Ten Important Reasons to Prepare Now to Cover Iraq in August.
 

A new crisis is brewing

The head of the new UN weapons inspection team, Hans Blix, has said his
team will be ready to begin its work in August. Iraq has already said that
the terms of UNSCR 1284 aren't acceptable and that UNMOVIC won't be
allowed in. [1] [See www.scn.org/ccpi/10reasons.html for endnotes and
links to related information.]

The US/UK may be preparing for more bombing

The New York Times story about Iraq's (legal) missile production [2], the
Sunday Times (London) story about terror against Iraqi opposition leaders
[3], and Richard Butler's recent speeches [4] lay the political groundwork
for bombing. Scott Ritter wrote of this bombing scenario and pointed out
that the US/UK pursuit of their own agenda (that Saddam must
go) sacrifices weapons inspections and disarmament (the UN agenda) and is
a violation of international law. [5, 6]

August marks 10 years of sanctions on Iraq

UN sanctions began on August 6, 1990. This date is also the 55th
anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, where an estimated 140,000
Japanese died. According to UNICEF, 500,000 Iraqi children would be alive
today if 1990 conditions in Iraq had continued through 1998. [7]  Protest
events are planned in Washington, DC, and other cities. [8]

Respected community leaders will break sanctions law in Seattle

More than 85 community leaders and citizens of Seattle have committed to
publicly break US sanctions law. At a media send-off event they will give
food, seeds, medical journals, and water purifiers to a delegation of four
local residents to take to Iraq. This event will be at noon, Monday,
August 7th, in Steinbrueck Park. [9]  In Iraq, the delegation will visit a
group of Americans living in Basra for two months to witness and report on
conditions there. [10]

The US, though denying it, embargoes food and medicine to Iraq

President Clinton wrote, "food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods
have always been exempt from the sanctions on Iraq." [11]

Nonetheless, the US government has proposed fines of $163,000 against two
Seattle travelers and the group Voices in the Wilderness, partly for the
crime of bringing "medicines and toys to Iraq" in 1997. [12]

Senator Craig said of US sanctions policy towards Iraq, "The use of food
as a weapon is wrong. Starving populations into submission is poor foreign
policy." [13]

International law prohibits using food as a weapon -- withholding food
from civilians is a crime against humanity. [14]

Polluted water is the 'prime killer' of Iraqi children

Rep. Tony Hall, just back from Iraq, wrote "The prime killer of children
under five years of age -- diarrhoeal diseases -- has reached epidemic
proportions and they now strike four times more often than they did in
1990. Holds on contracts for the water and sanitation sector are a prime
reason for the increases in sickness and death." Of the 18 holds on
contracts, he wrote, all but one was placed by the US. [15]

The US deliberately caused Iraq's polluted drinking water

Iraq's polluted water is due to the intentional destruction of civilian
infrastructure during the Gulf War. This was done, according to the
Pentagon's Col. John Warden, for 'long-term leverage'. [16]

"People say, 'You didn't recognize that it was going to have an effect on
water or sewage,'" said the [Pentagon] planning officer. "Well, what were
we trying to do with [UN-approved economic] sanctions --- help out the
Iraqi people? No. What we were doing with the attacks on infrastructure
was to accelerate the effect of sanctions." [17]

Bombed infrastructure followed by economic sanctions IS a WMD

Foreign Affairs magazine reported that sanctions have killed more than all
'weapons of mass destruction' put together. [18]  To be a credible threat,
a WMD must be useable. Imagine a WMD so deadly that it kills 10
Vietnam-Veteran walls full of children -- and no one notices. ABC, CBS,
and NBC did not give a word of coverage to UNICEF's 1999 report of 500,000
children's deaths. [19]  As Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire observed,
"Sanctions are the economic nuclear bomb." [20]

Respected voices are speaking out and need to be heard

In an editorial from April 2000, The Economist wrote, "If, year in, year
out, the UN were systematically killing Iraqi children by air strikes,
western governments would declare it intolerable, no matter how noble the
intention. They should find their existing policy just as
unacceptable." [21]

A former head of UNSCOM, a former UNSCOM weapons inspector, a former UN
Assistant Secretary General, two former top UN aid coordinators in
Baghdad, religious leaders, 70 Congresspersons, the New England Journal of
Medicine, and The Chicago Tribune, Seattle P-I, Seattle Times, San Jose
Mercury, and others have reported on, or editorialized against, sanctions
policy on Iraq. [22, 23, 24, 25, 26]

Truthful reporting can stop more deaths in Iraq

Hans von Sponeck, the last oil-for-food program coordinator who resigned
in protest over sanctions, said "[There is] disinformation, distortion,
misinterpretation, wherever you look ... but the finest example of
distorted information is a State Department Report ..." [27, 28]  US/UK
policy cannot stand the light of day. It is the job of responsible media
to shed that light. Tomorrow, the lives of yet another 150 Iraqi kids will
be at stake.
 
 

Bert Sacks

For more info:
Phone: (206) 548-9566
Email: wwfor@connectexpress.com
Website: www.scn.org/ccpi
(Please see the footnoted version of this on our website.)
 

----------------------

[1] The New York Times, June 10, 2000, "Security Council Extends
Oil-for-Food Program Allowing Iraq to Import Necessities" by Barbara
Crossette.

[2] The New York Times, July 1, 2000, "Flight Tests by Iraq Show Progress
of Missile Program", by Steven Lee Myers.

[3] The Sunday Times (London), July 9, 2000, "Saddam blackmails rebels
with rape", by Marie Colvin.

[4] "Former U.N. arms inspector Butler warns Israel of Iraqi weapons
buildup",
http://www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/meast/07/18/israel.iraq.ap/index.html, July
18, 2000.

[5] The Independent (UK), July 4, 2000, Interview with Scott
Ritter; http://www.iacenter.org/iraq82000.htm.

[6] Arms Control Today, June 2000, "Redefining Iraq's Obligation: The Case
for Qualitative Disarmament of Iraq", by Scott
Ritter; http://www.armscontrol.org/ACT/june00/iraqjun.htm.

[7] UN Unicef's Report "Results of the 1999 Iraq Child and Maternal
Mortality Surveys" is available at www.unicef.org/newsline/99pr29.htm and
www.unicef.org/reseval/iraq.htm released August 12, 1999.

[8] See http://www.endthewar.org,
http://www.nonviolence.org/vitw/pages/96.htm and
http://www.forusa.org/CCIraqFrame.html.

[9] See http://www.scn.org/ccpi/Aug2000delegLetter.html for the sign-on
letter with the updated names of those committed to this action and more
details about the event.

[10] Basra 2000 Project of Voices in the Wilderness, see press release and
regular updated reports from Basra (July 18th and 22nd, so far) at
http://www.nonviolence.org/vitw/Basra%202000.html.

[11] Letter from President Clinton to Representative Cambell, March 28,
2000. http://www.scn.org/ccpi/ClintonToCampbell.html.

[12] "Prepenalty Notice" from the Office of Foreign Assets Control,
U.S. Dept. of the Treasury, OFAC Nos. IQ-162016 and IQ-162433, December 3,
1998; http://www.nonviolence.org/vitw/htv2.html.

[13] May 21, 1998 Joint Senate Hearing, "Iraq: Are Sanctions Collapsing?",
available at http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate; see also
administration statements on using food as a tool for foreign policy
objectives at
http://www.state.gov/www/policy_remarks/1999/990701_eizen_sanctions.html.

[14] "IRAQ, MARCH/APRIL 1999, Report to the International Physicians for
the Prevention of Nuclear War and Washington Physicians for Social
Responsibility", by Gerri Haynes; appendix dealing with the legal aspects
of sanctions on Iraq, prepared with Elias Davidson, May 1999; five
international laws, charters, declarations and resolutions, and one US
federal law, are listed which are contravened by the sanctions on
Iraq: www.wpsr.org/mideast/app2reference.html.

[15] Press Release from Representative Tony Hall's office, "Rep. Hall
Urges U.S. Government to Review 'Holds' on Iraqi Civilians' Needs", June
28, 2000, see http://www.house.gov/tonyhall/pr149.html.

[16] PBS' Frontline, "The War We Left Behind", 1991, interview with
Colonel John Warden. This quote also appears in the Washington Post
front-page story referenced in the following footnote.

[17] Washington Post, June 23, 1991, "Allied Air War Struck Broadly in
Iraq --- Officials Acknowledge Strategy Went Beyond Purely Military
Targets", by Barton Gellman, p A1. For further quotes on the effect of the
destroyed infrastructure from The New England Journal of Medicine, see
http://www.scn.org/ccpi/infrastructure.html.

[18] Foreign Affairs, May/June 1999, "SANCTIONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION", by
John Mueller and Karl Mueller; also "GETTING IT BACKWARD ON IRAQ" by
F. Gregory Gause III in the same issue.

[19] Iraq Under Siege, edited by Anthony Arnove, published by South End
Press, March 2000. See the Chapter "The Media's Deadly Spin on
Iraq"; http://www.lbbs.org/sep/iraq.htm.

[20] Quote from Mairead Maguire, after returning from a visit to Iraq in
March 1999, facilitated by the group Voices in the Wilderness. See
http://www.nonviolence.org/vitw.

[21] The Economist, April 8, 2000, editorial. See also the article "When
Sanctions Don't Work" at
http://www.economist.com/editorial/freeforall/20000408/index_sf7472.html
in the same issue.

[22]
http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/zforum/00/freemedia061500_butler.htm,
"Richard Butler on Iraq and Foreign Policy", Thursday, June 15, 2000, in
which Richard Butler says "What we now know is that those sanctions [on
Iraq] are an abject failure. ... I can say now that it is perfectly clear
that sanctions against Iraq have become a bankrupt and harmful
instrument."

[23] See a number of interviews with Scott Ritter, including
http://www.scn.org/ccpi/ritter.html: "What I am worried about is the fact
that our policies are just continuing the suffering of innocent people and
actually bringing the Middle East to the brink of yet another
war. ... They [the American people] don't understand that our policies are
killing six-thousand kids a month. Every time I speak and bring that fact
up people are like: 'What?' They are just totally divorced from the
reality of what is happening in Iraq."

[24] Hans von Sponeck (Denis Halliday's replacement) also resigned in
protest over sanctions on Iraq, followed the next day by Jutta Burhardt,
country head of the UN's World Food Programme in Baghdad. See a transcript
of Mr. Sponeck's remarks to a doctors' delegation in Baghdad before his
resignation, and a recent speech in London after his resignation, both
available at http://www.scn.org/ccpi.

[25] See four interviews with Denis Halliday, at www.scn.org/ccpi. Denis
Halliday resigned in protest after 13 months as the UN oil-for-food
coordinator in Baghdad, and has been speaking out in opposition to the
sanctions. Most recently, see
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/070800-02.htm, in which he says, "In
fact, the UN Security Council is sustaining sanctions that are killing
about 7,000 Iraqi children each month and they know that. That is
intentional; that is genocide." (July 12, 2000)

[26] See http://www.scn.org/ccpi for a number of these editorials,
articles and references. Also, see http://leb.net/epic/Epic.html,
http://www.nonviolence.org/vitw, and http://iraqaction.org.

[27] See http://www.scn.org/ccpi/UNandUSreports.html for the URL's to both
the State Department Report and the UNICEF report, and for a comparison of
the 'disinformation, distortion, and misinterpretation' contained in the
State Department Report. E.g., compare the plots of under-five mortality
in the State Department Report with UNICEF's --- the State Department
Report shows a graph with NO change at all in under-five mortality in
1990, while a UNICEF graph shows a doubling and more of that mortality.

[28] Speech at "A Day and Night for the People of Iraq" - Kensington Town
Hall, London - May 6, 2000, by Hans von Sponeck. See
http://www.scn.org/ccpi for full text.