yay! war rocks!

but they are free freaky iraqi babies

I think they need to verify/check ALL stats etc before throwing potentially spurious claims out into the media.

BBC source: "We interviewed one Doctor who said".

Heh, if citing a minicab driver as a source of WMD intel is considered fair game by the government, a doctor sounds fine to me 🙂

The whole Falluja story is an outrage that bloody well should be investigated at the highest level. The assault was brutal and indiscriminate in the first place, with hospitals and power stations being bombed out, which is illegal in international law – and that's just one example.

hora – Member

I think they need to verify/check ALL stats etc before throwing potentially spurious claims out into the media.

i agree…… Jon Simpson was on the Today programme (R4) saying that he has seen kids with 12 fingers and 12 toes, 3 kids from one family, all of whom were paralysed, one of which with very serious brain damage.

There is a known massive increase in Iraqi birth defects since gulf war 2. Depleted uranium is often considered to be the cause. The latest hotspot might be some other cause – and its more than one doctor stating this has happened

Well that can't be right. I thought we went into Iraq purely for the benefit of the Iraqi people.

let's face it, the powers that be – all over the world – are ****.

i agree…… Jon Simpson was on the Today programme (R4) saying that he has seen kids with 12 fingers and 12 toes, 3 kids from one family, all of whom were paralysed, one of which with very serious brain damage.

Dupleted Uranium cant be used in house to house fighting.

Parts of Greater Manchester/Burnley, Bolton etc are seeing growth of birth defects. The Americans didnt fight house to house there.

Simpson etc should investigate their stories deeper rather than saying 'there is no official consensus because maybe the Iraqi government doesnt want to embarrise the Americans'.

Is that Banana Republic reporting? Come on.

ooOOoo – Member

Well that can't be right. I thought we went into Iraq purely for the benefit of the Iraqi people.

It was all about freeing the oil from tyranny

They did however use DU rounds against 'technicals' i.e. vehicle mounted weapons (Read: HiLux w/ machine gun in back) and 'hardened targets' i.e. bunkers etc.

Depleted Uranium is such a horrendous misnomer as if the Uranium was depleted it would have decayed to Lead…

..and considering the half life of Uranium is 4.5billion years or so its going to take a while.

BBC source: "We interviewed one Doctor who said".

…it was the work of the Cybermen.

Dupleted Uranium cant be used in house to house fighting.

How about white phosphorus? The American have been accused of using both in that assult.
The issue is reportedly due to all the rubble (and associated shrapnel/chemicals used to destroy them) being bulldozed into the river, which is then used to provide the areas drinking water.

Personnaly I don't like the title to this thread.

Is the oil from there now radioactive? That's got to be a good marketing point – more power?

Post-battle. Population returns/comes out and a spurt in births ensues leading to more defects naturally. Ontop of other factors- marrying within tribe/sect within a certain geographic area and said resulting chemicals in the water supply then yes.

How many people in Faluja? Simpsons said it was a very small town.

From the battle at the time I was under the impression that it was both strategic and a large/prominent town in Iraq?

Basically I think its a combination of factors. Every war shows a growth spurt in newborns.

Its disingenuous to report this way. Reminds me of the BBC's reporting on the Serbs portraying them as all bad in the Bosnian war.

I think the thread title is offensive too. They aren't different because they are Iraqi babies, they are still human babies. I realise that some irony was probably intended, but it missed, imo.

There is quite a serious increase in birth defects in very concentrated Islamic areas in Bradford. Apparently the doctors even have an abbreviation for it – NFB (Normal For Bradford).

Hora – go and read up some of the stuff – its a huge number of damaged children far far more than would be expected and has been going on for at least a decade – this is just an increase on the already high level and this is just news right now.

Well on the news reporting I've heard everyone was saying that they needed better analysis to prove anything. But we won't get better analysis – this is a regime (US and us) that doesn't even keep a count of civilian deaths. ("We don't do body counts")

Fallujah isn't samll. Can't tell you how many people, but it was about the size of a small market town when I was there.

Oh, and DU has been used in plenty of conflicts (including Kosovo) and certainly hasn't thrown up the level of birth defects being claimed in Iraq at the moment.

a spurt in births ensues leading to more defects naturally

True, but it wouldn't be hard for them to calculate the percentage of birth defects, rather than just a count.

John Simpson visited a new, US-funded hospital in Fallujah

It maybe the *new* hospital is now drawing in many more patients from further away hence the increased number of observations.
However, the observation does warrant detailed investigation to establish fact.

The Americans had little choice in building a new hospital. They bombed the old one, complete with patients inside.

There is quite a serious increase in birth defects in very concentrated Islamic areas in Bradford. Apparently the doctors even have an abbreviation for it – NFB (Normal For Bradford).

There must be some depleted uranium floating about in Leeds as well then.

Birth defects, to be expected when you make babies with close relatives.
They're just inbred! You can see it in any area with reasonably high concentrations of asian people.

So has Falluja seen a significant rise in inbreeding since 2004 for some reason?

I guess the conflict may have reduced the number of genetically-distant families living there – though it may also have brought in a certain amount of new blood too.

There are still children born in Vietnam in areas that Agent Orange was heavily used born with large craniums, bulging eyes and severe brain malfunction. Only in areas where Agent Orange was used but the US claims that there is no link at all, what is more you would abe a communist to say there is.

Birth defects, to be expected when you make babies with close relatives.
They're just inbred! You can see it in any area with reasonably high concentrations of asian people.

Is that supposed to be a joke?

TheFunkyMonkey – Member

Birth defects, to be expected when you make babies with close relatives.
They're just inbred! You can see it in any area with reasonably high concentrations of asian people.

that sounds SO rascist…… he does have a point, though. there was an MP who told Parliment about an unusually high proportion of defect births in his constituency. the cause was inter-marriage between asain families.

just think you could have worded that a little better!

For a start this is talking about comparing the rate of defects for this area vs the rest of that country, and comparing the rates today with before the assault. So even if there is something of a point in that rather dubious assertion it is misleading to make it here.

When there is story like this you can be sure that there will be:
a) shooting of the messenger
b) flat obtuse denial
c) deliberate mixing of issues to create confusion
d) unhelpful (and in this case borderline racist) remarks to try and make us see the people concerned as less human than we are

You can be sure there won't be:
a) a fair, open and independent inquiry