By Charley Reese
                Commentary

                Published in The Orlando Sentinel on November 26, 2000

                Most Americans don't realize how heinous our own
                government has been in its foreign policy.

                The Sunday Herald, a Scottish newspaper, last
                September reported that the United States and its allies
                deliberately destroyed Iraq's water supply and in the
                nine years since have deliberately prevented it from
                being repaired by keeping out the equipment and
                chemicals necessary.

                A Georgetown University professor has obtained a
                seven-page document, prepared by the Defense
                Intelligence Agency, that pointed out the vulnerability of
                the water system, its dependence on imported
                equipment and chemicals, and the likely consequences
                of its destruction.

                The report was dead accurate. The United States and its
                allies destroyed the system. The Sunday Herald
                reported that eight multipurpose dams were repeatedly
                bombed, smashing the infrastructure for flood control,
                municipal and industrial water storage, irrigation and
                hydroelectric power. Four of Iraq's seven major
                pumping stations were destroyed, as were 31 municipal
                water and sewage facilities.

                The result: Water-borne diseases -- typhoid, dysentery,
                hepatitis, cholera and polio -- have killed thousands of
                civilians in Iraq. There is always a rough justice in the
                universe, however. The Sunday Times has reported that
                tens of thousands of American and British troops are
                suffering from radiation poisoning from the depleted
                uranium shells fired during the Gulf War. No wonder
                both governments are trying to deny that Gulf War
                Syndrome even exists.

                The water-supply system, which we attacked, had
                absolutely nothing to do with supplying or supporting the
                Iraqi troops in Kuwait. It was a deliberate,
                cold-blooded attack, intended to kill and sicken Iraqi
                civilians. It was a war crime.

                People who like to yap about the rule of law should see
                to it that their own government obeys the law.

                The new president of Yugoslavia has our number when
                it comes to the rule of law. He said, "Washington
                introduced into the rule of law everything that is opposed
                to the rule of law: voluntarianism, insecurity and
                arbitrariness."

                It's one thing to knock out communications towers,
                bridges and ammunition dumps, but a city's sewer and
                water system has nothing to do with the military. Taking
                those out seems more malicious than any American
                would be capable of -- unless you've met some of the
                unthinking automatons and some of the heartless sharks
                who infect the Beltway. They flit around like wraiths,
                whispering their poisonous malice into the ears of the
                office holders.

                It would be comforting to imagine that one day the
                American people will elect to public office men and
                women who make clear to the world that we do not
                make war on women and children.

                Unfortunately, I fear that the cruelty and disregard for
                human life and human rights is a reflection of the
                American people's own attitudes. So long as the victims
                are "the others" -- foreigners -- most Americans don't
                seem to give a flip what is done to them.

                One hates to keep returning to the universal wisdom of
                religion, but what one sows one reaps. Our government
                has, in our name, been sowing hate, and one day we will
                reap the fruit of that hate. It will be bitter fruit.

                It will not be much consolation, if one day someone
                poisons our water supply, to know that that person got
                the idea from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.

                We need a new, more benign emperor in our Rome on
                the Potomac.