Friday, December 31, 2010

The Continuing Destruction of Falluja

Iraq's government has built a new hospital in Fallujah, but the city's obstetricians have complained that they are still overwhelmed by the sheer number of serious defects. The US military has long denied that it is responsible for any contaminant left behind in the city, or elsewhere in Iraq, as it continues its steady departure from the country it has occupied for almost eight years.

[...]

A study examining the causes of a dramatic spike in birth defects in the Iraqi city of Falluja has for the first time concluded that genetic damage could have been caused by weaponry used in US assaults that took place six years ago.

The research, which will be published next week, confirms earlier estimates revealed by the Guardian of a major, unexplained rise in cancers and chronic neural-tube, cardiac and skeletal defects in newborns. The authors found that malformations are close to 11 times higher than normal rates, and rose to unprecedented levels in the first half of this year – a period that had not been surveyed in earlier reports.

  UK Guardian

Of course, this isn’t the first time the subject has come up. It never caused much of a ripple in our part of the world, though.

The findings, which will be published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, come prior to a much-anticipated World Health Organisation study of Falluja's genetic health. They follow two alarming earlier studies, one of which found a distortion in the sex ratio of newborns since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 – a 15% drop in births of boys.

Now that sounds like something that might be welcomed by certain people in charge of TWOT; perhaps even a goal.

"We suspect that the population is chronically exposed to an environmental agent," said one of the report's authors, environmental toxicologist Mozhgan Savabieasfahani. "We don't know what that environmental factor is, but we are doing more tests to find out."

I’d think it would have had to been exposed very heavily and for some time to affect the birth rate, but then I’m not a chemical expert. Perhaps they’ve been blanketed with something airborne? Or something has been put in their water supply? I do know that even when I studied agricultural chemicals back in the early 90s, research showed a marked “feminization” of the environment – both in animals and humans – attributed to the use of a number of those chemicals, facts which didn’t seem to draw much concern outside environmentalist circles. That surprised me, since I figure anything threatening man’s “manliness” would be a very serious concern indeed in this country.

At any rate, as it has been argued that the atomic bomb was deployed at the end of WWII, not to end the war, which was already by many accounts about to be ended by a Japanese surrender, but to test our latest weaponry, and as it has been reported that we used something akin to the banned napalm - white phosphorus - on the people of Falluja, it occurs to me that there may even be other experimental weaponry unleashed on these people in the heat of a widely accepted retaliation.

The findings are likely to prompt further speculation that the defects were caused by depleted uranium rounds, which were heavily used in two large battles in the city in April and November 2004.

The WHO and NATO say DU is practically harmless. Others disagree: CADU; Gulf War Syndrome & DU; Contamination of Persian Gulf War Veterans and Others by Depleted Uranium

Iraq's government has built a new hospital in Fallujah, but the city's obstetricians have complained that they are still overwhelmed by the sheer number of serious defects. The US military has long denied that it is responsible for any contaminant left behind in the city, or elsewhere in Iraq, as it continues its steady departure from the country it has occupied for almost eight years.

Of course.


Sunday, July 25, 2010

War Crimes: Falluja Today

In Fallujah, a city just 50 miles from Baghdad, life has never been the same since April 2004, when U.S. Marines declared the entire area a free-fire zone and proceeded to do what Marines do best. Packing the most destructive weaponry in the world, American soldiers laid siege to the city, deploying depleted uranium munitions, white phosphorus and tons of conventional ballistics.

[...]

In the wake of America's "shock and awe" bombing campaign to take Baghdad, radiation detectors as far away as the United Kingdom noticed a fourfold spike in radioactivity in the atmosphere.

[...]

Today, according to a study by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health [PDF link], rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality and sexual mutations in Fallujah are higher than those reported in the aftermath of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear detonations.

[...]

Images of Iraqi children born horribly mutated are extremely difficult to look at and not for the feint of heart.

  Raw Story



Monday, February 15, 2010

Marja Recalls Falluja

U.S. Marines came under intense fire on Sunday after taking over a building in the heart of the last major Taliban bastion in Helmand province.

Taliban fighters unleashed automatic gunfire at NATO helicopters flying in and out of the town of Marjah, and fired on Marines during a ceremony to raise the Afghan flag over the compound to mark progress in the offensive.

Captain Ryan Sparks compared the intensity of the fighting to the U.S.-led offensive against militants in the Iraqi town of Fallujah in 2004.

"In Fallujah, it was just as intense. But there, we started from the north and worked down to the south. In Marjah, we're coming in from different locations and working toward the centre, so we're taking fire from all angles," Sparks said.

  Reuters India

I can't help but wonder what deals the CIA has made behind the scenes with Talib poppy growers. This area of Afghanistan is reported to be a center of the opium drug trade (producing over half the world's supply), and where there's a center of drug trade, there's CIA.


Sunday, February 7, 2010

The Next Falluja

Juan Cole comments on the news that people are fleeing their homes in Marja, Helmland Province in the South of Afghanistan, in response to notice that NATO soldiers are coming to rid them of Taliban, in what is being called the "largest assault against the militants since the war began." He reports that it is mainly a British operation, but the link he provides says it is being led by a "huge force of US Marines." (He also says the operation's name is the Persian word for "joint", while the link reports it as the Dari word for "together".)

I cannot forget the night I read the news that the US military had given the Fallujan people their notice, sending tens of thousands of families fleeing into the desert. It made me sick.

Agence France Presse reports that thousands of Afghans are fleeing an anticipated NATO/Afghan (mainly British) campaign against the Taliban stronghold of Marja, a city of 80,000, south of the capital of Lashkar Gah in Helmand Province. Marja is in the midst of a major poppy-growing region and so a center of narco-terrorism (the poppies are used to make heroin, and it is estimated that 40% of the drug trade goes to insurgents fighting the Karzai government).

The 5,000-man strike force will be British troops in the majority, and the rest will be Afghan or American. Although the campaign is called Operation Mushtarak, the Dari Persian word for "joint," it seems obvious that Afghan Army troops are a small part of the force. Unlike past such campaigns, the invasion force will be garrisoned in Marja rather than withdrawing, so as to allow the troops to keep the Taliban out and to win over local hearts and minds.

[...]

NATO is now racing to train enough Afghan troops to stay in the major southern city and keep it out of the hands of the Taliban.

  Juan Cole

The Marjah assault is the spearhead of a new counter-insurgency strategy, brainchild of US General Stanley McChrystal, who commands foreign forces in Afghanistan, aimed at winning over ordinary Afghans to support the government.

  Google/AFP

Winning hearts and minds by an invastion, driving thousands from their homes. I have a feeling we're getting off on the wrong foot.

President Hamid Karzai is eager to bring on board Taliban foot soldiers, who largely fight for cash rather than loyalty to the Islamists, by offering them money and jobs to put down arms and rejoin mainstream society.>

Because he hasn't noticed that this same tactic up to the present has simply succeeded in giving enemy soldiers intimate knowledge about the ways we go about fighting them, and money to purchase more arms. Because he hasn't noticed that their interest is in removing the infidel invaders and their passion is religious fervor, not a desire to rejoin mainstream society.

Sometimes I can scarcely believe what I read. Mark Twain said he couldn't decide if the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it. I expect were he alive today, he would have made his decision.

You may keep a measure of this type of attack and its results if you like in comparison to that ignoble previous such plan in Iraq through my compilation of Falluja posts (always linked in the right sidebar).


....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.