Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah 'worse than Hiroshima'The Independent: Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.
Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle...
Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait...
US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing... US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions...
In the assault US commanders largely treated Fallujah as a free-fire zone... British officers were appalled by the lack of concern for civilian casualties... Dr [Chris] Busby says that while he cannot identify the type of armaments used by the Marines, the extent of genetic damage suffered by inhabitants suggests the use of uranium in some form. He said: 'My guess is that they used a new weapon against buildings to break through walls and kill those inside.'...
Researchers found a 38-fold increase in leukaemia, a ten-fold increase in female breast cancer and significant increases in lymphoma and brain tumours in adults... Dr Busby says what is striking is not only the greater prevalence of cancer but the speed with which it was affecting people. Of particular significance was the finding that the sex ratio... From 2005 there was an 18 per cent drop in male births... an indicator of genetic damage that affects boys more than girls. A similar change in the sex-ratio was discovered after Hiroshima...
The impact of war on civilians was more severe in Fallujah than anywhere else in Iraq because the city continued to be blockaded and cut off from the rest of the country long after 2004.
Related:
The Times (London): Environmental scientists who uncovered the evidence through freedom of information laws say it is evidence that depleted uranium from the shells was carried by wind currents to Britain... The 'shock and awe' campaign was one of the most devastating assaults in modern warfare. In the first 24-hour period more than 1,500 bombs and missiles were dropped on Baghdad.
Truthout: What is happening in Iraq seems to reflect what psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton calls 'atrocity-producing situations.' He used this term first in his book The Nazi Doctors... 'A counterinsurgency war in a hostile setting, especially when driven by profound ideological distortions, is particularly prone to sustained atrocity -- all the more so when it becomes an occupation.'
