At Fallujah hospital in Iraq they cannot offer any statistics on children born with birth defects – there are just too many. Parents don’t want to talk. “Families bury their newborn babies after they die without telling anyone,” says hospital spokesman Nadim al-Hadidi. “It’s all too shameful for them.” “We recorded 672 cases in January […]
Posts Tagged ‘Iraq’
Violence lessens in Iraq as fighters shift to Syria
February 21, 2012The departure of al Qaeda-affiliated fighters from Iraq to join the rebellion against Syrian President Bashar Assad in Syria has had one benefit, Iraqi officials say: Violence has dropped in Iraq, in some areas by as much as 50 percent in just a few months. Iraqi officials declined to provide precise figures for the drop-off […]
US Marine who killed women and children gets 3 months
January 24, 2012A Marine accused of killing unarmed Iraqi women and children pleaded guilty Monday to dereliction of duty in a deal that will mean a maximum of three months confinement and end the largest and longest-running criminal case against U.S. troops to emerge from the Iraq War. Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich of Meriden, Conn., led the […]
War eradicates Christianity in Iraq and Afghanistan
January 6, 2012Despite long-term U.S. military occupations aimed at establishing representative governments in Iraq and Afghanistan, a real threat exists that Christianity now faces eradication in those countries. This is due to severe and persistent persecution of Christians there, according to the chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. “We are looking at two different […]
Are Americans gods with the moral authority to determine who will live and who will die?
January 2, 2012We will never know the artists, poets, and peacemakers who have never lived because their parents were killed in senseless wars. Imagine walking or driving through Kansas City, Kansas, or Syracuse, N.Y., or Rockford, Illinois, and knowing that every single man, woman, and child living in one of those cities represents a person who is […]
Iraq and Iran outsmarted the U.S. on troop withdrawal
December 20, 2011The real story behind the U.S. withdrawal is how a clever strategy of deception and diplomacy adopted by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, in cooperation with Iran, outmaneuvered Bush and the U.S. military leadership and got the United States to sign the U.S.-Iraq withdrawal agreement. A central element of the Maliki-Iran strategy was the common […]
The bittersweet end of the Iraq War
December 15, 2011The Iraq War has come to an official end, ending a chapter in U.S. history. In a small ceremony in Baghdad, the U.S. military formally ended its mission in Iraq after nearly nine years of war, 4,487 lives lost and more than 32,000 wounded. For many Americans who served in the war, as well as […]
US drone bases throughout the Middle East
October 18, 2011The Air Force is now negotiating with Turkey to relocate some of the Predator drones still operating in Iraq to the giant air base at Incirlik next year. Elsewhere in the Greater Middle East, according to Aviation Week, the military is launching Global Hawks from Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, piloted […]
American Apathy with Wars
September 19, 2011When U.S. forces launched the war in Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001, they were riding a wave of anger and a call for justice by a broad swath of the American public. The Pew Research Center says the initial support for the Afghan invasion was around 90 percent. In 2001 and 2002, about 40 percent […]
9/11 made the US into what we loathe
September 12, 2011Veteran correspondent Chris Hedges reflects on the 10 years since 9/11: Reporters in moments of crisis like 9/11 collect data, facts, descriptions, basic information, and carry out interviews as swiftly as possible. We make these facts fit into familiar narratives. We do not create facts but we manipulate them. We make facts conform to our […]
