A Public Health Issue or a War Crime
The highly respected medicak journal The Lancet that has been at the fore front of medical research for more that 150 years
has in a recent issue highlighted the consequences of the American areal bimbing on Iraq using a sophisticated statistical
technique called cluster analysis. The margin of error is less that 3% in most cases.
The team looked carefully at the mortality figure reported in select households in the week immediately preceeding the Ameican
bombing campaign in March 2003. This figure was compared to the mortality reported after the campaign to "liberate" Bagdad from the forces loyal to Saddam. The team from John Hopkins University found that by correlating the figure thus obtained over 33 neighbourhoods estimated that more than 100,000 civillians, of whom the large propotion happen to be non combatant women and children,had died as a DIRECT CONSEQUENCE OF ANGLO-AMERICAN ACTION.
The unacceptable civillian casualities has made the World wonder whether the US Under George Bush has no qualms about inflicting death on unarmed civillians in the name of Freedom and Democracy.. George Bush spoke of winning political capital
which he intends on the benefit of Americans. I would like to state the he has got this capital by wanton and callous bloodshed on a minumental scale.
The report made public needs to be placed on the table of the Security Council and the opinion of the World raised against
such actions. It is of coursr not my case that the American political establishment be hauled before a war crimes tribunal.
This will not happen and in 1945 the War Crimes Tribunal was set up only because Germany lost the war. More recently
Milodovan Milosovisch was arraigned in the Hague only because he was militarily and politically defeated.
However this does not negate the fact that atrocities and gross violations of the rules of combat are taking place in that insane and unneccessay war in Iraq and the world must protest.