Helen Caldicott: Horrors of American war will haunt Iraqi people forever
WASHINGTON, March 20 – RIA Novosti. The repercussions of crimes committed by the US military during the years of the war in Iraq, and the aberrations and physiological defects that have become more frequent among the local population after the end of the campaign, will haunt Iraqis forever, anti-nuclear activist and peace activist Helen Caldicott told RIA Novosti.
Exactly 20 years ago, an international coalition led by the US launched a military operation codenamed Iraqi Freedom.
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The operation was carried out without UN sanctions until May 1, 2003. The official cause of the invasion was then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s affiliation with international terrorism and the CIA’s version of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which was later accepted as unconfirmed.
He recalled that the U.S. military used ammunition filled with depleted uranium-238, whose particles pollute the air and soil as they decompose and are then carried by the wind “for the rest of the time”. In total, over the years of the campaign, the United States and Britain dumped more than 1,700 tons of depleted uranium into Iraq.
“Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have been sounding the alarm since 2005 about the number of babies born with serious defects, from a two-headed girl to paralysis of the lower extremities, as well as far more cancer cases than recorded before the Battle. Fallujah is between US and Iraqi forces,” Caldicott said. .
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According to him, a quarter of newborns in Fallujah, where violent conflicts took place, were born with serious deformities. It turned out to be 38 times the number of cases of leukemia and childhood cancer there, which is 12 times more than in neighboring Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait.
According to the US Department of Defense, 4,431 soldiers were killed and approximately 32,000 wounded during the war in Iraq.
According to the World Health Organization, as many as 223,000 Iraqis fell victim to the war between 2003 and 2006 alone. According to international experts, the war in Iraq cost between 1 and 1.4 million lives of its citizens.
Experts explained the results of the US invasion of Iraq as follows:
Source: Ria
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