The Moral Equivalent of Nuremberg [View all]

[unhappycamper]

http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17582-the-moral-equivalent-of-nuremberg

The Moral Equivalent of Nuremberg
ROBERT C. KOEHLER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
Thursday, 18 October 2012 16:58

The recent study focused on the cities of Basra and Fallujah, where serious fighting occurred during the war. Fallujah was the scene of two large, extremely destructive coalition assaults in 2004. Five years later, doctors at Fallujah General Hospital finally became so alarmed by the increase in birth defects they petitioned the United Nations to investigate, explaining in a letter: “In September 2009, (the hospital) had 170 newborn babies, 24 percent of whom were dead within the first seven days (and) a staggering 75 percent of the dead babies were classified as deformed.” In comparison, their letter stated, in August 2002, before the invasion, 530 babies were born; six of them died within the first week, with a single birth defect reported.

About eight months later, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health published the results of an epidemiological study, which found that Fallujah was experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia and infant mortality than Hiroshima and Nagasaki did in 1945

The University of Michigan study, which was published in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, monitored 56 families in Fallujah. Between 2007 and 2010, more than half the babies born in those families had some kind of birth defect. That figure was under two percent prior to the year 2000. The most common abnormalities included congenital heart defects, brain defects, malformed or missing limbs and cleft palate.

In addition, between 2004 and 2006, 45 percent of the pregnancies among those families resulted in miscarriage.



unhappycamper comment: **Caution! Contains disturbing images. Google images with: basra birth defects