Nun: Iraq's Youth Hurting

By Paul Logan
Journal Staff Writer
About 500,000 Iraqi children have died in the eight years after the Gulf War as a result of the "failed policy" of U.S.-U.N. sanctions, a Dominican nun told an Albuquerque audience.
UNICEF also estimates that about 1 million children under age 5 are chronically malnourished, Sister Jackie Hudson of Bremerton, Wash., said Thursday.
Economic sanctions, affecting food and medical supplies, were imposed after the war to force Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to reduce his arsenal. Hudson said the sanctions were supposed to weaken Saddam, but instead they have hurt the most vulnerable -- babies, the elderly and the poor.
Every time there's a story about Iraq in the media, she said, it reflects the U.S. "government's truth."
To the 50 or so people who attended her talk at the Newman Center, she said, "I hope to bring ... to you the people's truth."
Hudson took a two-week trip in April to Iraq with eight other nuns and risked 12 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for going to a nation that is off-limits to Americans.
She said their suitcases were crammed with basic medicines -- aspirin, vitamins and cough syrup -- and children's school supplies.
About one of every 20 Iraqis is Catholic in what Americans usually think of as a totally Muslim state, she said. Dominican priests and nuns also live in the nation of about 16 million people, Hudson said.
Hudson said Iraq was once considered as cultured as southern European nations. But since the Gulf War, she said, Iraq has slipped from being a relatively prosperous country to poverty-stricken nation.
During the 1991 war, coalition forces destroyed most of the country's water and sewer systems, electrical plants, schools, hospitals and bridges, she said.
About 5,000 pre-school-age children die each month from common illnesses that could easily be treated with the proper drugs. When malnourished mothers give birth to malnourished babies, the newborns that survive often are physically and mentally stunted for life, she said.
Hudson told of a young Iraqi boy who skinned his knee. When his mother washed the wound with contaminated water, it became infected. He was taken to a hospital where they operated without an anesthetic, and the boy died, she said.
On the day before she left Iraq, Hudson stubbed her toe. She stopped the bleeding with a small, antiseptic pad.
"It really came home to me," she said, "how simple mistakes lead to death."
Hudson said she wasn't defending Saddam, who is well known for atrocities against his own people. But before the Gulf War, she said, Saddam had "done great things for his people," including free education through college and free health care.
She said the Iraqi people's physical suffering has left them incapable of overthrowing the government. And Saddam has kept his military very strong, she said.
"There is no way that we can treat the people of this nation so horribly because of its leader, who they did not elect," Hudson said.
Still, she said, the bombing continues.
Hudson termed "obsolete" the antiaircraft sites she saw -- guns mounted on the back of pickups -- compared to U.S. cruise missiles.
"I think until we ourselves deal with our whole culture of violence, it's not going to change," she said.