From Iraq, a Tragic Reminder to Prosecute the War Criminals

[unhappycamper]

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/16699-from-iraq-a-tragic-reminder-to-prosecute-the-war-criminals



From Iraq, a Tragic Reminder to Prosecute the War Criminals
Friday, 31 May 2013 12:16 By John Pilger, Truthout | Op-Ed

The dust in Iraq rolls down the long roads that are the desert's fingers. It gets in your eyes and nose and throat; it swirls in markets and school playgrounds, consuming children kicking a ball; and it carries, according to Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, "the seeds of our death." An internationally respected cancer specialist at the Sadr Teaching Hospital in Basra, Dr. Ali share that quote in 1999, and today his warning is irrefutable. "Before the Gulf war," he said, "we had two or three cancer patients a month. Now we have 30 to 35 dying every month. Our studies indicate that 40 to 48 percent of the population in this area will get cancer: in five years' time to begin with, then long after. That's almost half the population. Most of my own family have it, and we have no history of the disease. It is like Chernobyl here; the genetic effects are new to us; the mushrooms grow huge; even the grapes in my garden have mutated and can't be eaten."

Along the corridor, Dr. Ginan Ghalib Hassen, a pediatrician, kept a photo album of the children she was trying to save. Many had neuroplastoma. "Before the war, we saw only one case of this unusual tumor in two years," she said. "Now we have many cases, mostly with no family history. I have studied what happened in Hiroshima. The sudden increase of such congenital malformations is the same."

Among the doctors I interviewed, there was little doubt that depleted uranium shells used by the Americans and British in the Gulf War were the cause. A US military physicist assigned to clean up the Gulf War battlefield across the border in Kuwait said, "Each round fired by an A-10 Warhog attack aircraft carried over 4,500 grams of solid uranium. Well over 300 tons of DU was used. It was a form of nuclear warfare."

Although the link with cancer is always difficult to prove absolutely, the Iraqi doctors argue that "the epidemic speaks for itself." The British oncologist Karol Sikora, chief of the cancer program of the World Health organization (WHO) in the 1990s, wrote in the British Medical Journal: "Requested radiotherapy equipment, chemotherapy drugs and analgesics are consistently blocked by United States and British advisers [to the Iraq Sanctions Committee]." He told me, "We were specifically told [by the WHO] not to talk about the whole Iraq business. The WHO is not an organization that likes to get involved in politics."



http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1280&bih=590&q=depleted+uranium&oq=depleted+uranium&gs_l=img.3..0l10.2023.5988.0.6259.16.9.0.7.7.0.224.1246.0j8j1.9.0...0.0...1ac.1.15.img.u1RS_RdGl-I#hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=depleted+uranium+basra&oq=depleted+uranium+basra&gs_l=img.3..0i24.132830.134661.0.135346.6.4.0.2.2.0.130.465.1j3.4.0...0.0...1c.1.15.img.rPG-uUziYRM&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.47244034,d.dmQ&fp=5719f0b944567030&biw=1280&bih=619

[madokie]

1. This is the worst crime of these two wars

Iraq/Afghanistan

[Downwinder]

2. Atmospheric Tests/Japan/Proximity to a Reactor

All defined in the late 1940s.

[Victor_c3]

3. I forget the exact numbers

but I read a study recently that stated that the incidences of birth defects in Fallujah are higher now than they were after the dropping of the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But at least they have the Iraqi people have their freedom now...