Looking for Trouble

Iraq’s deadly legacy

Seven years after the invasion of Baghdad, the Iraqi people are experiencing a devastating legacy. Babies are being born with severe deformities and the cancer rate is skyrocketing. The following video from Australian Special Broadcasting Service’s Dateline program offers a visually disturbing look at this legacy.

Please be warned, journalist Fouad Hady, an Iraqi who went to Australia seeking asylum but returned to Iraq for a series of groundbreaking stories, pulls no punches in revealing the depth of the problem. The images are haunting.

(The embedding link has been disabled. When you click to start the video, you will get a message suggesting you watch it on YouTube. Please do. The video is long, but it is definitely worth watching.)

Here is a link to the study mentioned at the end of the video report:
http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/7/7/2828/pdf, and a wiki page on the suspected cause: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium.

And here are links to stories I’ve published about depleted uranium:

http://www.seattlepi.com/national/95178_du12.shtml

http://www.seattlepi.com/national/133581_du04.html

Dateline is a multi-award winning international current affairs program with a brief to provide stories for Australians about life beyond Australia’s shores. The program is presented by George Negus, one of Australia’s most respected journalists, and is made up of a team of acclaimed producers and video journalists. Commissioned in 1984, it is Australia’s longest-running international current affairs program.

Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), according to an Australian government website, “is the voice and vision of multicultural Australia.” The principal function of SBS, is to provide multilingual and multicultural radio and television services that “inform, educate and entertain all Australians, and, in doing so, reflect Australia’s multicultural society.”