Since the assaults on Fallujah in 2004, the city has seen an astronomical rise in birth defects and abnormalities, including some too new to even have a proper medical name. VICE went back to Iraq to investigate.

Shoot the Messenger (2005): How one journalist's footage from Fallujah in the Iraq War caused a firestorm over acceptable rules of combat
The horrific shooting of an unarmed wounded Iraqi in a mosque shocked the world. But what really happened that day was never publicised. This exclusive report reveals the true story.
" I knew I had filmed something that has been captured on camera very few times in war," states NBC reporter Kevin Sites. His footage of a marine shooting a wounded combatant was so shocking that most American audiences didn't even get to see it. NBC released only a single black and white still. But even worse than the shooting, Sites alleges that four other wounded men were also killed in cold blood that day at the mosque. "These men were definitely shot again, freshly shot, after having been wounded the day before." The killing of the other insurgents was largely ignored by the media at the time. With the war such a hot political issue in America, the press is reluctant to criticise the actions of its own soldiers. In the original NBC report, Sites went to great lengths to justify the marine's actions. But while the soldier involved was cleared of any wrong doing, Sites himself came under attack for releasing the footage. "I received thousands of hate mails and death threats saying I was a traitor." The real issue of acceptable rules of combat seems to have been lost in the rush to discredit Sites.

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.

The first 10 pages of “The Burn Pits: The Poisoning of America’s Soldiers” will rip your heart out. In the opening chapter of this new book, Joseph Hickman, a former U.S. Marine and Army sergeant, shares the brief and tragic life story of one Iraq War veteran. In a nutshell, a healthy young man shipped off to Iraq, was stationed at a U.S. military base where he was exposed to a constant stream of toxic smoke, returned home with horrible respiratory problems, was denied care by the VA, developed brain cancer and died.

Thousands of soldiers have suffered similar fates since serving in the vicinity of the more than 250 military burn pits that operated at bases throughout Iraq and Afghanistan. Many who haven’t succumbed to their illnesses yet have passed along the legacy of their poisoning to their children. “The rate of having a child with birth defects is three times higher for service members who served in those countries,” according to the book

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