fall. The war commander, Lt Gen McFarland, now orders air strikes that are expected to kill up to 10 civilians without prior approval from U.S. Central Command, and U.S. officials acknowledge that air strikes are killing more civilians under the new rules.
U.S. officials previously claimed that air strikes in Iraq and Syria had killed as few as 26 civilians. A senior Pentagon official who is briefed daily on the air war told USA Today that was unrealistic, since air strikes that have destroyed 6,000 buildings with over 40,000 bombs and missiles have inevitably killed much higher numbers of civilians.
As the U.S. escalates its air strikes on Mosul, the largest city occupied by Islamic State, reports of hundreds of civilians killed by air strikes reveal some of the human costs of the U.S. air war and the new rules of engagement.
Award-winning Iraqi environmental scientist and Mosul native Souad Al-Azzawi (Ph.D. Colorado School of Mines) has compiled a partial list of air strikes that have killed civilians and destroyed civilian infrastructure from reports by Mosul Eye, Nineveh Reporters Network, Al Maalomah News Network, other Iraqi media and contacts in Mosul:
- Many government buildings have been destroyed. As U.S. officials told USA Today, attacks are often conducted at night to minimize civilian casualties, but they have killed security guards and civilians in neighboring buildings.
- Telephone exchanges have been systematically bombed and destroyed.
- Two large dairies were bombed, killing about 100 civilians and wounding 200 more.
- Multiple daytime air strikes on Mosul University on March 19th and 20th killed 92 civilians and wounded 135, mostly faculty, staff, families and students. Targets included the main administration building, classroom buildings, a women's dormitory and a faculty apartment building.
- 50 civilians were killed and 100 wounded by air strikes on 2 apartment buildings, Al Hadbaa and Al Khadraa.
- A mother and 4 children were killed in an air strike on a house in the Hay al Dhubat district of East Mosul on April 20th, next door to a house used by Islamic State that was undamaged.
- 22 civilians were killed in air strikes on houses in front of Mosul Medical College.
- 20 civilians were killed and 70 wounded by air strikes on the Sunni Waqif building and nearby houses and shops.
- U.S. air strikes on April 24th damaged the Rashidiya water treatment plant in West Mosul and the Yarmouk power station in East Mosul.
- The Central Bank of Mosul in Ghazi Street and several branches of Rafidain and Rasheed banks were bombed, with heavy civilian casualties, despite all cash reportedly being removed after the first bank was struck.
- Three workers were killed and 12 wounded in an air strike on the former Pepsi bottling plant.
- An air strike on a fuel depot in an industrial area ignited an inferno with 150 casualties on April 18th.
- Bombs have damaged a food warehouse, power stations and sub-stations in West Mosul, and flour mills, a pharmaceutical factory, auto repair shops and other workshops across Mosul.
- The Al Hurairah Bridge was destroyed by air strikes.
At the very least, U.S. air strikes have killed hundreds of civilians in Mosul and destroyed much of the civilian infrastructure that people depend on for their lives in already dire conditions. And yet by all accounts, this is only the beginning of the U.S.-Iraqi campaign to retake Mosul. One and one-half million civilians are trapped in the city, 30 times the UN's estimate of the number of civilians in Fallujah before the November 2004 assault that killed 4,000 to 6,000 people, mostly civilians. Meanwhile ISIL prevents civilians from evacuating the city, believing that their presence protects its forces from even heavier bombardment.
International humanitarian law strictly prohibits military attacks on civilians, civilian areas and civilian infrastructure. The presence of several thousand ISIL militants in a city of 1.5 million people does not justify indiscriminate bombing or attacks on civilian targets. As the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq warned U.S. officials in a Human Rights Report in 2007, "The presence of individual combatants among a great number of civilians does not alter the civilian nature of an area." UNICEF protested the bombing of a water treatment plant in Syria last December as "a particularly alarming example" of how "the rules of war, including those meant to protect vital civilian infrastructure, continue to be broken on a daily basis."
The fundamental contradiction of the militarized "war on terror" has always been that U.S. aggression and other war crimes only reinforce the narratives of jihadis who see themselves as a bulwark against foreign aggression and neocolonialism in the Muslim world. Meanwhile U.S. wars and covert operations against secular enemies like Hussein, Gaddafi and Assad create new zones of chaos where jihadis can thrive.
President Obama has acknowledged publicly that there is therefore "no military solution" to jihadism. But successive U.S. administrations have proven unable to resist the lure of military escalation at each new stage of this crisis, unleashing wars that have killed about two million people, plunged a dozen countries into chaos and exploded Wahhabi jihadism from its original safe havens in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Pakistan to countries across the world.
If the U.S. and its Iraqi allies follow through with their threatened assault on Mosul, the resulting massacre will join Fallujah, Guantanamo and U.S. drone wars as a powerful catalyst for the next mutation of Wahhabi jihadism, which is likely to be more globalized and unified.
But although Al Qaeda and Islamic State have proven adept at manipulating U.S. leaders into ever-escalating cycles of violence, the jihadis cannot directly order American pilots to bomb civilians. Only our leaders can do that, making them morally and legally responsible for these crimes, just as Islamic State's leaders are responsible for theirs.
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This Year's Hottest Toy: Iraq-Syria LEGO Playset
The set retails for $3 trillion. Weapons of mass destruction not included.
Dec 22, 2015
Every Christmas, one toy emerges as the most-wanted, gotta-have gift -- remember Tickle Me Elmo and Beanie Babies from years past? Well, 2015's big hit has emerged: The Iraq-Syria LEGO Playset.
The set retails for three trillion dollars, though the price may have doubled by the time this is published. The standard set includes enough LEGOS to build replicas of Mosul and Fallujah, allowing a child to refight those battles repeatedly. Figures include Sunni militias, Islamic State fighters, Shia militias, one figure representing the actual Iraqi Army, American special forces with and without boots, Iranians, Kurds, Turks, Russians, Syrians (moderate and radical, though they cannot be told apart), British, French and Italian troops, shady Saudi financiers and Hezbollah soldiers.
The basic set also includes a starter pack of refugee figures, though most people will want to opt for the bonus pack if only to access the limited-edition dead children refugee figures.
Not included: any weapons of mass destruction.
While the Iraq-Syria LEGO Playset will provide any child with decades of fun, even more adventures can be played out by buying the Turkish Expansion Pack.
And parents, please note: Even after careful construction with the best intentions, the playset tends to fall apart.
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365 Days and 605 Armored Military Vehicles Later: Police Militarization a Year After Ferguson
Aug 07, 2015
Last August, Ferguson and Fallujah had a lot in common. Those protesting the death of Michael Brown were met with "armored vehicles, noise-based crowd-control devices, shotguns, M4 rifles like those used by forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, rubber-coated pellets and tear gas." The scene looked more like a foreign warzone than a Midwestern American town and no one could tell why local police were taking up arms against those they are sworn to protect and serve.
The world was shocked by this highly and dangerously militarized response by local law enforcement. Foreign leaders equated Ferguson to combat zones in Iraq and Gaza. Veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars expressed horror at the reality that they had been less heavily armed while on active duty abroad. President Obama reacted by saying, "[t]here is a big difference between our military and our local law enforcement, and we don't want those lines blurred."
Ferguson put a spotlight on police militarization, but the concern is not new. Just before the death of Michael Brown, the ACLU released War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing. The report is a deep dive into police militarization, describing how some law enforcement practices have turned our police into soldiers and our neighborhoods into warzones. Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams are routinely engaged in militarized policing to carry out the so-called "War on Drugs".
The incidents reviewed in our report show that 79 percent of SWAT deployments were not emergency scenarios such as hostage or barricade situations, but rather home searches. More than 60 percent of those cases involved searches for drugs. And 61 percent of all the people impacted by SWAT raids in drug cases were people of color. Dr. Peter Kraska, professor of justice studies at the University of Eastern Kentucky, estimates that 80 percent of small towns have SWAT teams and 90 percent of larger cities have them. The number of SWAT raids per year has grown from 3,000 in the 1980s to 60,000 today.
War Comes Home calls out the federal government for providing military weapons and equipment to local police. The Department of Defense 1033 program, which sells military equipment at a bargain basement price to state and local agencies, is the epicenter of the controversy. And rightfully so. Since 2006, the 1033 program has provided local police departments with 11,959 bayonets, 205 grenade launchers, and 605 mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles (MRAPs). In response, citizens are voicing their concerns. Over 77,000 people have supported the ACLU's call to the federal government to stop funneling billions of dollars into the militarization of local law enforcement.
In response to all of this, President Obama issued Executive Order 13688 in January. The order created a federal interagency working group charged with investigating police militarization. As a result of the inquiry, the federal government is now banned from giving bayonets and grenade launchers to local police, but MRAPs are still in play. Granted, the working group has made it much more difficult to get an MRAP and a few other things. Now, police departments must establish community policing practices, training protocols, and have community approval in place before using federal resources to obtain some military equipment. But what about holding police departments accountable for the 605 MRAPs currently already in circulation?
The Obama administration should retroactively make the new requirements. If a police department wants to keep its MRAP, the local community should sign off. Additionally, anything that is now banned, like bayonets and grenade launchers, should be recalled.
The biggest contributor to police militarization is the War on Drugs. The federal government should reform the prohibitionist drug policies that have failed to stem the availability or use of drugs, cost billions of dollars, the cause of increased mass incarceration, and have disproportionately harmed communities of color. Beyond this, the Obama Administration must also take a look at the militarization of other branches of federal law enforcement. They should be alarmed by military-style raids by the Food and Drug Administration in search of raw milk, the Department of Education's response to financial aid fraud and the militarization of border communities by Customs and Border Protection.
The Obama administration has made some progress on demilitarization, but in order to avoid another Ferguson, we must press on and ensure that our law enforcement maintains its pledge to serve and protect rather than occupy and terrorize.
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John McCain and Lindsey Graham Want to Invade Fallujah Yet Again
Jan 06, 2014
There were conflicting reports on Sunday morning about whether the Iraqi government and its allied tribal levies had regained control of the western city of Fallujah, which had fallen to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS or ISIL) on Saturday. What was not in doubt was that some in the leadership of the GOP have a screw loose when it comes to foreign affairs.
Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) tried to blame President Obama for the al-Qaeda presence in Fallujah, saying that he had been wrong to withdraw all US troops from Iraq in December of 2011.
McCain and Graham decided to invade Iraq with no justification in international law, overthrow its government, dissolve its army, fire most Sunni Arabs from their jobs, and dissolve most of the state-owned industries, creating massive unemployment. What did they expect to happen? In contrast, Obama opposed the Iraq War when he was in the Illinois Senate.
It is really rich that these two should try to blame Obama for the problem that they caused. There was no al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2002 and the Iraqi government would not have allowed such a thing.
McCain and Graham are wrong on this matter for the following reasons:
1. The Iraqi parliament rejected a Status of Forces Agreement with the US on George W. Bush's watch and refused to reconsider. Without a SOFA, as Sen. McCain knows very well, US troops could not engage in combat without risking being brought to Iraqi courts and charged with war crimes.
The only way Obama could have kept troops in Iraq would have been to invade the country all over again, abolish parliament and install a puppet government that would invite the US to stay. Actually, that is exactly what Leonid Brezhnev did in Afghanistan. How did that work out for the Soviet Union? In fact, McCain pursued in the 1980s more or less allied with Muslim holy warriors against the Soviets in Afghanistan, contributing the the rise of . . . al-Qaeda. So we have seen this picture.
2. The Islamic State of Iraq and other extremist Sunni fundamentalists controlled city quarters of Fallujah while the American troops were there! The US invaded Falluja twice directly in 2004 and then conducted a proxy campaign there in 2007-8 using tribal levies (the "Awakening Councils") a third time! So the US military presence in Iraq 2003-2011 did not crush the Sunni extremists in Falluja, which they had to keep invading over and over again, as is proved by the way the extremists were back in control of the city just this past weekend. If a small contingent of US troops were in Iraq now, what would they do? Could they even tell which Iraqis in Falluja were the bad guys?
3. Sen. McCain has never comprehended that the Iraqis did not want US troops in their country. Many Iraqis who don't even like Sunni extremists would be perfectly happy to join them in fighting US troops were they again to be on the ground in Iraq. They're just not that into you, Lindjohn. A US troop presence in a place like Iraq is radicalizing and destabilizing, not a solution to the problems.
The two maintained that US power has declined in the Middle East in the past 5 years. But if we went back to 2007 we would find the US mired in two quagmires, in Afghanistan and Iraq, its forces over-extended and doing 3 and 4 18-month rotations. It was the bogged down US in 2007 that was weak and irrelevant. No one in the Middle East cared what W. thought.
They also wanted a direct US intervention in Syria, apparently because their Iraq adventure went so well. There is no prospect that the US could intervene effectively in Syria. Even if it could, do they want to put the Syrian rebels in power in Damascus? Do they even realize that one major rebel group in Syria is -- you guessed it- the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the same "al-Qaeda affiliate" they want to sent troops in to fight in Falluja!
Some people think war is the answer to every problem. It isn't even the answer to most problems.
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