disobey:

Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.

 

Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.

Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer.

Clearly, they hate us for our freedom. (Or whatever other convenient, bullshit excuse our government wants to make to justify our occupation of foreign countries.)

I wish I had the money to help these people.

ladyatheist:

I say they do. If you agree, add your name to the petition.

I’ve got a better idea. Let’s take all of the money we’d spend on a parade and give them each a bonus instead.  I’m sure they’d appreciate that quite a bit more.

jonathan-cunningham:

Wadaj Khanfar, the director of Al Jazeera, announced his resignation today after Wikileaks released documents that could prove embarassing to the news organization, the New York Times has reported.

According to the documents, Khanfar held particularly close ties with the U.S. government, to whom he promised the network would provide less critical coverage. He steps down today after running the network for eight years.

The documents allege that Khanfar censored some of Al Jazeera’s coverage of the conflict in Iraq under American pressure to sanitize its coverage, presumably to minimize anti-U.S. sentiment in the Arab world. The coverage in question was to include images of injured civilians, which were allegedly removed by Khanfar.

To an American media outlet, colluding with the government is actually a sign of respectability. Remember when the New York Times hid Bush’s warrantless wiretapping of American citizens for over a year?

Wikileaks… protecting us from scumbag liars everywhere.

I figure this needs to be posted as a reminder that not only are we still at war, but we’re still fighting three wars simultaneously.  (Am I the only one who accurately predicted that the war in Libya would not be the quick and easy operation that Obama promised?)

That doesn’t magically go away because we finally notice twenty-five million people have been thrown into the street at home to help pay for our foreign occupations.

Per CNN.com:

August has been the deadliest month for U.S. forces in Afghanistan since the conflict began nearly 10 years ago.

Sixty-six American troops have died this month, topping July 2010 when 65 troops died, according to a CNN tally.