The Victims of Fallujah's Health Crisis Are Stifled by Western Silence

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/10/26-3


Mariam Yasir, aged 6 (in 2009), with her mother in Fallujah, Iraq; Mariam suffers from a birth defect. (Photograph: Muhannad Fala'ah/Getty Images)

Four new studies on the health crisis in Fallujah have been published in the last three months. Yet, one of the most severe public health crises in history, for which the US military may be to blame, receives no attention in the United States.


Ever since two major US-led assaults destroyed the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004, Fallujans have witnessed dramatic increases in rates of cancers, birth defects and infant mortality in their city. Dr Chris Busby, the author and co-author of two studies on the Fallujah heath crisis, has called this "the highest rate of genetic damage in any population ever studied".

In the years since the 2004 sieges, Fallujah was the most heavily guarded city in all of Iraq. All movement in and out of Fallujah was monitored by the occupying forces. The security situation made it nearly impossible to get word out about Fallujans' nascent health crisis. One of the first attempts to report on the crisis was at the seventh session of the UN Human Rights Council in the form of the report, Prohibited Weapons Crisis: The Effects of Pollution on the Public Health in Fallujah by Dr Muhamad Al-Darraji. This report was largely ignored. It wasn't until the first major study on the health crisis was published in 2010 that the issue received mainstream media attention in the UK and Europe.

To this day, though, there has yet to be an article published in a major US newspaper, or a moment on a mainstream American TV news network, devoted to the health crisis in Fallujah. The US government has made no statements on the issue, and the American public remains largely uninformed about the indiscriminate harm that our military may have caused.

[Mnemosyne]

1. The stuff nightmares are made of. People here don't want to know what has been done in our name.

It sickens me.

[xchrom]

2. i feel ya -- as the kids say. nt

[Mnemosyne]

5. ...

[yurbud]

8. If the MSM ignores it, they don't even know enough to ignore it.

When I tell my college students about this and similar stuff, they have a fairly appropriate reaction--and they don't seem particularly surprised that they have gotten the real news.

[Mnemosyne]

10. I live in very red rural area, all I ever hear is, "I don't have time for that, enough to do."

I'm saying when given a choice, most people in my area just do not want to hear it.

I've gotten through to a few over the years, but mostly nada.

[marmar]

3. k/r ........ Just like the first Gulf War.

Rise up against Saddam !!!! We will support you !!!! .... Until we don't anymore.

[xchrom]

4. until we don't is right. nt

[fingrinn]

6. The funny thing is

Returning soldiers children are showing nearly the same rate of birth defects, and yet the media is strangely silent.
Using depleted uranium is against the geneva war conventions as it is classed as nuclear material.
Shells are covered with D/U which cut though tanks like butter and aerosol on impact leaving radioactive material lying around which has a half life of 4.5 billion years.
Fallujah may be suffering now, but just wait until it shows up in American troops.

[yurbud]

7. no crime for the very wealthy is big enough to prosecute and no crime AGAINST them is too small

NOT to prosecute.

[midnight]

9. I suppose talking about this is a violation of a secret law.... So terrible because without a

exposing this harm we will not be able to stop it...