Lasting consequences

There is no escaping the protracted fallout of invasion and occupation. There is no cure apart from stopping invasion, ending occupation.
Re-reporting, editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

DOMESTIC DESERTION

9-11, 9-11! Call to war abandons U.S. victims
House Rejects Bill to Help Sick Ground Zero Workers
Soldier suicides ignored

The U.S. government has approved and sealed legislation hemorrhaging more deficit spending including $37 billion [pushing past a $ trillion] for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, the U.S. House of Representatives “failed to pass a $7.4 billion bill to provide free healthcare and compensation payments to U.S. rescue and cleanup workers who were exposed to dangerous toxic chemicals at the World Trade Center site following the 9/11 attacks.”

Soldier suicide has risen above the rate among civilians since the Vietnam War. Between October 1, 2008 and September 30, 2009, 160 active-duty Army personnel committed suicide. A third of soldiers take at least one prescription drug. Fourteen percent of them take powerful painkillers. The U.S. Army report citing the figures “faulted commanders for ignoring rising mental health, drug and crime issues among soldiers.”

INVASION, OCCUPATION
THEFT, DISRUPTION
DISEASE, DEATH
RESISTANCE, RETALIATION

Afghanistan

As the month ends, July goes on record as the deadliest (63 troop deaths) for the U. S.’s nearly nine-year invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. The missing bodies of Navy sailor Jarod Newlove (Renton, Washington) and sailor Justin McNeley (Wheat Ridge, Colorado) were found earlier in the week.

KABUL: A NATO vehicle crash into a civilian car killing occupants of that car has led today to rioting outside the U.S. embassy in Kabul. Witnesses reported four passengers died when one of two military vehicles moving in convoy hit the civilian car. In 2006, a similar traffic incident led to massive riots that shook the capital and left at least 14 people dead. Young Afghan men responded by throwing stones and shouting ‘death to foreigners’ and “‘death to [Afghan president Hamid] Karzai.’”

Iraq

Billions of U.S. deficit dollars pumped into Iraq’s reconstruction have failed to rebuild the country’s ravaged infrastructure. “Money was just spent,” British journalist Patrick Cockburn said today on Democracy Now. “Nobody quite knew where it went. This was happening well after we knew that fraud had been occurring everywhere... Up to quite recently, there seems to have been a free-for-all with Iraqi funds.…”

Moreover, Iraq’s children are sick and dying as Japan’s children suffered and died in the fallout of World War II. “A new medical study has found dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukemia among people in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, a city bombarded by U.S. Marines in 2004.

Infant mortality is more than four times higher than in neighboring Jordan, eight times higher than in Kuwait. Cancer rates exceed those reported by survivors of the U.S. atomic bombs dropped in 1945 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Iraqi cases are “‘similar to the Hiroshima survivors who were exposed to ionizing radiation from the bomb and uranium in the fallout.”

FALLUJAH west: One soldier died and five people suffered wounds when a bomb exploded on a parked motorcycle near an army checkpoint.

MOSUL north: One police officer died and another two suffered wounds near the convoy of a police chief

BAGHDAD north: Sixteen people died (among them nine security personnel) and 14 suffered wounds Thursday when several bombs hit Baghdad’s Sunni district of Al-Adhamiyah. Three soldiers died and 12 suffered wounds Thursday when a car bomb exploded near an army base in Al-Sharqat, north of Baghdad in Salaheddin province. On different routes to the scene of the attacks, 13 people died among them three soldiers and three police officers. Among the wounded were seven police officers and two civil members of civil defense.

Sources and links
Democracy Now headlines July 30, 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/30/headlines
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/29/patrick_cockburn_on_missing_billions_in
“Afghans riot in Kabul after deadly NATO crash Module body,” July 30, 2010,
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/100730/world/afghanistan_unrest_accident_riot_1
“16 dead, 14 wounded in Baghdad attacks,” AFP July 30, 2010, http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20100730/twl-iraq-unrest-575b600.html