Once again I will say that the true cost of the war in Iraq is not in the number of US soldiers who were senselessly killed and wounded, it is born by the Iraqi people and what they lost, again, not only in the number of people killed or wounded, but their cultural history which was decimated and the saddest thing is that the horror inflicted on their country will go on for a VERY long time, as demonstrated by this article from Al Jazeera, look at that figure 250,000 bullets per insurgent killed!
Epidemic of birth defects in Iraq and our duty as public health researchers
War zones are heavily polluted with a variety of contaminants, and toxic metal mixtures are routinely found in these areas. Metal contaminants in war zones originate from bombs and bullets as well as from other explosive devices. Metals, most importantly lead (Pb), uranium (U), and mercury (Hg), are used in the manufacture of munitions. Their purpose and utility have been repeatedly described in US military manuals and bulletins (Departments of the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, Joint Technical Bulletin 1998; US Department of the Army Technical Manual 1990).
In addition, the US armed forces have used depleted uranium (DU) weapons in recent wars. DU weaponry was first extensively used in the US invasion of Iraq and Kuwait in 1991. At that time, an estimated DU expenditure of 320 to 800 tonnes was mainly shot at the Iraqi troops who were withdrawing from Kuwait to Basrah.
Later, during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the armed forces of the United States and the United Kingdom shot ammunition made from DU at a wide variety of targets, including populated cities, power and sanitation infrastructure (electrical power plants and water and sewage treatment plants), and civil and agricultural infrastructure. Although the amount of DU used and the specific locations of DU releases are not well known, approximately 2,000 tonnes of DU may have been used in Iraq.
Large quantities of DU bullets were also expended in the Iraqi environment. Between 2002 and 2005, the US armed forces expended six billion bullets according to the figures of the US General Accounting Office. That is 250,000 bullets per “insurgent” killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. An accurate tally of the numbers of bombs and the locations of bombings in Iraq is being compiled by the US Air Force. This information can be utilised in future studies to assess Iraqi public metal exposures and possible differential exposures in that population.Continue Reading
Ok sit down for a while and read this post, it’s a long one but it explains to of the biggest turning points in our country’s history. One the election of Richard Nixon, and the other the election of Ronald Reagan. While I always knew that there had to be a deal regarding the release of the hostages in Iran, the timing was just too perfect not to have been established BEFORE the election. I did not know about Nixon’s negotiations in Vietnam to keep the war going!! That of course pisses me off, and then he compounds the evil deed with the actions surrounding the Watergate break in! That lying son of a bitch!
Shocking New Evidence Reveals Depths of ‘Treason’ and ‘Treachery’ of Watergate and Iran-Contra
A favorite saying of Official Washington is that “the cover-up is worse than the crime.” But that presupposes you accurately understand what the crime was. And, in the case of the two major U.S. government scandals of the last third of the Twentieth Century – Watergate and Iran-Contra – that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Indeed, newly disclosed documents have put old evidence into a sharply different light and suggest that history has substantially miswritten the two scandals by failing to understand that they actually were sequels to earlier scandals that were far worse. Watergate and Iran-Contra were, in part at least, extensions of the original crimes, which involved dirty dealings to secure the immense power of the presidency.
Shortly after Nixon took office in 1969, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover informed him of the existence of the file containing national security wiretaps documenting how Nixon’s emissaries had gone behind President Lyndon Johnson’s back to convince the South Vietnamese government to boycott the Paris Peace Talks, which were close to ending the Vietnam War in fall 1968.In the case of Watergate – the foiled Republican break-in at the Democratic National Committee in June 1972 and Richard Nixon’s botched cover-up leading to his resignation in August 1974 – the evidence is now clear that Nixon created the Watergate burglars out of his panic that the Democrats might possess a file on his sabotage of Vietnam peace talks in 1968. Continue Reading
One thing I know is that Mr Parry’s book America’s Stolen Narrative is now on my to be read list!
