War, the gift that keeps on giving

[pynchonoid]

In the Easter spirit, thanks to President Bush and his
advisors, Iraqi children can decorate cluster bombs
instead of eggs; this year, the hot color is blood
red:  

<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5944-651852,00.html>

Children main victims of cluster bombs
By Richard Lloyd Parry
A family from al-Nasiriyah find out first-hand of a
new danger

NO ONE knows exactly where Hala Hassan and her
brother, Ali, were playing when they found the squat
brown cylinder lying on the ground. 

The children, aged five and two, are too stunned to
talk about it, and their father and mother were inside
at the time. 

In a poor city, they live in the poorest quarter of
all, where the closest things to toys are bits of
plastic scavenged from the rubbish that covers the
muddy ground. 

“They thought it was a kind of ball,” said Hala’s
aunt, weeping. “They only wanted to play.” 

But the object picked up by the two children was a
bomblet from an unexploded cluster bomb. It went off
in the front yard, leaving a neat six-inch hole in the
concrete floor. 

Tiny fragments of shrapnel flew upwards into Hala’s
legs and into Ali’s face. At least one of them is
still lodged deep in his cheek. Their father clutches
the screaming boy, weeping silently. 

Callous though it sounds, they are lucky to be alive.
Just the day before, three boys, aged between 7 and
14, were killed, and two injured in a similar tragedy
just 500 yards away. 

After a quarter of a century of dictatorship, 12 years
of sanctions and one of the bloodiest battles of the
three-week war, the people of liberated al-Nasiriyah
face a new source of misery: unexploded American
cluster bombs. [...] 



.....And, for  kids who like their Easter eggs with a
radioactive buzz, from now on:
  
<http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/17/1050172709687.html>

Civilians face health risk after latest use of
depleted uranium
April 18 2003

Hundreds of tonnes of depleted uranium used by Britain
and the United States in Iraq should be removed to
protect the civilian population, said the Royal
Society, Britain's premier scientific institution,
contradicting Pentagon claims it is not necessary.

The society's statement fuels the row over the use of
depleted uranium (DU), which is an effective tank
destroyer and bunker buster but is believed by many
scientists to cause cancers and other severe
illnesses.

The society was incensed because the Pentagon had
claimed it that had the backing of the society in
saying DU was not dangerous. 

In fact, the society said, soldiers and civilians were
in short- and long-term danger. Children who were
playing at contaminated sites were especially at risk.

[...] Professor Brian Spratt, chairman of the Royal
Society working group on DU, said "[...] large numbers
of corroding depleted uranium penetrators embedded in
the ground might pose a long-term threat if the
uranium leaches into water supplies."




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