Huge Rise in Birth Defects in Fallujah, and "Squirters"
The rise in frequency is stark - from two admissions a fortnight a year ago to two a day now. "Most are in the head and spinal cord, but there are also many deficiencies in lower limbs," he said. "There is also a very marked increase in the number of cases of less than two years [old] with brain tumours. This is now a focus area of multiple tumours."
This is a 700% increase in the course of a year.
Statistics on infant tumours are not considered as reliable as new data about nervous system anomalies, which are usually evident immediately after birth. Dr Abdul Wahid Salah, a neurosurgeon, said: "With neuro-tube defects, their heads are often larger than normal, they can have deficiencies in hearts and eyes and their lower limbs are often listless.
Zainab Abdul Latif moves wearily between her three children, wiping their foreheads and propping them up in their wheelchairs. "Every day, they need intensive care," the 29-year-old Falluja mother says. Neither her two sons, Amar, 5, and Moustafa, 3, or daughter, Mariam, 6, can walk or use their limbs. They speak two words - "mama, baba" - between them. All are in nappies.One of few people she can turn to is Dr Bassem Allah, the senior obstetrician who is chief custodian of Falluja's newborns. During medical school he had to search Iraq for case studies of an infant with a birth defect. "It was almost impossible during the 80s," he says. "Now, every day in my clinic or elsewhere in the hospital, there are large numbers of congenital abnormalities or cases of chronic tumours."
He pauses, his thoughts seemingly interrupted by the gravity of his words, then slowly continues. "Now, believe me, it's like we are treating patients immediately after Hiroshima."
This nightmare is just another aspect of the legacy of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, and likewise Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who voted to continue funding our genocidal occupation of Iraq year after year after year, and continue to support and direct undocumented and extra-judicial assassinations in Pakistan and elsewhere even today.
According to a just completed study by the New America Foundation, the number of drone strikes has risen dramatically since Obama became President. During his first nine and a half months in office, (Obama) has authorized as many C.I.A. aerial attacks in Pakistan as George W. Bush did in his final three years in office."You could see these little figures scurrying, and the explosion going off, and when the smoke cleared there was just rubble and charred stuff," a former C.I.A. officer who was based in Afghanistan after September 11th says of one attack. (He watched the carnage on a small monitor in the field.)
Human beings running for cover are such a common sight that they have inspired a slang term: "squirters."
And isn't that a marvelously appropriate last word for an essay about the American occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan?
"Squirters!"
Tough to read, Ruta, but thanks. I am so glad you linked to the Jane Mayer piece. Her descriptions of the on-the-drawing-board next generation of video drone-killers is stupefying. Every time I hear or read advocates of 'bringing the troops home' claim that drone attacks can accomplish the eradication of Al Queda, it makes me both sick and furious. There is no more universal theme that coalesces the outrage against us in the Muslim world.
Video-game war. And the Raytheons of the world are making the systems able to not only expand and perfect the visual fields, but the bombing fields as well. We are just sick.
I find I can't comment on the children; nothing seems appropriate.
November 14, 2009 8:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
There are also photos of the babies from Fallujah in the Arab press, and I just couldn't stand to link them, and don't suggest that anyone even look.
And it's happening all the time!
November 14, 2009 9:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
To look or not to look. What's that all about? Will looking make us get used to atrocity and make it acceptable to our calloused souls? Or will it strengthen our resolve against atrocity? I don't know the answer. I read once that Dalton Trumbo got into a debate about this at a Hollywood cocktail party, and the result was "Johnny Got His Gun." It was a bet, if the story is true at all, and I'm not sure "Johnny" proved that exposure to the horrors of war makes us pacifists or numbs us to accept it.
It's kind of crazy. You told the tale, roots, but warn us not to look. I'm not dissing you for this - it's just that it fascinates me. What is the difference between the written and the photographic account? Is the image representation less distant from "truth" than the verbal representation?
I was reading Georges Bataille's "Tears of Eros" once and came across a series of photographs showing the old Chinese "death by a thousand cuts" being perpetrated on a victim. This poor man's body was being taken apart piece by piece while he was alive and witnessing it. I reacted - I threw the book down on my coffe talble and there it sat for a month or so. I couldn't bring myself to look - to even touch the book. At some point I began to feel a sense of amazement that dots of blank ink on a piece of paper could have this power over me.
November 14, 2009 11:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know the answer to that , boho, but I can say that I can't get the image of the three children in wheelchairs in nappies out of my mind; mama wiping their brows. Another day I could maybe look at the photos; not today. Here I am crying again.
November 14, 2009 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
For reasons which would probably be obvious to the average psycho-pathologist, I composed a limerick in response to neoboho's exceptionally thoughtful comment.
November 14, 2009 12:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Round 2
A word is like sight on vacation,
and sight requires imagination,
But we put out our eyes,
With our damnable lies,
and turned into an abomination.
November 14, 2009 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bravo!
November 14, 2009 1:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
seconded
November 15, 2009 5:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
Given this sort of horror story, is it not shocking that anyone in our government, let alone the President, is considering escalating our violent, pointless presence in Afghanistan and that nothing substantive is being done to end our other pointless, violent presence in Iraq?
Thanks Ruta!
November 14, 2009 10:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Get a grip Ruta, 'squirters' might be a shocking term to use for a sentient human being but the military also use the term 'crispy critter' and 'floater'.
Not for the enemy.
For their own comrades after helicopter crashes or when found after accidents at sea.
Neural tube defects can be nutrition related, specifically Vitamin B-12, although dust from 'depleted' uranium munitions has been considered toxic also. Those sorts of munitions are only used in armor piercing projectiles against for instance, tanks. Certainly with a war on for 6 years the women may not have access to pre-natal vitamins. What is the cause? The doctors there don't know yet, it could be a combination of factors.
The Guardian link says the doctors on the scene say:
If you keep looking at pictures of deformed babies is there a chance you will blame the My Lai massacre on Obama too?
He did not start either war and he is ending the Iraq one ASAP. Get a drink and take a walk on the beach or the streets of Malibu bro, and be thankful the sociopath George W. Bush is still not in the Oval office. If you really want to help sick kids or poor families you might have to relocate from the one of wealthiest outposts of the empire.
November 14, 2009 12:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Is there any clear instance of responsibility you will not excuse Obama for? Every act of the US in Iraq is a war crime and the President's continued prosecution of the illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of that country is since he was sworn in is his responsibility.
November 14, 2009 12:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Starting illegal wars of aggression (followed by incompetent, corrupt occupations) are crimes against humanity according to the Geneva Convention. George W. Bush should stand trial, because he started the war.
Trying to end wars is not a crime against humanity. I believe that is what Obama is striving to do.
Resolving conflicts 8 years old cannot be done quickly or easily and I am thankful Obama is on the job and not John McCain.
November 14, 2009 1:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
You believe that is what Obama is doing? On what evidence? Zero. He is no more ending the illegal war in Iraq than he is the war in Afghanistan. His continuation of the illegal war in Iraq is also a war crime because every act flowing from the initial commencement of the war of agression flows from and is an extension of that crime. Obama could easily bring the conflict to a quick end but he has no such intention. The idea that draw downs are coming is keeping the gullible thinking that it is the beginning of the end, but it is only the beginning of a new and much, much longer phase of the illegal occupation.
November 14, 2009 1:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
What's your evidence that what U.S. forces are now doing in Iraq is increasing the bloodshed there instead of reducing it? Of course, if an American soldier inflicts harm, it will be attributed to him or her, but if the American's presence forestalls even greater acts of violence perpetrated by contending Iraqi factions, then someone has been spared as a result.
Afghanistan/Pakistan is a separate issue that can't be addressed adequately in a couple of comments, but whatever one's view of that conflict, it should consider not only harm done by one side, but also the possibility of harm averted. We can continue that discussion elsewhere, but we should agree that harm averted shouldn't be ignored.
When we look at the horrors of war, they burn into our minds the importance of the decisions we make, but they don't exempt us from exercising rational judgment in arriving at those decisions.
November 14, 2009 1:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
A Monster Moron breaks into Fred Moolten's house, kills his family, hangs up poor Fred by the balls, and brings in a posse of Little Morons to party.
Occasionally Fred whimpers "Get out, please!" but the Monster Moron replies...
"I can't leave you at the mercy of all those Little Morons. They might commit even greater acts of violence!"
Apparently that means even greater acts of violence than a genocidal occupation which has already killed over 1,000,000 Iraqis.
November 14, 2009 2:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wasn't referring to the conduct of the Iraq war in general, but to what is happening there now. As far as I know, we are not pursuing an active combat role. If you have evidence that we are currently (not formerly) causing more bloodshed than we are averting, you should provide it.
November 14, 2009 3:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry Fred but that line of logic is pure BS. We have no business there. Period. We need to get the hell out. We aren't preventing anything except the Iraqi's controlling their own oil and living without the American military. It's a completely bogus argument to say that our presence is preventing anything other than the inevitable power struggle that will ensue upon our leaving either whether that is sooner or later it's going to happen.
November 14, 2009 3:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Our withdrawal from Iraq's population centers has reduced civilian casualties from U.S. military action to almost zero. Almost all large scale casualties in recent months have resulted from bomb attacks on civilian targets by various insurgent groups or their adversaries within Iraq, accompanied by sporadic assassinations. I see no evidence to suggest that what we are now doing is responsible the kind of earlier horrors depicted here, and it would be wrong to suggest otherwise in the absence of evidence. The strategy underlying our withdrawal timetable is based on the expectation that an immediate, precipitous withdrawal would invite more violence than one affording more time for security forces to increase their capacity, and for political accomodations to take hold.
November 14, 2009 4:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Every horror being committed in Iraq is directly attributable to the US invasion Fred. Every single one. We have caused it all. Those people were better off under Sadam---far better off. Our government has committed the most horrible of crimes and those horrors occuring now are our fault and our responsibility. The only moral choice we have is to leave as soon as we physcially can manage it. There is no possible way to get out from under the reality that we have caused all the horros in Iraq since our illegal invasion. No plausible argument can be made that we are not responsible.
November 14, 2009 5:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
You continue to dodge the point I made, which is that what we are doing now is very different from what we did during the previous years. We inflicted some horrors then, and we are no longer doing it.
After ducking the issue, presumably because you have no evidence to refute the point that we have stopped doing those things, you then simply dogmatize by saying we should get out right away, but you present no evidence to suggest that a precipitous withdrawal would be preferable for reducing violence than one designed to keep pace with political and security developments within Iraq.
I may be unfair, but I see your reluctance to address the current reality as simply a desire to blame President Obama for consequences that shouldn't be attributed to him. Why else would you consistently refer to past wrongdoing when I bring up what we are doing in the fall of 2009?
Unless you can provide good evidence for harm that our current activities in Iraq are responsible for, I believe you should step back and focus on other issues.
November 14, 2009 6:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
And... our presence in Afghanistan is absolutely harmful to America's interests in both the short and long term and has no impact other than to destabilize the entire region. Whatever reason we may have, at one time, had for being there is long gone. Both wars are pointless imperial adventures that have brought more harm than good to all concerned. The harm to our victims is more apparent today than the harm we have done ourselves, but those chickens will soon come home to roost and the criminal folly of the two wars and the destruction they have brought to our country and people will be on display for the whole world, even for Americans, to see.
November 14, 2009 3:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Drones = War, once removed.
Rootie, I'm having trouble seeing today. There's this wet stuff in my eyes. Dead babies do that for me. Misshapen, altered in perfection, potential unrealized.
Thank you for recommending not clicking over to the photos. I didn't. Couldn't. My imagination takes care of the visual for me.
I just want this stuff to end, Rootie. I don't give a fuck who started it anymore. I just want it to end.
November 14, 2009 12:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Me too.
November 14, 2009 12:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
It must end. Violence begets violence, and evil acts beget evil acts.
It makes no difference what face leads the nation in conducting these actions.
November 14, 2009 3:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
I hate to break it to you, but the war won't end when we pull out; it just take us out of the equation and lets the Iraqis fight it out amongst themselves. As much as I'd like everybody to just get along, it's not gonna happen anytime soon regardless of what we do.
November 14, 2009 4:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
The oddest thing for me, Root, is how these events seem to rouse little or no sense of... what if someone did that to us? I understand the horror, and weighing that against the pragmatic gains of killing enemies, but where's the old human sense of... what if other people decide to do that to US?
Has the US as a nation just been so powerful, for so long, that it can't imagine this? As in, the drones. Part of me says yes to the drones if it means the larger armed presence in those wars gets to leave. The lesser of two evils and all. But then I start having these odder reactions. I start thinking, "What an awful way to fight. Absolutely no honour in it. No courage, no personal responsibility for killing, nothing that resembles being a warrior." And then I think, oh screw that. I'd trade the warrior's way of life in a flash if it meant we'd move to a kind of warfare that reduced casualties by 90%.
Then I start imagining our enemies using Predators on us. After all, we're picking out names in secret, of people we want killed, anywhere in the world, then killing them and anyone who happens to be near them or look like them. And not just the bosses now, it's lower levels, it's preachers, financiers and now... drug lords. And now... we're letting the Pakistanis pick out who they want killed. Then we push the button.
But what possible leg do we have to stand on if some other group or nation then decided to start taking out American political and military leaders using drones? And our business and religious and media voices? What would we do? Argue that we're peace-loving? Democratic? That we believe in a rule of law?
Take the killing of Mehsud. It sounded sooooo cool the way we looked down on him, on his rooftop, and then zoomed in and took him out. Until later on in the article, when it was mentioned that it took 16 missile strikes and between 207-321 additional dead to get him.
So, what happens as this Predator stuff spreads? Assassination, across any border, or anyone in any sector, as well as those around the target, now permitted. Is there no one in the US that worries this technology coming back to haunt the US? I mean, the next generation seems to include “nano” drones, which can fly like killer bees through open windows....
So is that the story? We get to spend an entire generation worrying about nukes, and the end of all life on Earth... and now we get to worry about whether anyone in our vicinity is a prick that someone else might have sent their nano-drones out to kill?
I donno, but this whole movement toward classifying people as terrorists, the use of torture, rendition, assassination squads, depleted uranium and killer drones isn't making me feel more confident about the future somehow.
Did you hear that?
Buzz... BUZzzz... BUZZZZZZZ
November 14, 2009 1:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
At this point nukes are relatively low-tech and easy to acquire, compared to drones, which require a whole network of infrastructure in addition to the thing itself.
But nukes are perfectly detachable, and when these chickens come home to roost, they probably won't be flown in by remote control from Pakistan, but dumped off a passing freighter or walked across a border in small pieces.
November 14, 2009 2:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
A picture to make good men weep.
SEE! And know that the cost in carnage
aint cheap
But soldiers must keep keepin' on
Cuzz SOMETHING has got to be won
Feel the tug? Yup, the Big Muddy is fast and deep.
November 14, 2009 2:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
I read somewhere that the Afghans asked for the unmanned drone technology; they'd do it themselves, if it needed doing. Nuh-uh, was the answer. But yes, Q, the technology will spread, and just imagine our reaction! Oh--it was in the Jane Mayer article, I think. Wait till they turn them on us; there was such technology on a Star Trek Next Generation, little aerial robots designed to take out a person at a time: Zzzztt!
Rumsfeld/Cheney were trying to sell the idea that Iraq had Mobile Flying Bio-chemical Labs; I always thought that would be the theme that sold the 2nd Gulf War. It wasn't of course, maybe people couldn't get their minds around it, like the drones.
November 14, 2009 2:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Other than the fact that you liberals blame EVERYTHING bad on the US, how are birth defects our fault? Don't start whining about DU - there was very little use of that in the Iraq invasion, and why would defects just now start appearing?
November 14, 2009 5:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Liberals blaming everything bad on the U.S is a falsehood. You manufactured it so you could spout a tiny diatribe against liberals and give yourself a little temporary pleasure. Most dogs I know just drag their ass on the carpet. Why don't you try that instead?
November 14, 2009 8:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Don't be silly. There were an estimated 10,000 tons of DU ammo fired into Fallujah during the assault. Radiation illness is accumulative - that's why nuclear workers wear radiation badges on the job. When the badge fills up, you don't ever work again at a nuclear facility. People in Fallujah have been exposed for five years now, and the accumulative effect is showing in birth defects. In time high rates of cancer will manifest. That's the way it works.
But it hasn't been proven that DU is the culprit. The military claims that dust born U-238 and U-236 particles are benign. That's probably the "bunk" in "bunkebusters."
November 14, 2009 8:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
neoboho - I believe you are a few orders of magnitude off on your '10,000 tons of DU used in Fallujah'. DU is only used in anti-armor shells, A-10 Warthog anti-tank rounds and bunker busters, few of which were used in Fallujah. Routine machine gun and carbines do not have DU.
'In Iraq, Gulf War I, 1991, use of DU was for 30mm and 120mm cannon shells Abrams tank and A-10 Warthog and 320- 750 tons' were used, link
I doubt 30 times more DU was used in Fallujah as in Gulf War I.
The insurgents had no armored vehicles to require DU projectiles, fighting was mostly small arms. You are probably off by a factor of 500-1000.
However everyone here on Blue Boy's Blog loves to blame Obama, and posters seem to prize their preconceived opinions regardless of reality so believe what you want to believe.
November 14, 2009 11:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Estimates on DU usage in the 2003 invasion of Iraq are about 1000 tons. For the entire invasion, which did not include Fallujah. (It was largely bypassed). There was little if any used there. If there are birth defects in that area, the cause is something else.
November 15, 2009 8:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Depleted uranium is indeed cumulative, you Ultimate Defender of the Neo-con Ideology. It gets into the air, settles on the Earth, gets into the water supplies. and what ho! People can breathe it, grow food in it, touch it while at play in THE DIRT (the children), then drink it, cook in it, bathe in it (though not very often, because there is almost NEVER enough water for a bath). Your hatred makes you blind, deaf, and dumb, you poor thing.
November 14, 2009 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
You know, there are good dogs and then there are sloppy, slobberin', cross eyed , inbred, idiot barkers that demand leash laws and justify shock collars. Continuing in that direction we come to you.
Your position, as usual, is on par with a grossly overblown lapdog with the brain of a slug and the urges of a jackal.
Good God amighty, you crap in the middle of the room and someone too sympathetic to put you down says with disgust, "wasn't that clever", and you start thinking that you really are.
November 14, 2009 9:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Must say I think when the doctors treating the patients in Fallujah say they are 'reluctant to draw a direct link with the fighting'(ruta's link in original post)I don't see how anyone here can be so sure. Frankly I think it has more to do with poor nutrition (which is in fact war related). There were no tanks in Fallujah so I don't know if any DU was used by the US. From the Guardian:
What is odd is posters who are so ready to assign causes when the doctors treating the patients are not ready.
Also, why is a guy sitting in some of the most exclusive real estate in the empire spending his time looking at deformed babies and blaming the country at large while assuming no responsibility himself to even get the facts straight? While doctors in Fallujah look for the real causes and real solutions.
November 15, 2009 12:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Strictly on a scientific basis, what this should motivate us to do is figure out what is happening. That means bringing in top epidemiologists with the resources necessary to look into this.
If it's poor nutrition it's easy enough to fix. If chemical toxicity of DU is the culprit, then it's important to know this definitively for everyone (people in future conflicts, those exposed already, and people in the military working in hazardous areas).
I'm wary of the statistics presented, especially given the extreme conditions in Iraq (despotic regime, two wars, then occupation). These can heavily effect the collection and reliability of data necessary to make comparisons over time periods.
So what we owe to everyone involved is to figure out the Truth; not just the first and most convenient conclusion we can jump to depending on our ideological convictions. The immoral thing to do here is wait and move slowly.
November 15, 2009 1:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
There is no justification for this. None.
November 14, 2009 10:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
What, if anything, did we use in Iraq that we are not using or planning to use in Afghanistan?
If these children are damaged by stuff we were using how long before similar epidemics appear there?
November 14, 2009 11:34 PM | Reply | Permalink