Today's Stories

December 1, 2009

David Price
Human Terrain Systems, Anthropologists and the War in Afghanistan

November 30, 2009

Gary Leupp
A "Necessary War" -- for a Gas Pipeline

Mara Ahmed /
Judith Bello
Pakistan and the Global War on Terror

Mike Whitney
Crisis in Dubai

Steven Higgs
Growing Up Toxic

P. Sainath
Pay-to-Print: "News" Stories for Cash Scandal Rocks India

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Arab Women Workers Need Not Apply

Norm Kent
On the Suicide of Mike Penner: Why the Transgendered Need Civil Rights Protections

Dave Lindorff
Obama as the Manchurian Candidate

Normon Solomon
The Hollow Politics of Escalation

David Michael Green How Dare You Clean Up Our Mess?

Website of the Day
The America's Program Needs Your Help

November 27 - 29, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Auld Triangle Goes Jingle Jangle

Carl Ginsburg
Planning for Poverty?

Mike Whitney
Blame Larry Summers

Franklin Spinney
Obama as LBJ

Joshua Frank
Coal Kills

Saul Landau
The True Price of Oil

Heather Gray
Overtly Racist Regimes in the 20th Century

John Ross
The Timeline for a New Mexican Revolution Comes Due

David Macaray
Adventures in Polarization

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon: 52 Words That Shook Washington

Shamus Cooke
The Devastating Consequences of the Corporate Health Insurance Bill

David Ker Thomson
The Transformers

Martha Rosenberg
Cash for Cheesedogs? The Recession Takes a Bite Out of Meat Consumption

Ramzy Baroud
A Paradigm Shift in Singapore?

Ron Ridenour
Post-War Internment Hell for Tamils

Amanda Mueller
Saving Grace: Negotiating Abortion and the Catholic Faith

James Rothenberg
China Kowtow

Travis Kelly
Mayday, 1960: the U2 Files

Don Monkerud
Big Beer Takes Over

Ron Jacobs
Science Fiction and Politics

Charles R. Larson
The Autumn of Chinua Achebe

David Yearsley
What Father Made Us Sing Before the Turkey

Poets' Basement
Catherine Zickgraf and Mickey Z.

Website of the Weekend
Good to Be Alive

November 26, 2009

Vijay Prashad
Mumbai in the Shadow of Kashmir

Greg Moses
We Remember the Popol Vuh

Jayne Lyn Stahl
How About a War on Poverty Instead?

Jeff Cohen
Get Ready for the Obama / GOP Alliance

John Blair
The Gasification of Indiana

Ann Robertson /
Bill Leumer
A Surge in Demands on Goverment for Jobs

Farzana Versey
The American East India Company

Sam Husseini
Moral Relativism at Fort Hood: Guilt, Therapy and the System

Tom Mountain
The Truth Behind the Turkey

Website of the Day
A Thanksgiving Prayer by William S. Burroughs

November 25, 2009

Dave Lindorff
The Bush-Blair Conspiracy on Iraq

Marjorie Cohn
The Case of Lynn Stewart

Belén Fernández
An Interview with Honduran Coup General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez

Ralph Nader
Weak-Kneed in China

Rannie Amiri
The Impending Release of Gilad Shalit: What Palestinians Deserve in Return

Missy Beattie
Finish the Job?

Rob Stone, MD Health Care Delusions: Better Than Nothing?

Norm Kent
In Praise of Adam Lambert

Binoy Kampmark Handing It to France: the Sporting Trial of Thierry Henry

Ron Ridenour
International Support for Sri Lanka

Website of the Day
The Credit Card Game

November 24, 2009

Mary Lynn Cramer
Health Care Reform and the Skinning of Seniors

Dean Baker
Too Big to Kill? The Vampire Banks Rise Again

George Ciccariello-Maher
Occupy Everything! Behind the Privatization of the UC, a Riot Squad of Police

Eric Walberg
Canada's Guantanamo

Andy Thayer
Lessons From a Lynching: the Murder of Jorge Steven Lopez-Mercado

David Macaray
The Delphi Incident: How the White-Collar Tribe Got Shafted

Laura Carlsen
The Perils of Plan Mexico

Gary Leupp
Obama as Hamlet

Adam Federman
Poisoning Dimock

William S. Lind Mission Creep: Counter-Insurgency in Salinas?

Website of the Day
Geography of the Recession

November 23, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
A Trial That Will Convict Us All

Jonathan Cook
Have Israeli Spies Infiltrated International Aiports?

Edward S. Herman / David Peterson
Vulliamy's Smears

Bouthaina Shaaban
What's New? It's Always Been Like This

Helen Redmond
Health Care's Historic Flop

Rannie Amiri
Saudi Arabia's Attack on Yemen

Dave Lindorff
Abortion and Health Care

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Self-Delusionary American Tragedy

Mike Whitney
Is American Casino the Best Picture of the Year?

Mark Weisbrot
Honduran Dictatorship is a Threat to Democracy in the Hemisphere

David Michael Green
The Placeholder Presidency of Obama

November 20-22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
CounterPunch Diary
It's Show Trial Time!

Gareth Porter
New Light on the Qom Facility

Mike Whitney
The Great Stimulus Debate of '09: Crybabies need not apply

Fred Gardner
Mammography
Pushes Back

James J. Brittain
It's Really a War on the Poor
A War on Coca Nobody Believes

Jonathan Cook
Rabbi Followers 'Terror Cell in Parliament'

Alan Farago
Bulletin from the Dark Side: Florida's Republican Ultras

David Macaray
A Hindu Version of the UAW
Labor Strife in India

Binoy Kampmark
The Israeli Exception: Gilo and East Jerusalem

Ben Sonnenberg
Ashes and Diamonds
Retirement Norwegian Style

Ron Jacobs
Judge Roy Bean Takes Manhattan

David Yearsley
200,000 Testicles Offered Up to the Gods of Song

Brenda Norrell
A Border Runs Through Them:
The Struggles of the Tohono O'odham

Ron Ridenour
The Tamils and Equal Rights of Self Determination

November 19, 2009

Christopher Ketcham
The Dumbest Newspapers at the Center of the World

Shamus Cooke
A Fraudulent Jobs Summit

John V. Walsh
Impotent in China

Saul Landau
Dissidents Make Noise--Oops, News

Ralph Nader
Exiting Afghanistan

Nikolas Kozloff
Blackout in Brazil

Fred Gardner
Reputable MDs Buy NorCal Health Care

Charles R. Larson
Voices of the Silenced

John A. Murphy
Nader v. Dodd

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Obama's Gray World

November 18, 2009

Uri Avnery
A Religious Scoundrel

John Ross
Hot Oil!

Conn Hallinan
Strategic Towns: Why Gen. McChrystal's Plan Will Fail

Mike Whitney
Obama's China Junket

Ray McGovern
The Bogus Success of the Surge

Nelson P. Valdés
Cyber Cuba: Internet, Broadband and Foreign Policy

Ramzy Baroud
Globalization Unchecked

Ron Ridenour
Tamil Eelam: the Historic Right to Nationhood

November 17, 2009

Mike Whitney
Let's Get Fiscal

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Double Crossed: War Vets Deported

Brian M. Downing
Do They Subscribe to GQ at the Pentagon?

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Two-Tiered Justice System

Joanne Mariner
A First Look at the Military Commisions Act

Dean Baker
Obama's Nuclear Option on the Yuan

Martha Rosenberg
Pig Hell at Wal-Mart Supplier

Danny Weil
Fear in Nicaragua

David Macaray
Retail Sales as Combat

Laura Flanders
Buried Bonanza for Over-Builders

Walter Brasch
Rush to Judgment on Terror Trials

November 16, 2009

Alan Nasser
Obama's Flawed Case Against Single Payer

Jonathan Cook
Campus Watch Copy Cats

Mark Weisbrot
Obama, China and the Dollar

Carol Miller
We Need Health Care, Not Insurance

Gary Leupp
The Andolan in Kathmandu and the Revolution to Follow

Harry Clark
Justice Goldstone at Brandeis

Ray McGovern
Shining a Light on the Roots of Terrorism

Norman Solomon
California Democrats Urge Obama to Leave Afghanistan

Ron Ridenour
Genocide in Sri Lanka

Norm Kent
Doctors Light Up

Brenda Norrell
Torture Resisters Arrested at Fort Huachuca

November 13-15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
A Man in a Hundred

Patrick Cockburn
Meet Our Afghan Ally: Stealing Money, Selling Heroin and Raping Boys

Tariq Ali
Short Cuts in Afghanistan

Douglas Lummis
Obama, Hatoyama and Okinawa

Vijay Prashad
Can the Major Speak?

Carl Ginsburg
Cornering the Market on Ambition

Manuel García, Jr.
The Purpose is Pork

Rannie Amiri
The Disastrous Presidency of Mahmoud Abbas

Mary Lynn Cramer
Death By Denial: the Militarization of Mental Health

Fred Gardner
Pot Doc Down

Dave Lindorff
Health Care Reform: DOA

Robert Jensen
How I Stopped Hating Thanksgiving and Learned to be Afraid

David Macaray
Wal-Mart Death Stampede Revisited

Corporate Crime Reporter
Exposing Timberland: Nike Foe Jeff Ballinger Zeros in on a New Target

Ron Jacobs
No More Star Spangled Eyes

David Model
NATO's Chimerical Enemy in Afghanistan

John V. Walsh
Godless China: What Obama Will Find

Jon Mitchell
Beggars' Belief

Stuart Easterling
Blaming the Narcos in Mexico

Dan Bacher
Big Oil Takes Over Marine "Protection" in California

Franklin Lamb
Lebanese Students Advise Obama on How to Get It Right

Farzana Versey
Moderns, Models and Martyrs

Charles R. Larson
War, Peace and Paramilitaries in Colombia

Saul Landau
The Coen Bros. Brutalize Job

David Yearsley
When the Cirque Meets the Beatles

Lorenzo Wolff
At the Side of the Frontman

Poets' Basement
Blaine, Rivas and Cox

November 12, 2009

Robert Weissman
Maniacal Deregulation

Franklin Spinney
The Afghan War Question

Nadia Hijab
After Fort Hood

Afshin Rattansi
Night Vision: Why US Sanctions on Syria Will Kill American Soldiers

Paul Craig Roberts
America's Dismal Future

Ralph Nader
Failing the People on Health Care

Belén Fernández
Tourists of the Honduran Counter-Revolution

Allan J. Lichtman
A National Peacemaker's Day

Dave Lindorff
President Peacenik's War

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Headline of the Year

November 11, 2009

Andrew Cockburn
The Crafting of a Loophole

Mike Whitney
A Small "d" Depression

Rev. Jesse Jackson
Where's the Jobs Stimulus?

Jeff Nygaard
Iranian Irrationality? Maybe Not

Stewart J. Lawrence
Honduran Regime Reneges on Political Deal

James Ridgeway
The End of the Little Red Cars: Memories of East Berlin

Eamonn McCann
Blood on Their Hands

Michael Ortiz Hill
Unbecoming War and Terrorism

Shepherd Bliss
From Oklahoma City to Fort Hood

Walter Brasch
"This is Jenna Bush Reporting ... "

November 10, 2009

Ellen Cantarow
Heroism in a Vanishing Landscape

Dean Baker
How to Raise $140 Billion a Year From Wall Street Banks

Rose Ann DeMoro
The Truth About the House Health Care Bill

Ramzy Baroud
Inch by Inch, House by House: How Israel Won the Settlement Battle...Again

Peter Lee
The Dalai Lama Sticks His Thumb in the Dragon's Eye

Dave Lindorff
Blaming the Workers

Roberto Rodriguez
Running Past PTSD (Or My Susto Profundo)

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Self-Dismembering F-35

Alan Farago
The Rising Tide

Joseph Grosso
The Legacy of Albert Parsons

November 9, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Leave Afghanistan to the Afghans

Linn Washington
Fox Finds a New Black Boogeyman

Carl Ginsburg
To be Young and Unemployed Forever

Jeff Leys
War Funding, 2010

John A. Murphy
Can Lieberman Save Single Payer? Why Progressives Should Back a Filibuster

John Halle
Bard and the Lobby: Final Thoughts on the Kovel Affair

Bouthaina Shaaban
Clinton Dances With Netanyahu

James Ridgeway
Heath Care: Winning a Battle, Losing the War

Dave Lindorff
The Kafka Economy

David Macaray
The Philadelphia Transit Strike

Stephen Fleischman
The Tea Party System

Website of the Day
Cap-and-Trade: The Huge Mistake

November 6-8, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Too Fat to Fight

Mark Grueter
Inside the American University of Iraq

Paul Craig Roberts
The Evil Empire

Patrick Cockburn
Friendly Fire

Gareth Porter
Karzai's Cabinet of Warlords

Mike Whitney
The Battle of Seattle, 10 Years Later

James Bovard
How the Media Enables Government Lies

Dean Baker
Don't Touch the Banks!

Robert Lawless
Empires and the Sullying of Anthropology

Saul Landau
Afghanistan: a War Without Logic

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Black Ops and Fort Hood

Stephanie Westbrook
My Memories of Fort Hood

M. Shahid Alam
How Eurocentric Are You?

Marc Levy
Walking With Mr. Muhammad

Franklin Lamb
Obama's Mid-East Mess

Ron Jacobs
A New Map of Hell

David Ker Thomson
Afternoon With Tulip

John V. Whitbeck
Moment of Truth

Julien Mercille
Drugs and Afghanistan: the UN's Misleading Report

Rannie Amiri
Egypt's Next Unelected President?

John Ross
Legalize It!

David Michael Green
Can You Hear Us Now?

Carl Finamore
Strike One for Hotels in San Francisco

Farzana Versey
The Farce of Fatwas and Political Expediency

Missy Comley Beattie
No to Single Payer, Yes to Prayer?

Charles R. Larson
Business as Usual in India

David Yearsley
Anna Magdalena, Music and the Art of Dying

Kim Nicolini
"Paranormal Activity:" a DIY Horror Film

Poets' Basement
Three Poems by Devreaux Baker

November 5, 2009

Pam Martens
The Fire Sale of America

Vijay Prashad
The Great Heretic

Brian Gallagher
The Soldiers From Standard Oil: Harvard, ROTC and American Foreign Policy

Norman Solomon
The Next Phase in Health Care Apartheid

Nadia Hijab
The Battle for Palestinian Representation

Joseph Shansky
And the Winner in Honduras is ... the United States?

Andy Thayer
Questions and Answers From Maine

Tracy Rosenberg
Pacifica and the Barbarians Who Pay the Bills

Website of the Day
All Folked Up

November 4, 2009

Stan Cox
The Inflated Promise of Natural Gas

Andy Worthington From Gitmo to Palau: Who are the Uighurs?

Robert Weissman
The Medicare-for-All Moment

Susan Galleymore
Of Veterans and Volunteers

Ralph Nader
Hoh's Afghanistan Warning

Michael Leonardi
Italy's Secret Ships of Poison

Bitta Mistofi
Death to No One: Isolating and Taunting Iran Will Only Empower the Regime

Robert Bryce
From Lahore to Copenhagen

Martha Rosenberg
Is Your Doctor's Continuing Ed Funded by Drug Makers?

Dave Lindorff
Democrats Crash and Burn

Website of the Day
Single-Payer Backtrackers

November 3, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
The Delegitimization of Karzai

Mike Whitney
Why the Crisis Isn't Going Away

Franklin C. Spinney
Katrina and the Paralysis of Fear

Laura Carlsen
The Little Coup That Couldn't

Serge Halimi
Don't Blame the Internet

John Stanton
Social Decay in America

Sophia Weeks
A Guatemalan Lament

Dave Lindorff
Country Joe, Kenny Rogers and Obama

November 2, 2009

Steven Higgs
Autism Spikes, Toxins Suspected

Ishmael Reed
White in America: Behind the Scenes at CNN

David Macaray
UAW Members Vote Down Ford; and the Media Attacked the Union

Bouthaina Shaaban
Settler Colonialism: Return to the Middle Ages

David Michael Green
Coming to Get You

David Swanson
The Two Percent Robustness

Ellen Brown
Cutting Wall Street Out

Adam Federman
Trading the Watershed to Trash the Catskills

James McEnteer
Doppleganger Politics: Star Wars, Clone Wars

Stephen Fleischman
Foot in the Door: Capitalism and Health Care

Website of the Day
Secret California Park Giveaway

October 30 - Nov. 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Long Gaze of the State

Jeffrey St. Clair /
Joshua Frank
Facing Down the Machine: Mike Roselle Draws a Line

Carl Ginsburg
Living in the Shadow of Yankee Stadium

Mike Whitney
Obama Goes Wobbly Over More Stimulus

Joe Bageant
The Iron Cheer of Empire

Gareth Porter
Security By Warlords: the CIA's Afghan Payroll

Saul Landau
The Cuban Embargo

Anthony DiMaggio
Conspiracy, Inc.: Wild Tales From the Reactionary Right

Dave Lindorff
Happy Talk Amid the Wreckage: Stocks Up, Jobs Down

Rannie Amiri
The Spooks of Beirut

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
An Afghan Travelogue

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Who Will Reform the Health Care Reform?

Rev. William E. Alberts
God's Favorite Team (and Nation and Religion)

Alvaro Huerta
The Abominable Mr. Dobbs

Martha Rosenberg
Marketing Drugs to Psychoneurotics

Binoy Kampmark
Don't Give Us Your Wretched: Refugee Policy in OZ

Norm Kent
Not Just Zig-Zag Any More: Medical Marijuana Goes Mainstream

Charles R. Larson Roth's "The Humbling:" Nothing Like a Novel From an Old Pro

Ron Jacobs
One Man's Truth, Another Man's Lies

David Yearsley
Not Loud Enough by Half

Lorenzo Wolff
The Vulnerability of Lauryn Hill

Kim Nicolini
"Big Fan:" Football, Class and Sexuality in America

Poets' Basement
Davies, Heyen and Orloski

Website of the Weekend
Coal Country Music

October 29, 2009

Michael Neumann
Criticism of Israel: a Wonderful Hiding Place

Mike Whitney
Housing Rebound? Not So Fast

Gary Leupp
Matthew Hoh Speaks Truth to Power

Conn Hallinan
Roman Roads and Modern Emperors

Marshall Auerback
Obama's Bogus Populism: Pay Curbs and Bank Loans

Laura Flanders
Palin's Pet Doug Hoffman Has Taliban Ties

Eamonn McCann
The War Criminal Vote: Blair or Karadzic for EU President?

David Macaray
Strange Invaders: Can Ignorance and Arrogance Win Hearts and Minds?

Mark Weisbrot
When Small Countries Lead the Way

Stephen Soldz
Psychologist Complicity in Torture Challenged

Christopher Brauchli
Will the Pope Bring the Taliban Into His Flock?

Website of the Day
The USS Liberty Affair and the Problem of Truth in History

October 28, 2009

Moshe Adler
How to Reduce Unemployment, Rebuild the Middle Class and Free Ourselves From Wall Street

Dave Lindorff
America's Drug Crisis: Brought to You by the CIA

Frank Joseph Smecker
Agaisnt Prometheus: an Interview with Derrick Jensen on Science and Technology

Alexandra Early
What a "Jobless" Recovery Means for Young Workers

M. Shahid Alam
Israeli Exceptionalism

Vijay Prashad
Sahelian Blowback: What's Happening in Mali?

John Ross
Three Years Later, Brad Will is Still Dead

Franklin Lamb
A Rare Victory for Lebanon's Palestinians

Gregory Travis
The Dismal Science: Elinor Ostrom's Nobel

Susan Galleymore
Peace Cycle to Palestine

Website of the Day
Newspaper Decline, a Graphic Display

October 27, 2009

Mike Whitney
Black Tuesday and How We Got Out of It

Patrick Cockburn
Bombs Will Go Off in Baghdad, Whether the US is There or Not

Stewart J. Lawrence
Honduran Coup Myths Dispelled

Alan Farago
Power Plays in Florida: Rate Increases, Nukes and Deception

Ralph Nader
Obama: Form Letters and Business as Usual

Dave Lindorff
Pentagon Dirty Bombers: DU in America

Bouthaina Shaaban
The Danger of Towing the Line Behind Israel

Brian M. Downing Elections in Afghanistan, the Second Time Around

Iain Boal
How You Can Save Pacifica

Carl Finamore
Hotel Workers and the Law of Momentum

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Here Comes That Third Party: Palin and the Constitutionalists

Website of the Day
How Bank of America Charges for Perfect Credit

October 26, 2009

Bill Quigley /
Deborah Popowski
When Gitmo and Abu Ghraib Come Home

Paul Craig Roberts
Are You Ready for the Next Crisis?

Uri Avnery
A Tsunami Called Goldstone

Mike Whitney
Will the Dollar Remain the World's Reserve Currency in Five Years?

Michael Snedeker
The Execution of Cameron Willingham

Shamus Cooke
Obama's Dirty War on Immigrants

David Michael Green
Paranoia for Breakfast

Martha Rosenberg
Gagging Michael Pollan

Patrick Bond
Gridlock on the Way to Copenhagen

Binoy Kampmark
Heading for the Tiber

Website of the Day
Goldman Sachs Abandons Kittens

December 1, 2009

The Casualties of Toxic Warfare

Global Connections and the Arc of War

By SUSAN GALLEYMORE

Alameda, California was once home to one of the largest Naval Air Stations in the world with 271 separate and distinct trades to manufacture and repair every part of any aircraft. Vast quantities of chemicals went into this work including solvents, aviation fuel, and radium-based paints for cockpit dials. Leaks and spills were as common as they are in any operation of this magnitude. Rags, brushes, and cleaning supplies were regularly replaced, the worn-out burned in pits located at the northern tip of the naval base. Enough chemicals were mishandled or leaked out of containers and sewer pipes that the former base is, today, a Superfund site.

As I inch my way through the mountain of documents the Navy amasses as it cleans up the relatively manageable contamination in my home town, I encounter a theme that echoes in my other research into our military, the military mindset, and the effects of militarism: a tendency to under-report, minimize, even deny, “occupational” hazards. It crops up in military documentation, out of the mouths of military spokespeople, and is supported by the the national defense – and homeland security – industries that support and benefit from it.

There are more than 40,000 toxic sites in the U.S. and its territories... approximately 1,000 of which are on the National Priority List, and for which Federal cleanup funding is forthcoming. Certainly the financial costs of cleanup are considerable. But what of the moral and ethical cost? Just as each tax-paying American is implicated in the wars our country wages, so too are we implicated in the human and environmental damage.
Is the damage the U.S. military has caused here and abroad worth the material benefit the U.S. derives?

The more things change...

Vietnam. This year, as they did last year, and for several years before that, delegates from Vietnam came to the U.S. to plead their case and to raise awareness about their countrymen who continue to suffer the consequences of dioxin-laden Agent Orange sprayed by the U.S. Air Force.

During the conflict in Vietnam, the U.S. military denied food and protection to those deemed to be “the enemy” and contracted with over 30 U.S. chemical firms to supply chemicals to defoliate Vietnam's forests. The most lethal chemical, Agent Orange, was contaminated with trace amounts of TCDD dioxin – the most toxic chemical known to science – which disabled and sickened soldiers, civilians and several generations of offspring on two continents.

Medical evidence indicates that cancers such as soft tissue non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, type II diabetes, and spina bifida and other birth defects in children are attributable to this exposure.

Vietnam's victims of Agent Orange, 2007. Photo: Merle Ratner, Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign

Surviving American veterans of Vietnam finally achieved limited compensation from the U.S. Government for some illnesses they suffer due to the poisons. The Vietnamese have received nothing. The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently refused to review the dismissal of the lawsuit of more than three million Vietnamese against 37 companies that manufactured this chemical weapon.

Attorney for the Vietnamese plaintiffs, Jonathan  C. Moore, states,“It is unfortunate that U.S. courts have chosen, contrary to U.S. and international law, to deny justice to millions of Vietnamese who suffer from the spraying of dioxin-laden Agent Orange which has left several generations of victims severely sick and disabled.”

These ailments and deformities are significant, sobering, and heartbreaking...made worse because affected families are physically unable to work and generate an income. Moreover, the chemicals continue to affect Vietnam's natural environment and destroy its mangrove forests, soil, and crops.

Dr. James R. Clary, a senior scientist at the Chemical Weapons Branch (the Air Force Armament Development Lab based in Florida at that time), wrote:
When we initiated the herbicide program in the 1960s, we were aware of the potential for damage due to dioxin contamination in the herbicide. We were even aware that the military formulation had a higher dioxin concentration than the civilian version due to the lower cost and speed of manufacture. However, because the material was to be used on the enemy, none of us were overly concerned. We never considered a scenario in which our own personnel would become contaminated with the herbicide. And, if we had [considered this scenario], we would have expected our own government to give assistance to veterans so contaminated.

This scientist's naive candor is refreshing. If he was working in today's military, he'd probably lose his job.

...the more they stay the same?

Iraq. Balad Airbase, 68 kilometers north of Baghdad and east of Fallujah, is one of the largest bases housing about 25,000 U.S. military personnel and several thousand contractors.

In June 2008 it had three clean-burning incinerators handling about 120 tons of waste each day. Additionally, the burn pit consumes 147 tons of waste per day: styrofoam, unexploded ordnance, petroleum products, plastics, rubber, dining facility trash, paint and solvents, and medical waste that – according to those performing the burns – includes amputated limbs.

This concoction is set alight with jet fuel, a substance that releases chemicals known to increase the risk of leukemia. Just burning plastic water bottles creates elevated levels of highly toxic dioxins, which can contaminate food chains by landing on plants that are consumed by animals and accumulate in fatty tissue.

A plume of black, tacky smoke hangs over the region when waste is burned. Air Force Lt. Col. Darrin Curtis, former bioenvironmental flight commander for Joint Base Balad, wrote in a memo dated Dec. 20, 2006:

“In my professional opinion, there is an acute health hazard for individuals. It is amazing that the burn pit has been able to operate without restrictions over the past few years. There is also the possibility for chronic health hazards associated with the smoke.”

In June 2009 three military servicemen from Charleston filed a class-action lawsuit against Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR). The lawsuit alleges that KBR burned hazardous waste in Iraq and Afghanistan that included human corpses, biohazardous medical supplies, styrofoam, tires, lithium batteries, asbestos insulation, paint, and items containing pesticides and latrine waste.

A mother in Baghdad's Al Mansour Hospital's pediatric oncology ward. Her child suffers from a cancer rarely seen in children. Photo: Susan Galleymore, 2004.

Since then dozens of U.S. military personnel have filed 34 lawsuits against KBR for allegedly incinerating toxic waste and releasing it into the atmosphere in Iraq and Afghanistan. A KBR spokeswoman responded via email that the “general assertion that KBR knowingly harmed troops is unfounded.” KBR, she says, did not operate most of Balad's burn pit, and that the others are operated at the direction of the military.

According to the June 12, 2009 Post and Courier article, “Burn pit caused injuries, suit says: Disposal of toxic wastes improper, servicemen claim,” there is also an Iraqi-run recycling center on the Balad base. Iraqis sort through recyclables tossed into the burn pit — such as the roughly 90,000 aluminum cans produced daily by the base — and resell them on the local market.

Are emissions from these burn pits and material from the recycling center simply adding to the toxic cocktail already flooding Iraq?

Fallujah's hospitals are experiencing a wave of newborns with chronic deformities and early life cancers. Dr Bassam Allah, the head of the Fallujah's children's ward, urges international experts to take soil samples across the region, and for scientists to mount an investigation into the causes of so many ailments. “Such abnormalities,” he says are “acquired” by mothers before or during pregnancy.

The UK Guardian reports that Fallujah's doctors, “are dealing with up to 15 times as many chronic deformities that may be linked to toxic materials left over from the fighting....from two [hospital] admissions a fortnight a year ago to two a day now.” Most deformities are in the head and spinal cord.... and “there is also a very marked increase in the number of cases of [children] less than two years [old] with brain tumours.”

Pediatrician Samira Abdul Ghani's kept detailed records over a three-week period and revealed 37 babies born with anomalies, many of them neural tube defects that result in brain matter found in the spine and dysfunctional lower limbs.

Abnormal clusters of infant tumors have also been cited in Basra and Najaf - areas that have in the past also been intense battle zones where modern munitions have been heavily used.

Baghdad's hospitals sees young children with rare cancers too. I visited Al Mansour's pediatric oncology ward in January 2004. Mothers nursed children with leukemias, neuroblastomas, non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and other cancers rarely seen in young children. Iraqi parents were selling their cars, houses, and other possessions to pay for chemotherapy whose medicines the U.S. refused to supply because, it was claimed, they were potential ingredients in the manufacture of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Doctors in Fallujah repeat what I heard from doctors in Baghdad: they are reluctant to draw direct links with war zone chemical pollutants. “We simply don't have the answers yet....We need funds to conduct scientifically accurate studies.”

Baghdad's babies were not, of course, victims of the May and November 2004 battles in Falluja. Are they victims of the economic sanctions of the 1990s? Or victims of pollutants from U.S.'s ongoing bombing raids over the no-fly-zones during the same period? Or victims of airborne pollutants from burning oil during Gulf War I ? U.S. troops continue to suffer Gulf War Syndrome so why would the region's children be immune? Iraqis have better luck receiving compensation for their enormous health disasters than the Vietnamese have had? Or will their plight be similar to that of the Vietnamese and unacknowledged in the furor over American troop exposure? What about Kuwait? And Bosnia? And Gaza? And Afghanistan?

For more than eight years the U.S. Government has maintained the fallacy that bombarding Afghanistan is necessary, that that is a “righteous” war against terrorism. The lawsuit against KBR includes burn pits in Afghanistan and it is a matter of time before the world is aware of the affects on troops and civilians there. It is likely that the wave of deformities in Afghan newborns will go undetected for a longer period than they took to crest in Iraq since many Afghan babies are born at home and in remote regions. A new study by the U.S.-based independent charity Save the Children says 60 out of every 1,000 Afghan babies die; this is already one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world.

When I began researching the military mindset I held that large institutions are inherently chaotic, that administrating millions of acres of military real estate around the world and the personnel occupying it – and their supply chains – results in inevitable errors, and that those responsible for public coffers would, occasionally, makes egregious mistakes that they'd want to hide. But, we the people, can no longer sustain this mindset and culture. We, the people, have reached the cul de sac of our “westward expansion.” We have nowhere else to go. We must turn around and face...ourselves.... We must begin the real work of recognizing our complex mutual humanity and interdependence...and cop to our innate glory...and vainglory, intoxication with self, denial, egotism, and our less-than-perfect traits that cross political boundaries. As we recognize the incontrovertible evidence in the arc of degradation that is war we must accept our responsibility for it...and ensure we no longer contaminate our world or its people.

Susan Galleymore is author of Long Time Passing: Mothers Speak about War and Terror, host of Stanford University's Raising Sand Radio, and a former “military mom” and GI Rights Counselor. Contact her at media@mothersspeakaboutwarandterror.org.

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