Iraq

NOVANEWS By Felicity Arbuthnot Global Research “Why should we hear about body bags and deaths … I mean, it’s not relevant, so why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that …” (Former First Lady, Barbara Bush, Good Morning America, 18th March 2003) In these days of the tenth anniversary of the illegal invasion and near destruction of Iraq, answers are owed not alone for the dead, but to the cancer stricken, the deformed, to their parents, their siblings and all Iraqis. They were left with a land poisoned by depleted uranium in 1991, the burden ever building over twelve more years of (illegal) US and UK bombings, then the enormity of 2003. Fallujah’s victims have rightly come under medical and media scrutiny since the US military onslaught of April and November 2004, but thro...

NOVANEWS By Marjorie Cohn Global Research From “Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law,” By Marjorie Cohn, 2007 According to sources inside the administration, George W. Bush was planning to invade Iraq and remove its government well before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Such an invasion violates the UN Charter, which the United States signed in 1945 after the bloodiest conflict in history. The Charter permits countries to use military force against another country only in self-defense or with Security Council permission. But the evidence indicates that the U.S.-led invasion satisfied neither condition and is therefore a war of aggression, which constitutes a Crime Against Peace - exactly the kind of war the Charter was meant to prevent. Although Bush ma...

NOVANEWS Thoughts on the 10th anniversary of the war on Iraq The author is a former Staff Sergeant in the U.S. Army infantry who spent a total of 28 months in Iraq. By Kevin Baker Millions of Iraqi children have suffered the  death of a close family member at the hands  of the U.S. military, and will forever be  impacted by the trauma of living under a  brutal occupation for nearly a decade. In the next few minutes, as you’re reading this, a mother will give birth in Fallujah. There is a 33% chance because of U.S.-used depleted uranium that the child will be born with a life-crippling birth defect, or dead; a young man will forge through piles of trash for food to feed his impoverished and displaced family. There are over 5 million displaced Iraqis, high estimates of over 1.3 m...

NOVANEWS

NOVAEWS worldnews.nbcnews.com Rana stepped out of church in Baghdad in December 2006 to find an envelope wedged against her car windshield. Inside was a bullet — a message that meant she and her family were next on an assassin’s list. They fled the city the next day, leaving behind a business, a home — everything. “I didn’t like Saddam Hussein, but he didn’t bother the Christians,” said Rana, 29, after a church service in London. “He was a dictator. When he went, the gangs came from everywhere.” Rana isn’t alone: Bombings, kidnappings and generalized violence unleashed by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Hussein caused hundreds of thousands of Christians to flee their homeland. While there is no centralized source of information on the number of Christians who have left Ir...

NOVANEWS Two US-led wars in Iraq have left behind hundreds of tonnes of depleted uranium munitions and other toxic wastes. Dahr Jamail Bombsites like this one in Fallujah remain toxic and likely continue to cause illnesses [Dahr Jamail/Al Jazeera] This report contains photos of a graphic nature. Fallujah, Iraq - Contamination from Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions and other military-related pollution is suspected of causing a sharp rises in congenital birth defects, cancer cases, and other illnesses throughout much of Iraq. Many prominent doctors and scientists contend that DU contamination is also connected to the recent emergence of diseases that were not previously seen in Iraq, such as new illnesses in the kidney, lungs, and liver, as well as total immune syste...

NOVANEWS By Gilbert Mercier NEWS JUNKIE POST It is official: the last United States troops left Iraq on December 17, 2011. Nevertheless, the US occupation of the country is far from over. American mainstream media are fanfaring that “the war in Iraq is over”, but the war has become a “pacification” process. The war might be over for the Pentagon, but now, the mission to control US interests in Iraq falls onto the lap of the State Department. Today I received, probably like millions of Americans, a pseudo-personal message from President Obama. “Gilbert, Early this morning the last of our troops left Iraq. As we honor and reflect on the sacrifices that millions of men and women made for this war, I wanted to make sure you heard the news. Bringing the war to a responsible end was a cau...

NOVANEWS The US and Britain not only bathed Iraq in blood, they promoted a sectarian war that now threatens the region Seumas Milne The Guardian, An Iraqi prisoner of war comforts his son at a center for prisoners of war captured by the US army near Najaf in March 2003. Photograph: Jean-Marc Bouju/AP If anyone doubted what kind of Iraq has been bequeathed by a decade of US-sponsored occupation and war, today's deadly sectarian bomb attacks around Baghdad against bus queues and markets should have set them straight. Ten years to the day after American and British troops launched an unprovoked attack on a false pretext – and more than a year since the last combat troops were withdrawn – the conflict they unleashed shows no sign of winding down. Civilians are still being ki...