Yes. Rather than linked to a massive website where I have to hunt and search for this “good article” it would have been more helpful for you to link directly to it. I am on a 14 year old computer that chugs incredibly slowly on a video and graphic intensive site, so no, I’m not going to spend hours hunting for this “good article”. Not everyone has an up to date fast computer.
Pretty general report. Can’t make any objective judgements based on that one.
The US did not use weapons of mass destruction in Fallujah. It got shot all to hell, but strictly conventional, non-WMD can do that quite well. Exaggerate, much?
As someone who is married to someone disabled by a birth defect, I get a little tired of people weeping and wailing over the poor deformed babies. Yes, there are horror stories out there, but none of what I saw on your BBC link would prevent a good and meaningful life. Certainly, deformities and disabilities make life harder, but it is often not as tragic as it first appears.
I actually have looked into the rise in birth defects at Fallujah, and here is what I think based on what I have found out on my own:
Depleted uranium is actually less radioactive than normal uranium, or uranium ore, or even some naturally occurring formations of things like granite. It is not Radioactive Death Bullets. There is NO, repeat NO indication that it causes genetic damage. It does, most certainly, cause kidney damage, but that is due to chemical properties and not radiation. Basically, you’d be dead of kidney failure long before any of its radioactivity could give you cancer or mess up your kids. However, there is one relevant effect here: men exposed to depleted uranium father significantly fewer boys than girls. So if the local men were significantly exposed to depleted uranium during fighting that could be a reason for the disparity in girls vs. boys born. Residual depleted uranium in the environment could be causing some kidney disease, but the linked article did not speak of that
Radon is a radioactive gas that vents out of the ground naturally, and tends to collect in low-lying areas like basements and bomb shelters. If people spent a lot of time huddling underground that could account for some new cancers - but that usually occurs years after exposure.
Some of the birth defects cited in various reports are not “genetic damage” although they can be pretty horrific. Neural tube defects, for example (that’s what my spouse has, by the way) can run from mildly annoying to devastating. This is the spina bifida or "open spine’ spectrum, which is just what it says: the baby is born with his spinal column open to the air. This can occur anywhere from the tailbone (one of the less disabling forms IF promptly treated) to the skull (if the brain is “open” it’s anacephaly or “absent brain”, which is just what it sounds like and invariably fatal at or shortly after birth). THIS IS NOT GENETIC DAMAGE! It is a developmental disorder where the spinal column fails to develop properly. Those who are not made sterile by the defect (or forcibly sterilized for eugenic purposes - common in the US through the 1960’s) are no more likely to have children with this defect than anyone else because - I repeat - it is NOT genetic in origin. It is associated with malnutrition - something that invariably seems to crop up during wartime due to shortages. Yes, it also showed up in Japan in 1945 but that was due to food shortages not radiation or chemicals. Given what Fallujah has been through it should be expected that the incidence of these defects would rise sharply due food supply issues alone.
Polydactyly - more fingers and toes than normal - is a human variation seen all over the world. It both arises spontaneously, and can also run in families. When I see one of these “poor babies” with six fingers my first questions is “how many other relatives have this?” because it’s not THAT uncommon and doesn’t require radiation, chemicals, WMD’s, or other nefarious origins.
During wartime, people are reluctant to go to doctors when there is fighting in the streets, for obvious reasons. So an uptick in reported illness post-war has to account for the fact that more illnesses are reported, not just occurring. A premature, deformed infant born during a firefight is far more likely to die and be buried without informing the authorities than in peacetime. This affects reported rates of illness and morbidity. If a child is feeling poorly and there is fighting in the streets the parents are more likely to attempt to treat at home than take the child to the hospital, so some cases of cancer or chronic disease that might have been caught early aren’t diagnosed until peace comes, which definitely skews the statistics.
So, birth defects and illness ALWAYS jump during war time and just after, but it has to due with deprivation, starvation, and untreated ailments as much as anything else that might be more sinister - note that the comparison is between Fallujah and Jordan, the latter of which was not at war in recent years. Until you account for ALL the factors at work it’s not possible to say that Fallujah is exceptional, or that something more sinister is going on. All too many of these “reports” present every deformed and ill child as the direct result of warfare and it just ain’t so. Even in peacetime, even in the best environments, about 3% of all births involve some defect or other and the less ideal the environment the higher that rate, regardless of whether the cause is war or famine or plague or whatever.
Yes, it’s heart wrenching to see deformed and ill children. That’s why people show them off - to gain sympathy and in some cases to encourage donation to a cause.
OK, going left to right and starting at the top, I have no clue what the first one is, the second is a harlequin ichthyosis baby, which is not linked to radiation or chemicals and happens from time to time all over the world. Number three isn’t a person. Number four is a holoprocephaly defect (hope I spelled the big word right) which is, again, a disorder of the developing fetus and occurs all over the world from time to time spontaneously. Number 5, I don’t know.
Next row - first picture isn’t people - nice bullets or missiles or whatever, propaganda much? Next too pictures are presented as “depleted uranium babies” I can’t read a whole lot of the text behind the pictures when you click on them, but what I gather is that people are attributing these defects to radiation despite the fact that depleted uranium is LESS radioactive than some naturally occurring environments. Number 4 has microcephalia near as I can tell- which can be attributed to many causes, from malnutrition in the mother to, yes, radiation but the fact is most cases have no clear-cut cause.
Later one we have yet another picture of harequin ichthyosis and some cleft palates - the latter a tragically common birth defect that doesn’t require sinister causes, it happens everywhere. Enough - this gets tiresome.
In other words - yes, there are deformed children. If a doctor randomly examined any of them, without knowing their place of birth, not one of them would the doctor say “Oh, this was definitely caused by warfare”.
The amount of suffering visited on a population by war is not trivial, from the destruction of homes to untreated illnesses to starvation and deprivation. But shouldn’t we be upset about those sufferings by themselves? Really, parading deformed babies to garner sympathy or provoke guilt is nothing more than explointing the disabled and deformed for ulterior causes. Your posturing, Zanthor, does nothing and helps no one.
I’d agree to be so specific when research is still on going is extremely unhelpful. The truth is ‘we’ don’t know what combination of weaponry caused the following:
Thing that struck me most is that the deformed Children abnormalities have skyrocketed these past few years, unknown causes..
the debate was meant to be,
what is the cause, why is it so..who is at fault.
was it us? what are we going to do about it?
simple questions really..
Much as news of this Iraq travesty coincided with Clintons visit to Vietnam, when she was presented with evidence of Agent Orange deformed babies.
she said she would ‘look into it’ ( sic )
My question was, just how many decades does it take to ‘look into it’
answer, much like the present response in this thread
basically, stonewalling, whitewash, applied in liberal doeses, as usual.
it was not us, it is someone else.
i say BS.
What say you?
Nope, does not have to rhyme.
That is in fact the worse thing one can do.
to insist on rhyme indicates you accept you must conform to what is acceptable, to some token transient majorities current viewpoint of what is and what is not acceptable…
You don’t see this huh?
Basically, where is the freedom in conforming?
the temporary illusion of acceptance by the deaden masses?
Sell your Soul that cheap huh?
This is what the 60’s was supposed to be about.
Freedom, from acceptance.
That wasn’t your argument at all. Your argument was that I had blood on my hands (‘no offense’):
See? Not so easy to pack peddel when your statement is right there, 'eh?
cough did you bother to read your own thread, you assclown of a moron, you?
[/QUOTE
I will redefine ‘blood on your hands’ just for you, since you simply do not seem to be getting it.
I was curious how aware you . ( not you personally ) ( rather, each of us in the West that lays waste to foreign nations - preemptively )
were and are aware of the issues of guilt by association, complicity, silent consent to the atrocities we commit.?
So far i get the Pontious Pilate thing, our hands are clean, it was not us that diid this.
Sorry, its just the way it look so far by the responses.
Attack the messenger being the most humorous, as if that will make the issues go away… lol
NOT that you personally invaded the whole ME, all by yourself, laid waste to it with all kinds of WMD. ( our WMD… )
and we have many x many, we just don’t call them WMD, but they do, and what they think is what counts, cos they are the ones being wasted by the hunfdreds and hundreds of thousands,
NOT US>>>>
here, the true colours of a vulture, nothing to add, just to take, try to deride, consume, dominate.
zero comprehension, zero ability.
just attack. America personified…
pretty much typifies the US’s approach to the whole world.huh?
Dominance, greed and lust.
Zero Compassion, zero much of anything really, cept SELF…