Wednesday, March 22, 2006

More children dying in Basra since Iraq invasion, says aid worker

We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men: George Orwell

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Gotham Gazette

Back From Iraq
by Joshua Brustein
19 Mar 2006
Faced with homelessness, about forty veterans call Jason Ortiz each month looking for help. Ortiz is a caseworker at New Era Veterans, a residence for previously homeless veterans in the Soundview section of the Bronx. Most of the residents there left the military decades ago, Ortiz says. But recently about five of the 40 calls he gets every month are from veterans returning from Iraq.
Ortiz's voicemail has the same discouraging message for all those who dial his number: There is no more room.

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They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening : George Orwell

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Source: Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA)
Date: 21 Mar 2006

More children dying in Basra since Iraq invasion, says aid worker
Vienna_(dpa) _ More children than ever before are dying of diarrhoea-related diseases in the British-occupied Iraqi city of Basra, an Austrian aid worker said Tuesday.
Vienna physician Eva-Maria Hobiger, initiator of the medical aid project Aladin's Lamp for children with cancer, said the health system in Basra was in a grave crisis.
She said the health care situation in Basra was decimated by the international sanctions against the Saddam Hussein regime, but since the war the situation had become even worse.
Not even the most necessary items such as infusion solutions were available, and there was scant prospect of improvement, she said on Vienna's Radio Stephansdom, according to the Catholic press agency Kathpress.
Not a single medical consignment has reached children in Basra, she said, adding that "without Aladin's Lamp and our deliveries, the children would die."
The situation of water supplies in the city was also catastrophic, Many who survive diarrhoea-related diseases contracted from contaminated drinking water were severely undernourished.
For months, only 40 per cent of the water needs in the city of 700,000 people had been covered from the mains. The rest had been taken from the Shatt al-Arab, a river which besides bacteria carried huge quantities of poisonous substances, Hobiger said.

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Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind: George Orwell

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A Time for Heresy {Another Must Read From Moyers}
by Bill Moyers, TomPaine.com
It is time to drive the money changers from the temple of democracy.


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The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them: George Orwell

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Bush's Skunktails
by Robert B. Reich, TomPaine.com
George W. Bush will harm a few Republicans this fall's elections -- but he has damaged the cause of good government for years to come.


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Number Of Iraqi Civilians Slaughtered In America's War? As Many As 250,000

Number of U.S. Military Personnel Slaughtered (Officially acknowledged) In Bush's War
2319


The War in Iraq Costs $249,019,818,285 See the cost in your community

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Scott Galindez | Someone Should Tell Bush Why We Went to War

Scott Galindez: After yesterday's presidential news conference, I am beginning to wonder if George W. Bush knows why we went to war with Iraq. He should just come clean and admit that we went to war because Dick, Wolfie, and Rummy told him to.

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"Never again shall one generation of veterans abandon another."

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Robert Scheer | Bush Continues to Deal in Denial

Robert Scheer writes: On the third anniversary of the beginning of his Iraq catastrophe, President Bush yet again dealt in denial, but this time the carefully screened audience at the Cleveland City Club wasn't buying it. Perhaps most on target was an elderly gentleman who cited what he said were the three main reasons for going to war in Iraq - WMD, Iraq's ties to the September 11, 2001, terrorists and the alleged purchase of nuclear material from Niger - and then noted dryly that all three of these rationales turned out to be false.

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