[THS] !!!!!!! Cancer Rate In Fallujah Worse Than Hiroshima

[The Harder Stuff in news and commentary]

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, the Generals, the entire lot, should be executed by firing squad. 


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26004.htm

Cancer Rate In Fallujah Worse Than Hiroshima

By Tom Eley

July 23, 2010 "WSWS" -- 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. “[S]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 buildings 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.”

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