This is insanely shocking - how many of you knew about this or even
heard about it over the past two weeks, the wikileaks stuff has
kind of acted as a barrier to this story getting out...
Did any of you hear or read about this? I'd like to know.
"The Iraqi city of Fallujah continues to suffer the ghastly consequences of a
US military onslaught in late 2004.
According to the authors of a new study, “Cancer, Infant Mortality and
Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009,”
the people of Fallujah are
experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality, and sexual
mutations than those recorded among survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
in the years after those Japanese cities were incinerated by US atomic
bomb strikes in 1945.
The epidemiological study, published in the
International Journal of
Environmental Studies and Public Health (IJERPH), also finds the prevalence
of these conditions in Fallujah to be many times greater than in nearby
nations.
The assault on Fallujah, a city located 43 miles west of Baghdad, was one
of the most horrific war crimes of our time. After the population resisted
the US-led occupation of Iraq—a war of neo-colonial plunder launched on
the basis of lies—Washington determined to make an example of the largely
Sunni city. This is called “exemplary” or “collective” punishment and is,
according to the laws of war, illegal.
The new public health study of the city now all but proves what has long
been suspected: that a high proportion of the weaponry used in the
assault contained depleted uranium, a radioactive substance used in shells
to increase their effectiveness.
In a study of 711 houses and 4,843 individuals carried out in January and
February 2010, authors Chris Busby, Malak Hamdan, Entesar Ariabi and a
team of researchers found that the cancer rate had increased fourfold
since before the US attack five years ago, and that
the forms of cancer in
Fallujah are similar to those found among the Hiroshima and Nagasaki
atomic bomb survivors, who were exposed to intense fallout radiation.
In Fallujah the rate of leukemia is 38 times higher, the childhood cancer
rate is 12 times higher, and breast cancer is 10 times more common than in
populations in Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait. Heightened levels of adult
lymphoma and brain tumors were also reported. At 80 deaths out of every
1,000 births, the infant mortality rate in Fallujah is more than five times
higher than in Egypt and Jordan, and eight times higher than in Kuwait.
Strikingly, after 2005 the proportion of girls born in Fallujah has increased
sharply. In normal populations, 1050 boys are born for every 1000 girls. But
among those born in Fallujah in the four years after the US assault, the
ratio was reduced to 860 boys for every 1000 female births. This alteration
is similar to gender ratios found in Hiroshima after the US atomic attack of
1945.
The most likely reason for the change in the sex ratio, according to the
researchers, is the impact of a major mutagenic event—likely the use of
depleted uranium in US weapons. While boys have one X-chromosome, girls
have a redundant X-chromosome and can therefore absorb the loss of one
chromosome through genetic damage.
“This is an extraordinary and alarming result,” said Busby, a professor of
molecular biosciences at the University of Ulster and director of scientific
research for Green Audit, an independent environmental research group.
“To produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must
have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened. We need urgently to
find out what the agent was. Although many suspect uranium, we cannot
be certain without further research and independent analysis of samples
from the area.”
Busby told an Italian television news station, RAI 24, that the
“extraordinary” increase in radiation-related maladies in Fallujah is higher
than that found in the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the US
atomic strikes of 1945. “My guess is that this was caused by depleted
uranium,” he said. “They must be connected.”
The US military uses depleted uranium, also known as spent nuclear fuel, in
armor-piercing shells and bullets because it is twice as dense as lead. Once
these shells hit their target, however, as much as 40 percent of the
uranium is released in the form of tiny particles in the area of the
explosion. It can remain there for years, easily entering the human
bloodstream, where it lodges itself in lymph glands and attacks the DNA
produced in the sperm and eggs of affected adults, causing, in turn,
serious birth defects in the next generation.
The research is the first systematic scientific substantiation of a body of
evidence showing a sharp increase in infant mortality, birth defects, and
cancer in Fallujah.
In October of 2009, several Iraqi and British doctors wrote a letter to the
United Nations demanding an inquiry into the proliferation of radiation-
related sickness in the city:
“
Young women in Fallujah in Iraq 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.…
“In September 2009, Fallujah General Hospital had 170 newborn babies, 24
percent of whom were dead within the first seven days, a staggering 75
percent of the dead babies were classified as deformed.…
“Doctors in Fallujah have specifically pointed out that not only are they
witnessing unprecedented numbers of birth defects, but premature births
have also considerably increased after 2003. But what is more alarming is
that doctors in Fallujah have said, ‘a significant number of babies that do
survive begin to develop severe disabilities at a later stage.’” (See: “
Sharp rise in birth defects in Iraqi city destroyed by US military”)
The Pentagon responded to this report by asserting that there were no
studies to prove any proliferation of deformities or other maladies
associated with US military actions. “No studies to date have indicated
environmental issues resulting in specific health issues,” a Defense
Department spokesman told the BBC in March. There have been no studies,
however, in large part because Washington and its puppet Baghdad regime
have blocked them.
According to the authors of “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in
Fallujah,” the Iraqi authorities attempted to scuttle their survey.
“hortly
after the questionnaire survey was completed, Iraqi TV reportedly
broadcast that a questionnaire survey was being carried out by terrorists
and that anyone who was answering or administering the questionnaire
could be arrested,” the study reports.
The history of the atrocity committed by American imperialism against the
people of Fallujah began on April 28, 2003, when
US Army soldiers fired
indiscriminately into a crowd of about 200 residents protesting the
conversion of a local school into a US military base. Seventeen were killed
in the unprovoked attack, and two days later American soldiers fired on a
protest against the murders, killing two more.
This intensified popular anger, and Fallujah became a center of the Sunni
resistance against the occupation—and US reprisals. On March 31, 2004,
an angry crowd stopped a convoy of the private security firm Blackwater
USA, responsible for its own share of war crimes. Four Blackwater
mercenaries were dragged from their vehicles, beaten, burned, and hung
from a bridge over the Euphrates River.
The US military then promised it would pacify the city, with one unnamed
officer saying it would be turned into “a killing field,” but Operation Vigilant
Resolve, involving thousands of Marines, ended in the abandonment of the
siege by the US military in May, 2004. The victory of Fallujah’s residents
against overwhelming military superiority was celebrated throughout Iraq
and watched all over the world.
The Pentagon delivered its response in November 2004. The city was
surrounded, and all those left inside were declared to be enemy
combatants and fair game for the most heavily equipped killing machine in
world history. The Associated Press reported that men attempting to flee
the city with their families were turned back into the slaughterhouse.
In the attack, the US made heavy use of the chemical agent white
phosphorus. Ostensibly used only for illuminating battlefields, white
phosphorus causes terrible and often fatal wounds, burning its way through
building material and clothing before eating away skin and then bone. The
chemical was also used to suck the oxygen out of buildings where civilians
were hiding.
Washington’s desire for revenge against the population is indicated by the
fact that the US military reported about the same number of “gunmen”
killed (1,400) as those taken alive as prisoners (1,300-1,500).
In one
instance, NBC News captured video footage of a US soldier executing a
wounded and helpless Iraqi man. A Navy investigation later found the
Marine had been acting in self-defense.
Fifty-one US soldiers died in 10 days of combat. The true number of city
residents who were killed is not known. The city’s population before the
attack was estimated to be between 425,000 and 600,000. The current
population is believed to be between 250,000 and 300,000. Tens of
thousands, mostly women and children, fled in advance of the attack. Half
of the city’s building were destroyed, most of these reduced to rubble.
Like much of Iraq, Fallujah remains in ruins. According to a recent report
from IRIN, a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs, Fallujah still has no functioning sewage system six years after the
attack. “Waste pours onto the streets and seeps into drinking water
supplies,” the report notes. “Abdul-Sattar Kadhum al-Nawaf, director of
Fallujah general hospital, said the sewage problem had taken its toll on
residents’ health. They were increasingly affected by diarrhea,
tuberculosis, typhoid and other communicable diseases.”
The savagery of the US assault shocked the world, and added the name
Fallujah to an infamous list that includes My Lai, Sabra-Shatila, Guérnica,
Nanking, Lidice, and Wounded Knee.
But unlike those other massacres, the crime against Fallujah did not end
when the bullets were no longer fired or the bombs stopped falling.
The US military’s decision to heavily deploy depleted uranium, all but
proven by “Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah,” was a
wanton act of brutality, poisoning an entire generation of children not yet
born in 2004.
The Fallujah study is timely, with the US now preparing a major escalation
of the violence in Afghanistan. The former head of US Afghanistan
operations, General Stanley McChrystal, was replaced last month after a
media campaign, assisted by a
Rolling Stone magazine feature, accused
him, among other things, of tying the hands of US soldiers in their response
to Afghan insurgents.
McChrystal was replaced by General David Petraeus, formerly head of the
US Central Command. Petraeus has outlined new rules of engagement
designed to allow for the use of disproportionate force against suspected
militants.
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.”
"link
:eek:
The Blackwater employee's were killed apparently after all of the following
occurred.
"On April 28, a crowd of approximately 200 people gathered outside the
school past
curfew, demanding that the Americans vacate the building and
allow it to re-open as a school. The protesters became increasingly
heated, and the deployment of
smoke gas canisters failed attempt to
disperse the crowd.
[13] The protest escalated as gunmen reportedly fired
upon U.S. troops from the protesting crowd and
U.S. Army soldiers from
the 3rd Battalion of the
325th Airborne Infantry Regiment of the
82nd Airborne Division returned fire, killing 17 people and wounding more than 70
of the protesters. There were no Army or Coalition casualties in the
incident. U.S. forces said that the shooting took place over 30–60
seconds, however other sources claim the shooting continued for half an
hour
[14]
Two days later, a protest at the former Ba'ath party headquarters decrying
the American shootings was also fired upon by U.S. troops, this time the
U.S. 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which resulted in three more deaths.
[12][15] Following both incidents, the US soldiers asserted that they had
not fired upon the protesters until they were fired upon first.
The 82nd Airborne troops were replaced by forces from the 3rd Armored
Cavalry Regiment and
101st Airborne Division, and on June 4 the 3rd
Armoured Cavalry was forced to request an additional 1,500 troops to help
quell the growing resistance faced in Fallujah and nearby
al-Habaniyya.
[16]
Fallujah, December 2003
In June, U.S. forces began confiscating motorcycles from local residents,
claiming that they were being used in
hit-and-run attacks on US
troops.
[17]
On June 30, a large explosion occurred in a mosque in which the
imam,
Sheikh Laith Khalil and eight other people were killed. While the local
population claimed that Americans had fired a missile at the mosque, U.S.
forces claimed that it was an accidental detonation by insurgents
constructing bombs.
[18] "link
and that was justification enough for locking people inside the city
& using white phosphorous on them.
What do you think???
Anyone shed more light on the story?
