Posts Tagged ‘Depleted uranium’
Worse than combined Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombing in birth defects in Iraq? The Bush Jr. consequences since invasion of 2003
Posted on: April 24, 2021
Birth Defects of Iraqis after US invasion
Posted on March 25, 2013
- In: Essays | Events/Cultural/Educational/Arts | health/medicine | Lebanon/Middle East/Near East/Levant | political Artical | Safety | sciences | social articles | war aftermath | women
Iraqi Birth Defects Worse than Hiroshima
I watched a documentary on the cable ARTE yesterday on the birth defects suffered by babies in Iraq after the US invasion of 2003. And today Hot Posts is disseminating what Rania Khalek wrote. This is a reblog with minor editing. Rania Khalek posted on March 20, 2013 in her blog “Dispatches from the underclass”
The United States may be finished dropping bombs on Iraq, but Iraqi bodies and babies will be dealing with the consequences for generations to come in the form of birth defects, mysterious illnesses and skyrocketing cancer rates.
Al Jazeera’s Dahr Jamail reports that contamination from U.S. weapons, particularly Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions, has led to an Iraqi health crisis of epic proportions.
“Children being born with two heads, children born with only one eye, multiple tumors disfiguring facial and body deformities, and complex nervous system problems…” are just some of the congenital birth defects being linked to military-related pollution.
In certain Iraqi cities, the health consequences are significantly worse than those seen in the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Japan at the end of WWII.
![(Dr Samira Alani/Al Jazeera])](https://raniakhalek.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/iraq-birth-defects.jpg?w=408&h=270)
(Dr Samira Alani/Al Jazeera])
The highest rates are in the city of Fallujah, which underwent two massive US bombing campaigns in 2004. Though the U.S. initially denied it, officials later admitted using white phosphorous (like what Israel used on Gaza).
In addition, U.S. and British forces unleashed an estimated 2,000 tons of depleted uranium ammunition in populated Iraqi cities in 2003.
DU, a chemically toxic heavy metal produced in nuclear waste, is used in weapons due to its ability to pierce through armor. That’s why the US and UK were among a handful of nations (France and Israel) who in December refused to sign an international agreement to limit its use, insisting DU is not harmful, science be damned.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s refusal to release details about where DU munitions were fired has made it difficult to clean up.
Today, 14.7% of Fallujah’s babies are born with a birth defect, 14 times the documented rate in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Fallujah’s babies have also experienced heart defects 13 times the European rate and nervous system defects 33 times that of Europe.
That comes on top of a 12-fold rise in childhood cancer rates since 2004.
The male-to-female birth ratio is now 86 boys for every 100 girls, indicating genetic damage that affects males more than females.
(Dr Samira Alani/Al Jazeera)
(On a side note, these pictures are rather sanitized compared to other even more difficult to look at images. See here if you can bear it.)
If Fallujah is the Iraqi Hiroshima, then Basra is its Nagasaki.
According to a study published in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, a professional journal based in the southwestern German city of Heidelberg, there was a 7 fold increase in the number of birth defects in Basra between 1994 and 2003.
According to the Heidelberg study, the concentration of lead in the milk teeth of sick children from Basra was almost 3 times as high as comparable values in areas where there was no fighting.
In addition, never before has such a high rate of neural tube defects (“open back”) been recorded in babies as in Basra, and the rate continues to rise. According to the study, the number of hydrocephalus (“water on the brain”) cases among new-born is 6 times as high in Basra as it is in the United States.
These phenomenon are not isolated to Fallujah and Basra. The overall Iraqi cancer rate has also skyrocketed:
Official Iraqi government statistics show that, prior to the outbreak of the First Gulf War in 1991, the rate of cancer cases in Iraq was 40 out of 100,000 people. By 1995, it had increased to 800 out of 100,000 people, and, by 2005, it had doubled to at least 1,600 out of 100,000 people. Current estimates show the increasing trend continuing.
As Grist’s Susie Cagle points out, “That’s potentially a more than 4,000% increase in the cancer rate, making it more than 500 percent higher than the cancer rate in the U.S.“
Dr. Mozghan Savabieasfahani, an environmental toxicologist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, told Jamail that “These observations collectively suggest an extraordinary public health emergency in Iraq.
Such a crisis requires urgent multifaceted international action to prevent further damage to public
health.”
(Dr. Samira Alani/Al Jazeera)
Instead, the international community, including the nation most responsible for the health crisis is mostly ignoring the problem.
To make matters worse, Iraq’s healthcare system, which was once the envy of the region, is virtually nonexistent due to the mass exodus of Iraq’s medical doctors since 2003.
According to recent estimates, there are currently fewer than 100 psychiatrists and 20,0000 physicians serving a population of 31 million Iraqis.
Dahr Jamail was on Democracy Now this morning discussing the horrific effects of military-related pollution in Iraq:https://www.youtube.com/embed/RNi_1pbSqGY?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent
Yanar Mohammad, President of the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq was also on Democracy Now and addressed the toxic legacy of birth defects in Iraq. (I interviewed Mohammed for a piece I wrote for Muftah about the deterioration of Iraqi women’s rights since the invasion, which you can read here.)
DIME Weapon (Dense Inert Metal Explosive) effect: Israel use them on Gaza
Posted on: February 28, 2017
Israel DIME Weapon effect on Gaza-Article and Gallery
What’s DIME ?!
Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) : is an illegal weapon that had been tested in Iraq (Fallujah ) USA , and used in 1996 by Israel , then 2008-2009 again by Israel on Gaza .
Dense Inert Metal Explosive (DIME) : It produces lower pressure but increased impulse in the near field.
Upon detonation of the explosive, the casing disintegrates into extremely small particles, as opposed to the shrapnel which results from the fragmentation of a metal shell casing. (They are irradiated too with “low nuclear” by-products)
Those shrapnel enter the body , which is very lethal at close range ( 4 meters or 13 feet ).
Survivors close to the lethal zone may have their limbs amputated (as the micro shrapnel can slice through soft tissue and bone).
One more Israeli ( IsraHelli Surprise ) :
It’s Carcinogenic , cause the effect of heavy metal tungsten , along with depleted uranium , as USA used before in IRAQ and Afghanistan .
DIME wounds are considered to be untreatable because the metal is delivered in the form of a fine powder which is can’t be removed by surgery .
Is it Legal ?
DIME , is illegal but that’s didn’t hold USA from using it in Iraq and Afghanistan , along with IsraHell ( Israel ) , 2006 , 2008-2009 .
Question: Since when IsraHell ( Israel ) and USA pay an attention to UN and Legality of their ways ?!
Why Israel is using it over civilians at Gaza ?
IsraHell is using those kind of weapons not for the first time , they have a long log from using such Illegal weapons on Palestinians , without fear of consequences .
The right answer would be a Genocide , for the Palestinians at Gaza .
If IsraHell ( Israel ) is using those type of illegal weapons to test it , thats immoral .
If Israhell (Israel ) is trying to terrorize Gaza civilians , thats would be the prove anyone can ask for about How IsraHell ( israel ) is terrorist .
If IsraHell ( israel ) is using those type of illegal weapons to cancerize Gaza people , that`s even unethical an immoral .
and , if IsraHell ( israel ) attended to Genocide the Palestinians at Gaza , ( as we all believe now ) , that would be inhuman .
Therefor , we can’t say was what IsraHell hidden goal of using those kind of weapon , so lets by what IsraHell ( israel ) did in Gaza
IsraHell ( israel ) is Inhuman , a Racismic nation , immoral and unethical . and thats how we see it . and thats what gave it ( IsraHell ) the right to do so , that its Illegal country built on blood and dead bodied .
Gaza: Israel under fire for alleged white phosphorus use
Israel uses experimental genotoxic weapon (DIME) against civilians in Gaza
Italian TV Exposes Experimental IDF Use of U.S. Weapon Which Severs and Burns Limbs Below Genitals
Israel Drops Cancer-inducing Bombs on Gazans
A Norwegian doctor working in Gaza has strongly criticized Israel for using cancer-inducing bombs against Palestinian civilians.
According to Al Ray Palestinian Media Agency, Dr. Erik Fosse recently stated to Press TV that the majority of patients hospitalized in Gaza are civilians injured in attacks on their homes, and that about 30% of these victims are children.
Dense Inert Metal Explosive, known as DIME, is an explosive device developed to minimize damage to things that are incidental to the intended target, known as “collateral damage“.
The bombs reportedly effect a relatively small but rather significantly damaging blast radius, and are believed by medical experts to have severe biological effects on those hit with the bomb’s micro-shrapnel.
DIME munitions were developed by the US Air Force, in 2006, and have since been tested repeatedly on the people of Gaza, who, according to the Electronic Intifada, have long served as involuntary lab rats for Israel’s weapons industry.
DIME bombs contain tungsten, a cancer-causing metal which helps to produce blasts which slice through flesh and bone, often completely destroying the lower limbs of people within the blast radius.
See related link: Israel DIME Weapon effect on Gaza-Article and Gallery
(Warning — graphic images.)
The doctor also says that some Palestinians in the besieged enclave have been wounded by a new type of weapon which even doctors with previous experience in war zones do not recognize.
Israel has used banned weapons in the past, including depleted-uranium and white phosphorus, which is nearly impossible to extinguish and leaves its victim hideously burned and scarred, should he or she even survive such an attack.
The ground assault continues in Gaza, today, with nearly 300 reported deaths and over 2,000 wounded in Gaza, to include elderly, disabled and children not even a year old — all victims of targets which include mostly civilian homes,hospitals and municipal facilities.
Related:Doctors Evacuate Patients After Israel Bombs Hospital
Who may be taken down Assad or Obama? The consequences of Syria Chemical weapon climate of anxieties…
Posted on: September 12, 2013
Who may be taken down Assad or Obama? The consequences of Syria Chemical weapon climate of anxieties…
Do you think a few of the major players, among Presidents, Prime Ministers, UN inspectors, a few head of intelligence services… will pay the price for this extended game of keeping the world community on its toes?
Is the premature US president’s handling of the Syria crisis and its bad timing of any effects on his ultimate downfall?
So far, Russia pulled the Joker card that satisfies all parties, except those who wants Syria destroyed, completely ruined, desolate for decades and divided.
The USA, Russia and China have reached an agreement on the dominion partition of this region.
Ridding the Middle East of all chemical and biological weapon factories and depots is a must. And this policy should apply to Israel, especially Israel that master the modern techniques for biological warfare.
Sahar Charara shared a link from Aljazeera English:
HIGHLY CLASSIFIED. FOR YOUR EYES ONLY (a letter of Obama to Syrian President Assad?)
Dear Mr Assad,
This letter is to inform you that some time in the next two weeks, you will be the subject of a focused, limited and narrow attack by US cruise missiles in response to your recent alleged use of chemical weapons on your own people without our permission.
Here are some helpful hints to help you get through this uncomfortable episode:
1- Send the wives and kids of senior government personnel to Beirut and Paris for a shopping holiday.
2- Remove any chemical weapons from the map I have conveniently appended to this letter of potential bombing locations.
3- Move in political prisoners to use as human shields and ensure maximum collateral damage and thus publicity value when we do bomb.
4- Loudly declare your willingness to attend a UN-sponsored peace conference “under fair conditions“, but don’t lay them out in any detail. Skype call Bibi (Israel PM) if you have any questions on how to do this. The Israelis are the world experts in this field.
5- Point out to anyone who will listen that, while there’s no proof that you were responsible for this attack (even though we both know you did it), the US knowingly provided Saddam Hussein with intelligence while he gassed Iranian soldiers during the Iran-Iraq War, and we’ve not even so much as offered an apology to Iran, never mind to Iraq for the hundreds of thousands of people we killed in a generation of sanctions, invasions and occupation.
6- Tell your broker in Beirut to buy stock in Raytheon before the attack is launched; the price is climbing quite nicely as we approach bomb date and there’s no reason you shouldn’t earn a little something for your trouble.
Hoping the events of the next few weeks aren’t too unpleasant,
Sincerely, Barack Obama
Mark LeVine posted:
Simply put, the entire process by which the president has tried to steer the US towards a bombing campaign reveals such a shocking display of political and diplomatic incompetence – one of the greatest in US history – that he couldn’t have done more to aid the Assad regime if he tried.
Unable even to conceive over 3 years of actually using the full weight of the UN for the purposes it was intended – to stop war – or to lay a proper groundwork for the use of force against Syria when it inevitably crossed the “red line” of large-scale chemical weapon use, the Obama administration, which clearly hasn’t wanted any part of military action in Syria, has allowed itself to get behind a ridiculous plan of action that is allowing the likes of Assad’s son and Russian President Putin to taunt him like a schoolyard bully when no teachers are in sight.
The mess extends in several directions.
The first is the lack of willingness of the Whitehouse to make amends for the chemical weapons-based lies it deployed a decade ago to justify the invasion of Iraq, let alone its own large-scale use of weapons such as White Phosphorus and depleted uranium, the direct support provided to Saddam Hussein for his use of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War – or the even more colossal impact of Washington’s use of Agent Orange and napalm in Vietnam.
Had Obama owned up for the American misdeeds of the past half century, the US might have a little credibility at the moment.
Instead, it’s as if he dusted off the script from 2002-03. Even if this time the script is true, it’s hard not to imagine Dick Cheney hiding somewhere in the Whitehouse attic pulling the strings.
Second, while the president talks about “international credibility” being on the line, his administration has done absolutely nothing to engage in serious reform of the UN – the legitimate embodiment of the international community – and particularly the Security Council, so that countries such as Russia or China could no longer veto action against murderers such as Assad.
The reason, of course, is that this would mean the UN could stop murderers and thieves such as Israelis Netanyahu and Peres, not to mention the US, Russia and China, from pursuing all the policies that routinely violate international law.
At the same time, Obama has done even less to support real democracy in the Arab world, instead strengthening the hands of dictators and despots the region over.
In this environment, there was really never any way the administration could offer the kind of help to the civil resistance in Syria that might have given them a fighting chance without moving to violence, an arena in which they could only be hopelessly outgunned in the current international environment.
Yet neither did it arm the secular opposition early on, when it could have made a difference and prevented the inevitable takeover of the resistance by amply funded extremist jihadis (of the Nusra Front).
As important, by allowing the UN to remain removed from the equation, Obama has given other great powers, in particular Russia, the ability to challenge the US directly, as Putin has indicated he would do, in response to any military action by the US.
If this wasn’t bad enough, not only does the president disregard international law by declaring his willingness to use force without a UN mandate, he also declares that he can use force without Congressional approval, but then goes and seeks it anyway.
These possibilities are all bad.
Either the US Congress becomes complicit in launching an attack that is a clear violation of international law, or the president winds up acting in complete isolation to the vast majority of the international community, the US political establishment, and the American people, who oppose the use of force by a wide margin.
What’s worse, in the hopes of appeasing critics at home and abroad, the president has promised to make the strikes narrowly focused and limited – that is, meaningless in practical terms.
If the president is looking only to degrade Syria’s chemical weapons capabilities, he’s given Assad so much time to prepare that no limited strike would accomplish that goal.
If he’s hoping, as his new ally Senator John McCain advocates, to use this opportunity to change the balance of power on the ground, a limited strike will be even more useless.
And if he strikes harder and longer than he said he would, he will look like a liar – and the Russians will no doubt come to the Syrians’ aid with deliveries of advanced weapons systems.
It’s worth noting that, during the 1967 war, it was the Soviet Union’s secret message to the US that it would become directly involved to protect its client regimes that led President Johnson to pull the Israelis back from conquering even more territory.
The US administration’s attempts to win the propaganda battle have been equally amateurish.
After beginning a unilateral move towards military action before it could be determined who was responsible for the attack, it did not release the evidence it says it has until after its main ally, Britain, had already seen its parliament vote against authorizing violence – plunging the “special” US-UK relationship into one of its deepest crises in decades.
When the administration does release evidence, it doesn’t in fact release any evidence – only a narrative about what the “secret” evidence shows, and assumes anyone will accept it at face value.
In the meantime, it once again delegitimizes the work of weapons inspectors, while engaging in a campaign of coordinated leaks about the evidence – rather than merely presenting such in the open – that so confuses and annoys the press corps.
This risible, almost Keystone Cops-esque attempt to manage information and public discourse on Syria has only strengthened another dictator and mass murderer, Russian President Putin (anyone remember the tens of thousands of deaths during the second Chechen War?), who can take the high road of calling for bringing everything to the UN or the G20 precisely because he knows he has the veto power to protect his allies, the Syrian regime.
If there was any silver lining to this absolute foreign policy disaster, it’s that the people of the United States and their British counterparts have apparently decided they will no longer back the use of force without a full and open debate. (This is a major victory to world peace: Seeking the debates in parliaments before any preemptive war)
But what good is this if the US government believes it can ignore its own citizens?
Key members of the Congressional establishment will back the government, despite widespread public opposition, on the claim that “American credibility” is at stake.
Perhaps the worst part of this whole diplomatic and political fiasco is that the loss of credibility and focus has allowed the one claim Obama has made that remains valid and of utmost importance – that normalising the use of chemical weapons would be an utter disaster for the world community and would wind up seeing it used with increasing frequency by governments, armed groups and terrorists – is left in a shambles.
If there’s one thing that’s certain, we’ll all be the worse off for ignoring chemical weapons use.
It’s hard to see how Obama’s attempt to intervene in the Syrian civil war can produce any kind of successful outcome from either the American or Syrian civilian perspective, if Assad is left still standing with nothing worse than a bloody nose.
And if events play out as it seems they will – a “narrow and limited strike” that rallies people around Assad and shifts focus away from his murderous campaign against his own people – Obama will have succeeded in making the situation even worse for the Syrians on whose behalf he is supposedly striking.
Truly, Syria could wind up being one of the worst foreign policy disasters in US history, destroying whatever shred of diplomatic credibility the Obama administration had left.
It’s almost enough to make one nostalgic for the days of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld…
Mark LeVine is professor of Middle Eastern history at UC Irvine and distinguished visiting professor at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden and the author of the forthcoming book about the revolutions in the Arab world, The Five Year Old Who Toppled a Pharaoh.
His book, Heavy Metal Islam, which focused on ‘rock and resistance and the struggle for soul’ in the evolving music scene of the Middle East and North Africa, was published in 2008.
Follow him on Twitter: @culturejamming
Note: The 5 principles of propaganda before launching a preemptive war:
1. Never mention any economic interests
2. Completely Forget history and geography: Your citizens should remain in a total blank on where your targeted enemy is located, and whether it had any long history of resistance to invaders and occupiers…
3. Demonize the opponent (club of evils). Just focus on the bad history of the enemy related to violent crimes against humanity…
4. Vehemently claim to defend the victims, the same ones that your bombs and missile will re-kill first in collateral damages”…
5. Monopolize the debate and prevent the opposing opinions
Note 2:
Hot posts this week (August 31/2013)
- Two minds on Syria: From “Arabic” speaking authors. Part 2
- Cluster, Orange gas, Phosphorous, depleted uranium, Sarin bombs… And harsh events and calamities
- Invisible Trauma: War-Affected Children. Causes, treatment, prevention, and implications…
- “The man who put words in the king’s mouth” by the Iranian novelist Hassan Frohouar
- Do’s and Don’ts say on Syria Civil War? A long time colonial engineered catastrophe…
- Message amplification, Free Prize, Where do Purple Cows come from…?
- Two Minds on Syria
- Do you master a Second Language? The proper way to be Born Again
- Blasts in the Night, a Smell, and a Flood of Syrian Victims
Birth Defects of Iraqis after US invasion: Far Worse than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined
Posted on: March 25, 2013
Iraqi Birth Defects Worse than Hiroshima
The United States may be finished dropping bombs on Iraq, but Iraqi bodies and babies will be dealing with the consequences for generations to come in the form of birth defects, mysterious illnesses and skyrocketing cancer rates.
Al Jazeera’s Dahr Jamail reports that contamination from U.S. weapons, particularly Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions, has led to an Iraqi health crisis of epic proportions. “Children being born with two heads, children born with only one eye, multiple tumors disfiguring facial and body deformities, and complex nervous system problems…” are just some of the congenital birth defects being linked to military-related pollution.
In certain Iraqi cities, the health consequences are significantly worse than those seen in the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Japan at the end of WWII.
(Dr Samira Alani/Al Jazeera])
The highest rates are in the city of Fallujah, which underwent two massive US bombing campaigns in 2004. Though the U.S. initially denied it, officials later admitted using white phosphorous (like what Israel used on Gaza). In addition, U.S. and British forces unleashed an estimated 2,000 tons of depleted uranium ammunition in populated Iraqi cities in 2003.
DU, a chemically toxic heavy metal produced in nuclear waste, is used in weapons due to its ability to pierce through armor. That’s why the US and UK were among a handful of nations (France and Israel) who in December refused to sign an international agreement to limit its use, insisting DU is not harmful, science be damned.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s refusal to release details about where DU munitions were fired has made it difficult to clean up.
Today, 14.7% of Fallujah’s babies are born with a birth defect, 14 times the documented rate in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Fallujah’s babies have also experienced heart defects 13 times the European rate and nervous system defects 33 times that of Europe.
That comes on top of a 12-fold rise in childhood cancer rates since 2004.
The male-to-female birth ratio is now 86 boys for every 100 girls, indicating genetic damage that affects males more than females.
(Dr Samira Alani/Al Jazeera)
(On a side note, these pictures are rather sanitized compared to other even more difficult to look at images. See here if you can bear it.)
If Fallujah is the Iraqi Hiroshima, then Basra is its Nagasaki.
According to a study published in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, a professional journal based in the southwestern German city of Heidelberg, there was a 7 fold increase in the number of birth defects in Basra between 1994 and 2003.
According to the Heidelberg study, the concentration of lead in the milk teeth of sick children from Basra was almost 3 times as high as comparable values in areas where there was no fighting.
In addition, never before has such a high rate of neural tube defects (“open back”) been recorded in babies as in Basra, and the rate continues to rise. According to the study, the number of hydrocephalus (“water on the brain”) cases among new-born is 6 times as high in Basra as it is in the United States.
These phenomenon are not isolated to Fallujah and Basra. The overall Iraqi cancer rate has also skyrocketed:
Official Iraqi government statistics show that, prior to the outbreak of the First Gulf War in 1991, the rate of cancer cases in Iraq was 40 out of 100,000 people. By 1995, it had increased to 800 out of 100,000 people, and, by 2005, it had doubled to at least 1,600 out of 100,000 people. Current estimates show the increasing trend continuing.
As Grist’s Susie Cagle points out, “That’s potentially a more than 4,000% increase in the cancer rate, making it more than 500 percent higher than the cancer rate in the U.S.“
Dr. Mozghan Savabieasfahani, an environmental toxicologist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, told Jamail that “These observations collectively suggest an extraordinary public health emergency in Iraq. Such a crisis requires urgent multifaceted international action to prevent further damage to public health.”
(Dr. Samira Alani/Al Jazeera)Instead, the international community, including the nation most responsible for the health crisis is mostly ignoring the problem.
To make matters worse, Iraq’s healthcare system, which was once the envy of the region, is virtually nonexistent due to the mass exodus of Iraq’s medical doctors since 2003.
According to recent estimates, there are currently fewer than 100 psychiatrists and 20,0000 physicians serving a population of 31 million Iraqis.
Dahr Jamail was on Democracy Now this morning discussing the horrific effects of military-related pollution in Iraq:
Yanar Mohammad, President of the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq was also on Democracy Now and addressed the toxic legacy of birth defects in Iraq. (I interviewed Mohammed for a piece I wrote for Muftah about the deterioration of Iraqi women’s rights since the invasion, which you can read here.)
Adonis Diaries 