Dahr Jamail - Iraq 10 years on

Yesterday I posted Dahr Jamails article on how he was affected by his time in Iraq in 2004 and on Joanna Macy. Here he describes his return to Iraq 10 years on

Dahr Jamail Returns to Iraq to Find Rampant Torture and a Failed State Living in "Utter Devastation"

Part one - Investigative journalist Dahr Jamail reported for Democracy Now! throughout the early stages of the U.S. invasion of Iraq 10 years ago. Now with Al Jazeera, Jamail has just returned from Iraq once again, finding what he calls a "failed state" living in "utter devastation." In part one of our interview, Jamail discusses the harrowing security situation for Iraqis living in fear of bombings, executions and kidnappings, the widespread torture in Iraq’s prisons, and the breakdown of security in what he calls a "lawless state." Jamail is the author of "Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq" and "The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Ten Years Later, U.S. Has 

Left Iraq with Mass 

Displacement & Epidemic of 

Birth Defects, Cancers

In part two of our interview, Al Jazeera reporter Dahr Jamail discusses how the 

U.S. invasion of Iraq has left behind a legacy of cancer and birth defects 

suspected of being caused by the U.S. military’s extensive use of depleted 

uranium and white phosphorus. Noting the birth defects in the Iraqi city of 

Fallujah, Jamail says: "They’re extremely hard to bear witness to. But it’s 

something that we all need to pay attention to ... What this has generated is, from 

2004 up to this day, we are seeing a rate of congenital malformations in the city of 

Fallujah that has surpassed even that in the wake of the Japanese cities of 

Hiroshima and Nagasaki that nuclear bombs were dropped on at the end of World 

War II." Jamail has also reported on the refugee crisis of more than one million 

displaced Iraqis still inside the country, who are struggling to survive without 

government aid, a majority of them living in Baghdad