AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Democracy Now!, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we go first to Jeremy Scahill, reporting from the southern Iraqi city of Basra.

JEREMY SCAHILL: One-and-a-half-year-old Hammoudi Abbas is going to die, maybe in a week, maybe in a month, maybe in a year. But his doctor says he won’t see a third birthday. Hammoudi was just diagnosed with lymphoma, cancer of the lymph nodes. His face is severely disfigured by a large softball-sized tumor that presses against his left eye. He wears a bib around his neck that says “I love my mommy.” The bib is covered in the blood that Hammoudi has been coughing up. His doctor, Mohamed Kamel, says that with adequate drugs, Hammoudi would have a solid chance of beating the cancer. But he says that because of shortages caused by the U.S.-led sanctions, the necessary drugs are simply not available.

DR. MOHAMED KAMEL: Die within a week, some of them within a month, some of them even a year. But he’ll die sooner or later.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Hammoudi is one of the thousands of children in southern Iraq that have fallen victim to the cancer epidemic that has plagued the region since the end of the 1991 Gulf War. The doctors at the hospital say the cancer is the result of Washington’s use of depleted uranium munitions and the ensuing contamination of southern Iraq’s food and water supply. The doctors at Ibn Ghazwan, Basra’s largest pediatric hospital, don’t need the latest threats of war from Washington to enter crisis mode. They say they live it every day.

DR. MOHAMMED NASIR: We have enough experience to deal with war, because, you know, we are 20 years in war, with Iran, then with U.S.A.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Dr. Mohammed Nasir is the director of the hospital.

DR. MOHAMMED NASIR: We are prepared. Our people are knowing what to do with such situation. We have the experience, but we have no the content.

JEREMY SCAHILL: While the hospital will not be the primary institution in Basra handling casualties and war injuries in the event of a U.S. attack, it will continue to deal with life and death situations among Iraq’s most vulnerable population. The hospital is full of parents sitting at their dying children’s bedsides praying for miracles. The doctors say they are very worried about their ability to continue in the event of war.

DR. MOHAMMED NASIR: In 1991, Iraq have a lot of things to deal with any emergencies. But nowadays it’s very difficult for us. We are short of everything, even the food. Whatever happen to us, we will have to accept it, because no choice left for us.

JEREMY SCAHILL: From the hospital, we head to the overcrowded slums of Basra, which lies in the heart of the so-called no-fly zones imposed by the U.S. and Britain. The people live with regular bombings and the constant rumble of planes.

Have a lot of the American and British planes been flying around?

IKBAR FARTUS: Yes. Before, many, I think 9:00, 9:30.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah.

IKBAR FARTUS: There is an American airplane coming, early this morning, yes.

JEREMY SCAHILL: In the Jumhuriya neighborhood, we pay a visit to the home of Ikbar Fartus, who we’ve reported on extensively before. On January 25th, 1999, her 6-year-old-son Haider was killed by a U.S. missile after Washington’s warplanes attacked their neighborhood. His younger brother Mostafa lost two fingers in the attack and still lives with shrapnel in his back. In all, according to the U.N., 17 people were killed that day. Fartus and the 23 other people who live in their house know that war is again on the horizon.

IKBAR FARTUS: The largest thing now, with the speech and the — because all of us are scared from the — because we taste it before. We know how it’s — how much it’s very hard and very, very, very, very hard, when you can do nothing, only just waiting the bombing and the airplanes and missiles.

JEREMY SCAHILL: While we were in her home, Ikbar Fartus told us that she was two months pregnant. She said she hoped the baby would improve their situation. Two days later, she lost the baby. For years, since the 1991 Gulf War, the people of al-Jumhuriya neighborhood have lived with raw sewage flowing through their streets like a canal. Their roads are not paved, and their drinking water is polluted. Some say that conditions are the result of U.S.-led sanctions and regular bombing. Others say it’s Saddam’s punishment of the overwhelmingly Shiite population. Likely it’s a combination of the two. In recent months, bulldozers and other machinery have arrived. The government has finally gotten around to paving some of the streets, and work is underway to reconnect the neighborhood to the sewage system in Basra. But for one family, the welcomed construction brought tragedy. Last November we visited the home of a struggling artist, Majid, his wife and their four children. When we were there last year, Majid’s wife Karima told us how the American and British warplanes scared her so much that she would collapse when she heard them in the air.

KARIMA: [translated] I feel sick when I hear the planes flying above. I cry. I have psychological shock. I can’t sleep. I listen to the radio, and I feel scared. We are asking God just to save us.

JEREMY SCAHILL: As we left Jumhuriya, we learned that not long after she spoke with us, Karima had an episode of psychological collapse on the street in front of her house. As she fell, she hit her head on one of the bulldozers working in the neighborhood. Her injuries were so severe that she died. Her husband Majid, who loved to paint pictures of Imam Ali, one of the holiest figures in Shia Islam, has now painted a picture of his wife that hangs in their modest home. The painting is strikingly lifelike, and those who knew Karima say it perfectly captures who she was. Several of her neighbors told us that now Karima can finally rest peacefully away from the rumble of the warplanes. But Majid and the children and their neighbors in Basra know that they are left to face a very uncertain future. For Democracy Now!, this is Jeremy Scahill in Basra.

AMY GOODMAN: And special thanks to Jacquie Soohen, as well as Norm Stockwell of WORT and Rick Rowley of Big Noise Films.