[E-rundbrief] Info 943 - Uranwaffen im Irak

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 943 - Matthias Reichl: Radioaktivität durch DU-Bomben
- weltweit; Tom Eley (WSWS): Cancer rate in Fallujah (Iraq) worse than
Hiroshima. Links zu Homepages: Uranmunition und radioaktive Gefahren für
Mensch und Umwelt.;

Bad Ischl, 5.8.2010

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

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Radioaktivität durch DU-Bomben - weltweit

Die über Generationen wirksame radioaktive Kontaminierung durch
DU-Bomben und -Geschosse (mit abgereichertem Uran) u. ähnl. wurden -
nicht zum ersten Mal - wissenschaftlich nachgewiesen. Nicht nur im Irak,
sondern schon vorher auf dem Balkan, in Palästina und anderen Regionen.

Der Experte für atomare Niedrigstrahlung Ernest Sternglass (USA)
bestätigte mir auf Anfrage bei einer Diskussion der PLAGE in Salzburg am
23.6.2006, dass radioaktive Nanopartikel auch aus DU-Geschossen in
Wolken gelangen und von ihnen über tausende Kilometer transportiert
werden um als radioaktiver Niederschlag auch andere Kontinente zu
verstrahlen.

Matthias Reichl, 5.8.2010

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Cancer rate in Fallujah worse than Hiroshima

By TOM ELEY | WSWS.ORG

Published: Jul 28, 2010 20:11 Updated: Jul 28, 2010 20:11

www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jul2010/fall-j23.shtml

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, 1,050 boys are born for every
1,000 girls. But among those born in Fallujah in the four years after
the US assault, the ratio was reduced to 860 boys for every 1,000 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.’”

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 Baghdad 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 building 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, Gen. 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 Gen. 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 Gen. 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.”

Vollständiges Dokument:

Chris Busby Malak Hamdan and Entesar Ariabi: Cancer, Infant Mortality
and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009
www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/7/7/2828/pdf

Weitere Berichte:

Patrick Cockburn: Toxic legacy of US assault on Fallujah 'worse than
Hiroshima'. The shocking rates of infant mortality and cancer in Iraqi
city raise
new questions about battle
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/toxic-legacy-of-
us-assault-on-fallujah-worse-than-hiroshima-2034065.html

Layla Anwar: Falluja schlimmer als Hiroshima
Radio Utopie (Bericht in Deutsch), 7. Juli 2010
http://www.radio-utopie.de/2010/07/07/falluja-schlimmer-als-hiroshima/

Karin Leukefeld, Damaskus: Radioaktive Verseuchung des Landes wird ignoriert
http://www.ag-friedensforschung.de/regionen/Irak/krankheiten.html

Florian Rötzer: Haben die Uranwaffen des Irak-Kriegs auch Europa
kontaminiert?
20.02.2006, Telepolis, http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/22/22081/1.html

Interview with Dr. Ernest J. Sternglass, author of "Secret Fallout" 11/92
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/inetSeries/ejs1192.html

Uran-Munition - Tödlicher Staub
DER SPIEGEL,  13.01.2001
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,112234,00.html

Marcus Hammerschmitt: Tödlicher Staub
Telepolis, 03.01.2003
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/13/13891/1.html

Chris Busby - Low Level Radiation Campaign (UK)
http://www.llrc.org

Film von Frieder Wagner «Der Arzt und die verstrahlten Kinder von Basra»
(über Dr. Siegwart Horst Günther) und "Deadly Dust - Todesstaub"
http://www.zeit-fragen.ch/ausgaben/2006/nr-25-vom-2062006/toedlicher-staub/
http://www.nuoviso.tv/

http//www.uranmunition.net/bilder,epidemiologische_daten.html

http://www.uraniumweaponsconference.de


Weitere Informationen in unserem Begegnungszentrums (E-)Rundbrief - u.a.:

Matthias Reichl:  Balkankrieg und Zerstörung der Lebensgrundlagen.
Wiederaufbau in Jugoslawien auf vergifteter Grundlage?
(aktualisiert 10.1.2007)
http://www.begegnungszentrum.at/texte/reichl/reichl1-du.htm

Rosalie Bertell (CDN) zum Jugoslawien-Krieg und die Gefahren des
Abgereicherten Urans (DU): "Rundbrief" Nr. 93, 2/99, Mai 1999 .

Info 660 - Rb 128 - Kosovo - Balkankriegsschaeden
http://webmail.horus.at/pipermail/e-rundbrief/2008/000719.html

Info 905 - Kontaminiertes Metall in Gaza
http://webmail.horus.at/pipermail/e-rundbrief//2010/000966.html

-- 

Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
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fon: +43 6132 24590, Informationen/ informations,
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