2 days ago, this article appeared on Al-Jazeera English.  What we did to Fallujah should bring shame to every American who cares about something more than himself or herself.  The rate of birth defects resulting from our use of phosphorous and “depleted” uranium is astounding.  The photos of the affected children are heart wrenching.  Cleft palates can be repaired, but the rest of the deformities and other defects cannot.  According to the article many babies die after 20 days of so-called life.  You have to wonder how many other people have been affected in different ways by the revenge assaults on Fallujah.  What we did there was much worse than what Saddam did further north to the Kurds with his chemical weapons.

The debt we owe to people is enormous.  Instead of playing games with Maliki we should be making efforts to clean up the mess we made and to care for the affected people.  Unfortunately, because Fallujah is in a Sunni area, and Sunnis lost their battle with the Shia in the civil war that we so carefully arranged for with Bush’s misguided policies, nothing much will be done, and the damage will last for generations to come.

I hope that Dr. Alani’s research and findings will be published widely and that the West will do what it can to help, but things don’t look very promising right now.  Think about this:

As of December 21, Alani, who has worked at the hospital since 1997, told Al Jazeera she had personally logged 677 cases of birth defects since October 2009. Just eight days later when Al Jazeera visited the city on December 29, that number had already risen to 699.

Here’s is another shocking finding:

Dr Alani visited Japan recently, where she met with Japanese doctors who study birth defect rates they believe related to radiation from the US nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

She was told birth defect incidence rates there are between 1-2 per cent. Alani’s log of cases of birth defects amounts to a rate of 14.7 per cent of all babies born in Fallujah, more than 14 times the rate in the affected areas of Japan.

I don’t think that any kind of status in the world that the US claims (like “Sole SuperPower”) entitles it to use weapons that have been declared illegal under international agreements and to disregard the lives of those who remain behind in the war torn areas we have abandoned. Obama needs to send the Iraqis an Ambassador with some clout in Washington, and stop worrying about “terrorists”. Please read the full article.