Special Report day three: Abandoned and afraid, the parents of Iraq's suffering children wait in vain for help
"He needs multiple surgery outside Iraq. It's a dysfunctional problem. He has no hearing in his left ear. They told me he has to be six before they can remove cartilage from his chest wall to put in his ear. All operations have to be outside Iraq to beautify the ear and give him his hearing."

Special Report day one: The phosphorus shells that devastated this city were fired in 2004. But are the victims of America's dirty war still being born?
For little Sayef, there will be no Arab Spring. He lies, just 14 months old, on a small red blanket cushioned by a cheap mattress on the floor, occasionally crying, his head twice the size it should be, blind and paralysed. Sayeffedin Abdulaziz Mohamed – his full name – has a kind face in his outsized head and they say he smiles when other children visit and when Iraqi families and neighbours come into the room.

Recently, I received an intriguing email claiming that the rapidly increasing worldwide epidemic of diabetes was caused by depleted uranium (DU). As a medical doctor I never heard of such an idea. Every physician knows that radiation can lead to cancer, but the DU and diabetes connection seemed ludicrous. Nevertheless, I thought it would be interesting to check it out on the Internet.

Remarkably high levels of congenital anomaly at birth, together with high cancer rates in Fallujah, Iraq were previously found in a joint UK Iraqi epidemiological study published in the International Journal of Environment and Public Health in July 2010 and reported in The Independent.  The illnesses and unusual changes in the sex-ratio at birth, were shown to appear following the US-led attacks on the town in 2004.

  Saturday, 9 July 2011-  Widespread dumping of toxic waste by Mafia clans in the southern region of Campania is causing a dramatic increase in birth defects and cancer, according to a group of US and Italian scientists.

  LEMONDE.FR | 10.06.11 | 20h48 • Mis à jour le 10.06.11 | 21h02 
"Did the American army use nuclear weapons in Iraq?" This is the surprising question raised by France Info on Friday June 10. In partnership with Paris-Match, Angélique Férat, radio correspondent for the area, returned to the city of Fallujah, about fifty kilometers from Baghdad. The city, a stronghold of the Sunni insurrection, was attacked and partially destroyed by American forces in April 2004 and again in November the same year. Since then the city has seen a very high number of birth defects - so much so that, according to Angélique Férat, "almost every family has its own 'monster baby'". The Iraqi authorities refuse to consider the subject and there are no official statistics.

  Since the Fukushima accident we have seen a stream of experts on radiation telling us not to worry, that the doses are too low, that the accident is nothing like Chernobyl and so forth. They appear on television and we read their articles in the newspapers and online. Fortunately the majority of the public don't believe them. I myself have appeared on television and radio with these people; one example was Ian Fells of the University of Newcastle who, after telling us all on BBC News that the accident was nothing like Chernobyl (wrong), and the radiation levels of no consequence (wrong), that the main problem was that there was no electricity and that the lifts didn't work. " If you have been in a situation when the lifts don't work, as I have" he burbled on, "you will know what I mean." You can see this interview on youtube and decide for yourself.

Dr Bill Wilson MSP (SNP) has written to the UK Secretary of State for Defence asking him to order UK service personnel not to deploy uranium armaments in Libya, to urge all other forces engaged there not to use them and to "withdraw UK forces immediately" should others use them.

   (Feb. 28, 2011)
On February 20, Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, 66, who has been treating patients with cancers for many years at a hospital in Basra, the largest city in southern Iraq, said quietly on the other end of the telephone that all the citizens of Basra are "hibakusha," just like the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who have been suffering from their exposure to radiation from the atomic bombings.

Though president Obama and many other Americans have moved on, not wanting to look back, many of the children of Fallujah do not have the nicety of that choice. But who am I kidding, trying to appeal to Americans through the suffering of the weak is like I don’t know what, but it certainly is doomed to failure as much as trying to appeal to people through truth, whatever that may be. This is of course why Wikileaks has accomplished nothing nor is it likely to. The most likely scenario is already taking place with an intensification of the Terror Wars and domestic spying and harassment here at home. This, of course, is what people don’t like to admit about Wikileaks yet it is true all the same.