Depleted Uranium. The Babies Will Haunt Us

The Babies Will Haunt Us

by Kelley B. Vlahos

December 18, 2012 It was like walking through a nightmare: drifting in an out of hospital rooms, down the long hallways, her contact with shock-ravaged Iraqi parents interrupted only by glimpses of their physically deformed and terminally sick babies who in many cases, would never see the outside of Fallujah’s main hospital, ever. Iraqi baby in Fallujah. Credit: Donna Mulhearn. Then, the more than vague sense that she must apologize. The words thick like molasses were hard to form. "I felt inadequate," said Donna Mulhearn. "What was so hard was, what do you say to these people other than saying sorry, which I said over and over again. You just wanted to offer more." Donna Mulhearn is a name we need to remember, as she is one of a small but dedicated group of citizen activists who, after most of us have said the long goodbye to Iraq in the rear-view mirror, are taking on the environmental and humanitarian legacy of the Iraq War as a personal cause. Right now, she is doing what the western mainstream has so far failed to do, which is report on the horrifying number of miscarriages, deaths, birth defects and congenital illnesses among babies in urban Fallujah, the site of some of the most intense U.S bombing (2004) during the war. A generation of women in this Sunni Iraqi city, which at one point was considered an insurgent "breeding ground" during the war, is now unable to have consistently healthy babies, according to anecdotal reports and scientific studies. It’s so bad that hospital officials are quietly telling women there to stop getting pregnant. Why? Many think it is because of the war pollution — due to everything from heavy metals from exploded ordnance to radiation left behind by depleted uranium used on U.S ammunition and tanks — inhaled by Fallujah’s residents, seeped into the ground water, flowing in the nearby Tigris River, choking the air they breathe. "This is a toxic legacy, in which I would include, is the legacy of warfare," Mulhearn told Antiwar.com in a recent Skype interview from her home in Australia. "In the last 10 years we’ve had a good focus on remnants of war that are visible — like land mines and cluster munitions, things that go boom and explode. We need to now look at those toxic remnants of war that are not visible but are extremely harmful to communities." "Harmful" seems like such an understatement for the things the doctors in Fallujah have been seeing in recent years. Thanks to Google, you can see it too, but we warn you it is not for the squeamish. Some of the more common defects on the rise in Fallujah General Hospital: Gastroschisis (babies born with their intestine protruding outside their small bellies), Hydrocephalus (babies born with "water on the brain, abnormal brain swelling), Encephalocele ( neural tube defect in which babies are born with sac-like protrusions from their heads), Macrocephaly (babies with abnormally large heads), spina bifida (backbone and spinal canal are not closed before birth, creating gaping hole in the babies’ backs) and cleft lip and palate. In front of the rubble during one of her trips to Iraq during the war. Credit: Donna Mulhearn. There have also been numerous reports — and photos do not lie — of infants born without eyes, missing limbs, extra limbs, covered in tumors, missing genitalia, severe brain damage. Back in 2010, the BBC’s Mark Simpson reported seeing a baby with three heads as he toured a clinic in Fallujah. When I wrote "Children of War" for The American Conservative in March 2011, doctors were reporting two birth defects a day, compared to two every two weeks in 2008.

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