FOR much of the world, 2003 was defined by the USled invasion of Iraq. And for its part 快猫短视频 had to decide how to cover the conflict and its aftermath. What insight could this magazine, as a specialist in the spheres of scientific rationale, evidence, discovery and technological innovation, bring to what is ultimately a political act?
The answer, as it turned out, was relatively straightforward. For perhaps more than any conflict in the past, this was a war defined by those very themes. The lead-up to the conflict was shaped by the evidence, or lack of it, for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Because of its overwhelming technological superiority, the US decided to fight a 鈥渟mart鈥� war, starting with the 鈥渟hock and awe鈥� tactics designed to stun Iraq into submission.
Once hostilities began, the danger to American and British soldiers on the ground came not only from Iraqi bullets and steel, but friendly fire incidents, fostered by the increasing use of high-tech equipment, and the threat of biological and chemical agents. If that didn鈥檛 kill them, the fear lingered that Gulf war syndrome, which many of the troops who fought in Iraq in 1991 claim has blighted their lives since, eventually might.
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For the Iraqi people, alongside American and British promises of liberation came the spectre of environmental catastrophe for years to come, as war threatened water supplies, biodiversity and the last hopes of rescuing the ancient Mesopotamian marshes, site of the Bible鈥檚 Eden.
These concerns helped to drive 快猫短视频鈥檚 coverage of the conflict. First, we told how the US took a gamble with its near-total reliance on smart weapons 鈥� precision missiles that could be guided accurately to their targets, sparing civilians and non-military buildings. During the 1991 war, smart bombs were reserved for difficult missions. In 2003, they accounted for 90 per cent of all ordnance dropped. But success was by no means guaranteed.
That technological gamble appeared to pay off as Saddam鈥檚 presidential palaces went up in smoke, bombed by unseen pilots and missiles. But as the war progressed, targeting and communications mishaps left soldier after soldier dead from friendly fire. British Challenger tanks shot at each other and American planes bombed British armoured vehicles. Safety experts warned that the culture of rivalry in the armed forces and the way such accidents are investigated means we may never get to the root cause of such accidents.
Weeks into the conflict, as television stations continued to broadcast news of swift victories almost as they were happening, we revealed the impact of the stress placed upon the soldiers involved. US army researchers who measured the cognitive performance of soldiers in simulated battle conditions found that the stress of combat and lack of sleep affect soldiers so badly they perform worse than if drunk or sedated. Such findings have prompted the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to find out if it is possible to stop soldiers needing any sleep at all.
Added to that stress was the omnipresent threat of a biological or chemical weapons attack. Alongside their high-tech detectors, allied soldiers sent to the front line were equipped with pigeons, to act like canaries in a 19th-century coal mine. The birds fall ill at a whiff of nerve agents such as sarin and VX. But the soldiers were not told that about 1person in 10 is almost as sensitive to traces of nerve agents as the pigeons, and there is mounting evidence that exposure to even minuscule amounts of these chemicals can cause permanent brain damage in susceptible individuals.
Meanwhile, new research supported the stories of countless veterans of the 1991 conflict who claim to be suffering from Gulf war syndrome. A team at the US Department of Veterans Affairs found that veterans are likely to be suffering from three separate syndromes. Those suffering from syndrome 2, with symptoms including confusion and dizziness, had lost nerve cells from the basal ganglia, structures known to play a part in the affected brain functions. They were around eight times as likely as healthy comrades to have reacted badly to pyridostigmine, a drug given to soldiers both in 1991 and 2003 to protect against attacks by nerve agents. The irony is that the drugs that protect against these agents seem to affect the same physiological pathways as the poisons themselves.
And debates raged over the use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions. Shells tipped with DU are an armourer鈥檚 dream but an environmental nightmare. And as DU munitions were fired in Iraq, controversial evidence mounted that DU may affect our bodies in ways we don鈥檛 fully understand. We reported on the first direct evidence that radiation from DU damages chromosomes in cultured cells, and on studies suggesting that low-level radiation from DU can enhance the damage caused by its chemical effects.
Of course everything now looks a little different than it did back in March and April. The UK and US have won the war, but are struggling to win the peace. Bombs directed against the occupying forces and international agencies detonate regularly with lethal effect. Old rocket-propelled grenades are downing the most advanced military helicopters, and no weapons of mass destruction have been found. The political fallout appeared to lead to the death of British bioweapons expert David Kelly and threatened the demise of governments on both sides of the Atlantic.
For the Iraqi people, other dangers persist. The United Nations Environment Programme has spent the latter months of this year lobbying the US government for safe access to Iraq, so it can ascertain how widely DU still contaminates the landscape. As 快猫短视频 went to press UNEP had still not gone in, a delay that could mean the extent of any pollution will never be known.
But as we exclusively reported in October, hope burns brightly for some. Saddam is now a prisoner, and Iraqis are starting to undo some of the damage done by his regime, using their new-found freedom to destroy the dams and pipelines he installed to drain the south-western marshes. Water is once again flowing across the marshlands that once formed the largest wetland ecosystem in the Middle East.