From the UK Guardian, July 31, 200 (via Iraq Today)
Children hardest hit by humanitarian crisis in Iraq
The number of Iraqi children who are born underweight or suffer from malnutrition has increased sharply since the US-led invasion, according to a report by Oxfam [Rising to the humanitarian challenge in Iraq – 30 July 2007] and a network of about 80 aid agencies.
The report describes a nationwide catastrophe, with around 8 million Iraqis – almost a third of the population – in need of emergency aid. Many families have dropped out of the food rationing system because they have been displaced by fighting and sectarian conflict. Others suffer from the collapse in basic services caused by the exodus of doctors and hospital staff.
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Forty-three percent of Iraqis are in “absolute poverty”, partly because of a 50% unemployment rate. Basic services in 2003 were poor after a decade of sanctions and under-investment by the Saddam Hussein regime. But they have worsened since. The number of Iraqis without access to adequate water supplies, for example, has risen from 50% in 2003 to 70% now.Eighty percent lack effective sanitation, and diarrhoeal diseases have increased. Most homes in Baghdad and other cities have only two hours of electricity a day.
Children are suffering the most, with 92% showing learning difficulty because of the pervasive climate of fear. More than 800,000 have dropped out of school, because they now live in camps for the displaced or because schools have had to be taken over to shelter the homeless.
Around 40% of Iraq’s teachers, water engineers, medical staff and other professionals have left the country since 2003.
Iraqis are sick of foreign people coming in their country and trying to destabilize their country.
–George W. Bush
As to Saddam bad though he was your country is far worse.
–Dr. Maryam, Iraqi Pediatric Oncologist
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Note: A Pediatric Oncologist in Iraq would be responsible for providing medical care and treatment for Iraqi children with cancers born of Iraqi women who have been breathing depleted uranium.
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They hate our freedoms.
Depleted Uranium is radioactive and has a very long half life which means it will be around for millions of years. It is an alpha emitter which is why it is so dangerous when inhaled or injested. There is no lower limit of radiation for reproductive organs and the eyes. Radiation is know to be a cause of cancer and birth defects. Connecting all these facts it seems obvious that depleted uranium could be responsible for the increase in cancers and birth defects occuring in Iraq and for the increase in illnesses of military service personnel and the birth defects occuring among military service personnel’s children. The continued use of depleted uranium is poisoning the environment and could make these places inhabitable.
When I worked for the State of New York Health Dept. in the ’50’s I collected fallout samples and tested them for gamma radiation. Only once did I have a hot sample but there was no way of determining where it came from. This was a period of time when above ground nuclear bomb testing was being done. It could have been local or it could have been from far away.
Source: Veterans For Peace: Way back to the First Gulf War, vets w/ “unexplained illnesses” have really been poisoned by DEPLETED URANIUM. Now? Besides the DU from bombs that’s in the air & the dust, it’s in the metal of the vehicles our soldiers are using. Some soldiers in Iraq banked their sperm BEFORE deployment–after seeing seriously deformed kids born to those earlier GULF WAR vets!