Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

Let me clarify the pictures of the deformed babies were from 1998 onwards.

The real tragedy of soldiers policing a colonial occupation is also suppressed. More than 58,000 American soldiers were killed in Vietnam. The same number, according to a veterans’ study, killed themselves on their return home. Dr. Doug Rokke, director of the US army depleted uranium project following the 1991 Gulf invasion, estimates that more than 10,000 American troops have since died as a result, many from contamination illness. When I asked him how many Iraqis had died, he raised his eyes and shook his head. "Solid uranium was used on shells," he said. "Tens of thousands of Iraqis – men, women and children – were contaminated. Right through the 1990s, at international symposiums, I watched Iraqi officials approach their counterparts from the Pentagon and the Ministry of Defense and ask, plead, for help with decontamination. The Iraqis didn’t use uranium; it was not their weapon. I watched them put their case, describing the deaths and horrific deformities, and I watched them rebuffed. It was pathetic." During last year’s invasion, both American and British forces again used uranium-tipped shells, leaving whole areas so "hot" with radiation that only military survey teams in full protective clothing can approach them. No warning or medical help is given to Iraqi civilians; thousands of children play in these zones. The "coalition" has refused to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to send experts to assess what Rokke describes as "a catastrophe." - John Pilger
04/16/04

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The Iraqi children are suffering in the same manner with the same deformities during this war as before.

-Am