take the log out of your own eye

A disturbing story broke on Sky News this morning of a massive increase in the number of deformed and malformed babies being born in Iraq - all since 2002 when America first attacked. These children are physically and mentally beyond the reach of normal society, with missing limbs, senses, capacities and features. Some cannot stay awake for days at a time, some haven't grown since the day they were born, some are covered in violent and seeping birthmarks - all are practically incapable of speech or normal activity.

Speculation has arisen that this epidemic rise is due to America's use of a weapon made of white phosphorous which explodes when coming into contact with oxygen causing severe burns. Studies are not yet definite on the exact repercussions of white phosphorus on a people and its environment, but none have yet ruled it out as a cause for what could be happening in Iraq's Fallujah.

How does someone invade a country stating that country's nuclear weapons policy and experimentation with biological warfare as a justifiable reason for the invasion - and then leave its people like this? They've used the very same dangerous and untested weapons they condemned on an innocent people who were just trying to survive under a dreadful regime. Now they're trying to survive with a crisis that they were never prepared for and never dreamed would happen.

Nothing has made me as angry about America's invasion of Iraq as this. How two-faced, self-serving and hypocritical can one administration really be?

One mother's 3 year old baby lies still on the bed, limbs the same size as the day she was born, but they're not the only reason she cannot move - she has two heads growing out of her tiny shoulders that weigh her down. It seems to be the only part of her that keeps growing. Her mother says she can easily sleep for 3 days, and that they have to poke her to wake her up. But there's little difference between awake and asleep for her.

Another mother holds a baby girl whose face is covered in a large swollen purple oozing "birthmark". It glistens and looks too painful to touch. While being interviewed, the mother says she sometimes wishes her daughter would just die - that way they can both get some relief...

Who knows what will be found out once studies on white phosphorous are definitive and complete. But I for one hope they point squarely at the US as being as irresponsible, selfish and criminal as the regime they swooped in to remove.