H/t Der in The Lifeboat News, yesterday:
Extract:
US military intervention heavily damaged Iraqi infrastructure and ecologies that sustain human survival, especially during the initial invasion in 2003 but also later during the occupation (2004–2011). Adhering to a “shock and awe” strategy, the United States launched 800 cruise missiles within the first 48 hours of the invasion in March 2003 —more than double the number of missiles launched in the entire Gulf War. Between 2002 and 2005 alone, the US armed forces expended 6 billion bullets—roughly 200,000-300,000 bullets per individual killed in Iraq. This number of shells, full of lead and mercury, does not include larger ordinances or other metal remnants from after 2005, or from previous wars: the Iran-Iraq war (1980–1988), the First Gulf War (1990–1991), the sanctions era (1991-2003) and the 2003 occupation’s instigation of a further decade of militia warfare. The most recent military intervention in Iraq was accompanied by unprecedented waste abandonment and waste burning: discarded vehicles, excess weapons, discarded clothing and much more were all left in Iraq’s land, water or air.
Given the onslaught of military toxic dumping in Iraq, from spent bombs and bullets to base-making, burn pits and junkyards, it is no surprise that widespread cancers and congenital anomalies, along with other major health issues in the civilian population, abound. The medical resources to cope with cancers and birth defects, however, are also impacted by the enduring effects of total war—the targeting of an entire population and their environment, rather than military installations alone. Hospitals in Falluja, for example, have been targeted repeatedly by multiple entities, including by the United States in 2008 and by the Iraqi government in 2014 and 2015. Additionally, medical doctors remain in short supply, since many were assassinated by militias or displaced by militia threats to their families: By 2008, only 9,000 doctors were living in Iraq.