Gorilla’s Guides

FALLUJAH, Jun 12 (IPS) - Babies born in Fallujah are showing illnesses and deformities on a scale never seen before, doctors and residents say.

The new cases, and the number of deaths among children, have risen after “special weaponry” was used in the two massive bombing campaigns in Fallujah in 2004.

After denying it at first, the Pentagon admitted in November 2005 that white phosphorous, a restricted incendiary weapon, was used a year earlier in Fallujah.

In addition, depleted uranium (DU) munitions, which contain low-level radioactive waste, were used heavily in Fallujah. The Pentagon admits to having used 1,200 tonnes of DU in Iraq thus far.

Many doctors believe DU to be the cause of a severe increase in the incidence of cancer in Iraq, as well as among U.S. veterans who served in the 1991 Gulf War and through the current occupation.

“We saw all the colours of the rainbow coming out of the exploding American shells and missiles,” Ali Sarhan, a 50-year-old teacher who lived through the two U.S. sieges of 2004 told IPS. “I saw bodies that turned into bones and coal right after they were exposed to bombs that we learned later to be phosphorus.

“The most worrying is that many of our women have suffered loss of their babies, and some had babies born with deformations.”

Read more »

With thanks to my Sister in humanity Sophia.

Mohammed Ibn Laith

As we remarked before the expression “ongoing diplomacy” is just a nice way of saying “Genocide.” Courtesy of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit it’s now indisputably “legal” under American “law.”

On Friday 22nd 2008, to nobody’s surprise the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit  upheld [follow this link to download the judgement as as PDF] the dismissal [follow this link to download the judgement as as PDF] of the case brought by approximately three million Vietnamese plaintiffs against against Dow Chemical Co, Monsanto Co and nearly 30 other American chemical companies for producing and supplying defoliants, including Agent Orange that US forces used during the Vietnam war. 

American warplanes sprayed these highly toxic substances on Vietnamese forests between 1962 and 1971 to destroy Vietnamese sources of food and cover. In other words just as they have done — and continue to do in Irak today, the Americans during the Vietnam war used the starvation of civilians as a weapon.

Long after the last bullet has been fired in a war, unexploded bombs, landmines and toxic chemicals continue to maim and kill civilians. This is particularly true of the Vietnam war. Three decades after US soldiers and diplomats scrambled aboard the last planes out of Saigon in April 1975, the toxins they left behind still poison Vietnam.

Source: Comment is free: Agent of suffering

Do you remember this child?  He’s one of the millions who will not get any help or restitution from the people who did this to him, they can hide behind the legal doctrine of sovereign immunity. He won’t get any help or restitution from the people who made a lot of money selling the poison to the people who did this to him.

This is from Reuters on Friday:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal appeals court upheld on Friday the dismissal of a civil lawsuit against major U.S. chemical companies brought by Vietnamese plaintiffs over the use of the defoliant “agent orange” during the Vietnam War

… … …

A U.S. District Court judge in Brooklyn, New York ruled in March 2005 that the plaintiffs failed to show that use of agent orange, a plant killer supplied to the U.S. military in Vietnam, violated a ban on the use of poisonous weapons in war and that the lawsuit did not prove the plaintiffs’ health problems were linked to the chemical.

“Although the herbicide campaign may have been controversial, the record before us supports the conclusion that agent orange was used as a defoliant and not as a poison designed for or targeting human populations,” Judge Roger Miner wrote for the three-judge appeals court panel.

The court also upheld two other agent orange rulings, including one in a case that was brought by veterans and their families who said their health problems did not become apparent until after a 1984 class-action settlement was reached with a group of veterans. In that case, the Second Circuit found that, as government contractors, the chemical companies could be shielded from liability.

Source: Court upholds dismissal of agent orange suit | Reuters

Dioxins:

Dioxins are a class of chemical contaminants that are formed during combustion processes such as waste incineration, forest fires, and backyard trash burning, as well as during some industrial processes such as paper pulp bleaching and herbicide manufacturing. The most toxic chemical in the class is 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin (TCDD). The highest environmental concentrations of dioxin are usually found in soil and sediment, with much lower levels found in air and water

Source: Dioxins 

2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin (TCDD) 

TCDD is considered to be one of, if not the most toxic man-made substance. It has been shown to cause cancer and disrupt multiple endocrine functions. TCDD is a by-product of several manufacturing processes such as paper production and pesticide formulation. Among its varied effects, TCDD has been shown to cause increased fetal loss and reduced birth weight in animal studies.

Source: Birth Outcomes of Women Exposed to Dioxin in Seveso Italy - DERT

Three decades later America and her surrogates make war on all the peoples of the Middle East in the same evil, and futile way that they made war on the peoples of South East Asia, only the means of delivering death across the generations have changed. Not the calculated barbarity, not the hypocrisy, not the evil, and most certainly not the racism. It’s not just Irak, and it’s not just Lebanon:

What I mean by that is that it’s going to be a cold day in hell before the Lebanese forgive or forget what was done to their children by Israeli troops and Israeli aviators. They’re not going to forgive or forget that the weapons used to slaughter their children and destroy their livelihoods were made in America, paid for by America, and calculatingly used against their children in a war planned for years by Israel, and launched with America’s blessing.

They’re not going to forgive or forget that America blocked all attempts to stop their children being massacred by Israeli troops and Israeli aviators. They’re never ever ever going to forgive or forget what that bloodsoaked slut Condoleeza Rice said about how the agonised deaths of their children were the “birth pangs of the new middle east.” They’re not going to forgive or forget that neither the “light unto the nations” nor the “shining city on the hill” gave a flying fuck about their children. It didn’t matter that a lot of the dead children were Christians all that mattered was that they were Lebanese, that they were Arabs, untermenschen and that it was worth killing them because the political calculation in America and Israel was that killing them would cause their parents to blame and hate their fellow Lebanese.

Source: Gorilla’s Guides (old site): Guest Posting by Declan: “What I Did At The Weekend”

And its not just Gaza:

In any event, in Gaza the Oslo experiment in indirect rule seems to be over. Israel now treats the territory less like an internment camp and more like an animal pen: a space of near total confinement whose wardens are concerned primarily with keeping those inside alive and tame, with some degree of mild concern as to the opinions of neighbors and other outsiders.

Source: Middle East Report Online: Disengagement and the Frontiers of Zionism by Darryl Li

America’s “ongoing diplomacy” is directed at all the peoples of the Middle East, or at least at those of us who aren’t utterly and slavishly obedient to American demands. The war in Irak is part of America’s “ongoing diplomacy,” the “ongoing diplomacy” that is carried out by “Democrat” and “Republican” administrations alike, of saying to us and to everyone who has something that America covets:

We are your new masters, we are intrinsically better and moral than everyone else simply because we are American. We are the new master race. We know what is good for you. Obey us or we will do this to your children and your home.

No.

Maryam, Mohammed Ibn Laith, Fatima.

An Open Letter to the Minister of State for International Development : Regarding Public Health in Iraq.

The Rt. Hon. Douglas Alexander, M.P.,
Minister of State for International Development,
International Development Committee,
House of Commons.

Dear Mr Alexander,

Re: Public Health Iraq.

As one who has spent considerable time in Iraq over the years, has been Senior Researcher for two Award winning documentaries, on the state of the health and health infrastructure, before and after the embargo, has written and broadcast widely on Iraq and am co-author of an educational book on Baghdad, I write in some concern.

I was astonished to learn from your website, that at the Oral Evidence in the House of Commons, on the 22nd of January, 2008, in to the now shameful health system in Iraq (it’s upkeep entirely the responsibility of the occupying forces under international law) you stated (after Question 15) ‘There were literally decades of under investment and mismanagement within the health system ..’ (under Saddam Hussein.)

With respect, this shows either a breathtaking ignorance, or a stunning economy with the truth.

The United Nations State of the Nations Report of 1989, recorded Iraq as having over ninety percent access to ‘free high quality health care’ (based on the British National Health Service, incidentally) and to clean water and an educational system so exemplary (free from kindergarten through university) that two years running, Iraq was awarded a special U.N., prize for its excellence. Hence the high qualifications of the country’s professionals. The medical profession was one aspired to especially, by students. On qualification, many were paid for, by the Iraqi government, to also undertake post-graduate studies in the West, thus benefiting from expertise in both Iraqi and Western practices. Many of the students came to Britain, who benefited greatly financially from the Iraqi government’s policy.

Thirteen years of the most draconian embargo ever imposed by the United Nations (driven by the US and UK) after the 1991 bombing, led to disaster in a country which had (on the advice, ironically,, of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization) imported - broadly - seventy percent of everything. The forty two day carpet bombing defied the 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Convention, which states: It is prohibited to ‘ attack destroy or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population… including : foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations … irrigation works.’ All the former were about seventy percent destroyed. Water and irrigation facilities, were totally destroyed, at the behest of US Central Command.

With denial of trade and imports, further deterioration occurred, despite the remarkable ingenuity of the Iraqi people and indeed the Ministries. However malnutrition rose - especially amongst the under fives and new born. Water born diseases soared, cholera and typhoid, virtually, eradicated returned and infant mortality became a searing wound on the soul of the nation. The pharmaceutical factories, which produced basics, including anti-biotics, were also bombed, as were the factories which produced medical syringes.

Numerous hospitals and clinics across the country had been destroyed or damaged. Yet inspite lack of imported materials (and the bombing of the cement factory) they were somehow rebuilt and repaired, remarkably, in the circumstances. Of course over the eleven years of illegal, un-U.N., sactioned bombing, by the United States and United Kingdom, many facilities were again damaged or destroyed.

In 1998 every window in a ten story hospital in the center of Baghdad was blown out, by a bombing in a residential area. Patients were killed directly, shredded by glass shards turned missiles, or died of heart attacks and the hospital again badly damaged. Since the glass factory had been bombed in 1991, this was another major disaster. UNICEF stepped in and replaced probably a thousand plus windows, since one of the country’s major maternity units was situated there. The same year, at the country’s major pediatric oncology hospital, the nurses home was flattened and the hospital again badly damaged, in this war against the new born, the unborn and the under fives - in defiance of another swathe of international law.

Before these criminal acts, which took place from1991 onwards : ‘.. very significant advances in the provision of health care and major construction projects, gave the country a first class range of medical facilities, in both large towns and through a series of clinics in rural areas’ (resulting in) infant mortality declining to about forty, per thousand live births.’ However: ‘Following five years of the economic embargo …. the infant mortality rate reached 97.2 per thousand live births’, by 1995.

There was, further ‘.. a two fold increase in infant mortality and a five fold increase in under five mortality and with an increasing prevalence of malnutrition, a two fold increase in stunting and a four fold increase in wasting, between August 1991 and August 1995. Mortality for the under fives had tripled.’

This in spite of a monthly free ration system, which the U.N., described as the most efficient they had monitored. But with the destruction of livestock, chicken farms and agriculture, imports not allowed and inflation stratospheric, essential proteins were missing. Year after year the United Nations Sanctions Committee (and I stress U.S., and U.K., driven) even vetoed protein biscuits, which Iraq had requested to add to the provisions.

I quote these facts, from the extensive United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization Report of 1995, the Result of a Mission led by Dr Peter Pellett, Professor of Nutrition at the University of Massachusetts, since it indicates especially graphically, the state of the formerly excellent health service and the plight of the most vulnerable, just five years in to the embargo. The ‘oil for food’ programme, when it finally came in to train, largely fiddled with what Iraq could and could not have, as Iraqis died. Hospital equipment, X-ray machines, dialysis machines, scanners, medications, instruments, theatre essentials, drips are needed instantly, not in six months, or a year later as day by day, patients died for the wait.

To illustrate the the iniquity, an acquaintance, in desperation, sent a supply if insulin, in a jiffy bag, to his diabetic brother in Baghdad, as none was available. It was returned by the Post Office as needing an export licence.His brother died before the license arrived. I myself was threatened by DFID with prosecution, for taking a year’s supply of cancer treatment to a surgeon with cancer, who had worked here at the Hammersmith Hospital, a specialist in pediatric orthopedics, who had enabled numerous British children walk again, able to use their arms, straightened small bodies. Cancer treatments too, were vetoed by the United Nations Sanctions Committee.

From elevators, to central oxygen, to incubators, all gradually collapsed - with the Sanctions Committee denying parts or replacements. And as the years went on, the situation deteriorated from the impossible to the apocalyptic. Then based on a pack of lies, Iraq was bombed and invaded in 2003 and the hospitals and health service have near-collapsed entirely - along with everything else - so catastrophically, under the United States and Britain’s watch and responsibility, that an oft repeated Iraqi refrain, is to refer to the ‘golden days’ of the embargo. The 2003 attack was, of course, Nuremberg’s ’supreme international crime’ which as a lawyer, you will of course, be aware.

Further, it took the embargo thirteen years for an estimated million and a quarter souls, to die of ‘embargo-related causes.’ (United Nations phrase.) It has taken just five years for America and Britain’s ‘liberation’, to kill almost the same amount - according to the respected, ORB and John Hopkins, Bloomburg studies. Deaths - overtly through bombing, killings by troops their militias and other violence - and covertly, through the destruction of and failure to restore, Iraq’s health care system. If Darfur’s plight is ‘genocide’, what is Iraq’s?

I apologize for the length of this letter, but felt that as you are in a position of potentially vital importance, relevant to hopefully, a rapid response to this shocking situation, if you are genuinely unaware of the background, there is a missile sized hole in your portfolio!

Iraq’s heath care system is not ‘ .. the result of decades of under investment and mis-management’, but of thirteen years of draconian sanctions and bombings, an illegal invasion and five years of further destruction and decimation. Given Britain’s pivotal role in the all, the country has a duty to right an appalling wrong. With a change of Prime Minister, an electorate which has never been more cynical, which was promised a change of direction., Iraq will for ever be Labour’s nemesis. Such a policy of reparation on Iraq’s health care, might just win back a few British hearts and minds.

Yours sincerely,

Felicity Arbuthnot

URI: Public Health Crisis in Iraq: 13 years of sanctions and bombings, an illegal invasion and 5 years of death and destruction

Re-posted in its entirety by gracious permission of Sophia, of Les Politiques.

From the article Sophia linked to:

Why has Washington been so doggedly determined to deny any compensation to Vietnamese victims, even refusing to come up with humanitarian aid? A clue can be found in the intervention of the White House counsel in the Vietnamese lawsuit against the chemical companies. The US government intervened to argue that if the court permitted the case to prosper, it would undermine national security and limit presidential options in a time of war.

In the New York Court Seth Waxman, defence counsel for the chemical companies, argued there was a lack of legal precedent for punishing those who used poisons during warfare, and said US battlefield decisions could be harmed. “This does affect our ongoing diplomacy,” he said, citing the use of depleted uranium shells by US forces in Iraq.

Source: Comment is free: Agent of suffering

U.S. warplanes dumped about 18 million gallons (70 million liters) of the defoliant on Vietnamese forests between 1962 and 1971 to destroy Vietnamese sources of food and cover. The plaintiffs seek damages from dioxin poisoning which decades later they say has caused cancer, deformities and organ dysfunction.

Source: Vietnamese appeal agent orange suit in New York | U.S. | Reuters

Polychlorinated dibenzodioxins (PCDDs), polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) constitute a group of persistent environmental chemicals. A number of dioxin or furan congeners, as well as some co-planar PCBs have been shown to exert a number of toxic responses similar to those of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD), the most toxic dioxin. These effects include dermal toxicity, immunotoxicity, reproductive effects and teratogenicity, endocrine disruption and carcinogenicity.

Source: WHO - Assessment of the health risk of dioxins: re-evaluation of the Tolerable Daily Intake (TDI)

The judges appeared unmoved by previous cases from years following World War Two, when makers of the gas Zyklon B, used in Nazi death camps, were convicted of crimes.

Unlike those cases, the judges questioned if poisons used in war that were not directly intended to kill people and only found years later to cause harm violated international law.

“It’s a different circumstance here, is it not?” asked appeals court judge Robert Sack. “Is poison designed to kill or hurt?”

Source: Vietnamese appeal agent orange suit in New York | U.S. | Reuters

“This does affect our ongoing diplomacy,” he said, citing the use of depleted uranium shells by US forces in Iraq.

“Ongoing diplomacy” what a nice way of saying “genocide”. We Irakis know all about American “ongoing diplomacy“:

13129 malformed children have been born in Iraq in the last five years. Their deformities have been caused by American Depleted Uranium munitions used in the American led 1991 “Desert Storm” war with Irak launched after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The war saw heavy use of depleted uranium rounds by American and British forces and was followed by a punitive sanctions regime enforced by the United Nations primarily at America’s behest. The sanctions included preventing Irak from importing drugs for the treatment of cancers and birth defects. The current war on Irak was launched on the pretext that Irak was failing to comply with sanctions and had weapons of mass destruction.

Source: Gorilla’s Guides: 13129

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.

–60 Minutes (5/12/96)

Source: “We Think the Price Is Worth It”

According to the green zone government Ministry of Health the numbers of maimed children born with defects in Irak after the United States used over 940 thousand depleted uranium rounds in the war with Iraq in 1991 in the last 5 years is 13129.

The report from Al Melaf gives the statistics from a Ministry of Health briefing on the number of children born with birth defects since 2001 as 13129 in total.

The number of deformed children born last year was more than 1919.

Ninewa (Nineveh) province, has the highest number of children born maimed as 411.

Baghdad is next with 372 children born distorted.

Basra has seen the birth of 300 distorted children .

Between 30 to 40 children per month are born with defects attributed to their mothers inhalation of radioactive dust from depleted uranium rounds. The American army used depleted uranium during the last war and this was confirmed by a German team who visited Irak recently and were able to obtain a missile which proved after checking that the American forces used depleted uranium.

Source: Gorilla’s Guides: 13129

We Irakis know exactly what former U.S Solicitor General Seth Paul Waxman means when he talks about “ongoing diplomacy“.

Maryam, Mohammed Ibn Laith, Fatima.