Vancouver Sun
              August 25, 2000 A15

              By Jillian Skeet

              Recent weeks have seen the re-emergence of an all-too-familiar pattern of
              deadlines, allegations and threats against Iraq.  Together, these signs
              suggest that the stage is once again being set for a massive military strike
              on that beleaguered state.

              New United Nations resolutions have been adopted, affirming that sanctions
              will not be lifted until a new weapons inspection team has been allowed into
              Iraq and has, according to its own determination, disarmed the country.

              When U.N. sanctions were first imposed on Iraq on August 6th 1990 to
              encourage Iraqi withdrawal from the neighbouring state of Kuwait, few could
              foresee the decade of horror and suffering that was about to unfold.

              Ten years later, the facts are more than clear.  The policies of continuous
              war and sanctions have deprived the citizens of Iraq of the necessities of
              life.  An estimated 1.5 million innocent civilians have died in what is
              essentially a walled-off ghetto.

              Before the Gulf War began on January 17th 1991, Iraq was a sophisticated and
              wealthy nation.  Although politically repressed, most Iraqis enjoyed a high
              standard of living and a good quality of life.  According to reports from
              the World Health Organization, obesity was the biggest health problem in the
              country.

              A recent UNICEF report confirms 500,000 excess deaths of children under five
              and a further 25 percent of all children are suffering from stunted physical
              and intellectual development as a consequence of chronic malnutrition.

              Today, Iraq is a nation of devastation, death and despair.

              In a country that once employed 7 million foreigners, unemployment has
              reached a staggering 65% in many sectors.  The 250 Iraqi dinar note, worth
              $750 US in 1990, is now worth less than 10 cents.

              Iraq's once outstanding education system, which provided free education
              through university, has been decimated.  School supplies - including chalk,
              pencils, scribblers and textbooks are banned under sanctions.  Forty percent
              of students are now absent on any given day. Those who do attend often sit
              three to a desk with no paper or pencils. According to the teachers, many
              are simply too malnourished to concentrate.

              The healthcare system which once rivaled our own is now virtually
              non-existent.  Iraq's once modern public hospitals lack functioning medical
              equipment and essential painkillers, anesthetics and medicine.  A visit to
              one of these hospitals is a haunting experience for it is here that the
              desperate arrive and, in most cases, simply die without the medicine or
              treatment that could save their lives.

              Amidst this horror, bombs continue to rain down on Iraq almost daily.  Since
              the Gulf War, the United States and Britain have flown 28,000 sorties and
              dropped 1,800 missiles and bombs on Iraqi territory.

              Even more horrifying, however, is the reality that western governments and
              media rarely report on the bombings, let alone challenge the legality,
              morality or wisdom of this decade-long policy of war and sanctions.

              Saddam Hussein has been so successfully demonized by western governments and
              media, that violations of the United Nations Charter and flagrant violations
              of international humanitarian law by the West are either overlooked or
              dismissed as
              insignificant compared to the goal of "containing Saddam".

              Yet, it is the United States and Britain, with their own large stockpiles of
              weapons of mass destruction that are bombing Iraq for purportedly pursuing
              this same class of weaponry.

              The four-day bombing of Iraq in December 1998 and the bombings carried out
              since then constitute outright acts of aggression that should have received
              unanimous condemnation from the world community.  Yet, even Canada, once
              acclaimed for its support for the principles of the UN Charter and
              international law, has actively supported and participated in the war and
              sanctions against Iraq.

              US and British military action against Iraq cannot be justified under the
              principles of military self-defence contained in the United Nations Charter.
              The  "No Fly Zone" which has sparked the ongoing bombings was established by
              an arbitrary decision by the United States, Britain and France.  It
              therefore violates both international law and sovereignty of Iraq.

              US and British policy towards Iraq is predicated on the assumption that the
              world believes in their moral superiority, and accepts the global double
              standards on which their policies are based.

              The fact that Saddam Hussein is a repressive dictator is beyond dispute.  He
              rules Iraq with an iron fist, and is known for foreign incursions into Iran
              and Kuwait, and for his use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in the
              northern Iraqi village of Halabja in March 1988.  But Saddam's record of
              atrocities does not stand-alone.

              While the US and Britain enforce the arbitrary "No Fly Zone" to purportedly
              protect the Kurds from Saddam, they ignore attacks on the same people by
              their NATO ally, Turkey, which has frequently invaded and occupied portions
              of northern Iraq.  While they are destroying Iraq for allegedly pursuing
              weapons of mass destruction and failing to comply with UN resolutions, the
              US actively assists and protects Israel, which maintains an arsenal of
              nuclear weapons and has failed to comply with scores of UN resolutions.

              It was not Saddam but the British colonial government of 1920 which first
              contemplated the
              use of chemical weapons against the Iraqi people.  And while many countries
              either have or pursue a nuclear weapons capability, the United States is the
              only country in the world that has used nuclear weapons against the civilian
              population of another state.

              The US  maintains the world's largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, and US
              and Britain both refuse to uphold the pledge they made 30 years ago under
              the Non- Proliferation Treaty to disarm their nuclear weapons.  This promise
              was made in exchange for a promise from the non-nuclear states that they
              would not seek to acquire nuclear weapons.  Current U.S. efforts to develop
              a ballistic missile defence system clearly indicate that the U.S. has no
              plans to work for global nuclear disarmament..

              The US has also dragged its feet in destroying its large chemical weapons
              arsenal as required under the Chemical Weapons Convention.  It was out of
              step when the rest of the world agreed that landmines were an intolerable
              instrument of war, and joined the ranks of its demonized foes - Iraq and
              Libya - in refusing to endorse the establishment of the International
              Criminal Court in Rome in June of 1998.

              We are programmed to believe that, unlike Iraq, countries like the US can be
              trusted to use their military might responsibly.  Yet, the US bombing of the
              El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan in August, 1998 (which Canada
              immediately endorsed) was nothing more than an act of state terrorism.

               To-date, all evidence indicates that the pharmaceutical factory in Sudan
              was just that.  It was not producing biological or any other type of
              weaponry, but was producing 50% of the pharmaceutical needs of the
              impoverished Sudanese people, 90% of the veterinary needs for the African
              continent and, incidentally, had the contract for pharmaceuticals under
              Iraq's meagre "Oil for Food Deal".

              It is no coincidence that the US and Britain are the ringleaders in the
              on-going destruction of Iraq. They were once next-door neighbours in the
              Middle East.  While the US controlled vast oil resources and maintained a
              major strategic foothold in Iran, Britain was doing the same across the
              border in Iraq.

              The US controlled Iran through their man, the Shah, whom they installed
              following a CIA-backed coup that overthrew Iran's democratically elected
              leader, Mossadegh in 1953. US foreign policy suffered a crippling blow when
              the Shah - despite being propped up by Savak, a brutal police force - was
              deposed by a popular revolution in 1979.

              Iraq was a British Colony until the British installed monarchy was
              overthrown in a popular revolution in 1958.  This occurred despite American
              assistance to prop up the British controlled regime.

              In 1972, when Iraq announced the nationalization of its oil resources it
              came as a major blow to British, American and French oil companies
              controlling Iraq's oil at the time.

              The true objective behind the decade-long policy of war and sanctions
              against Iraq, is the reassertion of control over Iraq's oil.  This is
              the political reality - Iraq's children are dying for oil.

              This was clearly underscored in a UN Security Council review of the
              sanctions released in February of last year.

              The report documented the tremendous human suffering under sanctions and
              recommended that Iraq be permitted to sell as much oil as it needs to
              provide adequate food and medicine for its population.

              The report acknowledged that as a result of war damage and the inability to
              import spare parts and equipment, Iraq's oil production capacity was
              limited..  It's solution was not that Iraq be permitted to import the
              equipment and spare parts necessary to repair its oil infrastructure but
              instead that Iraq be permitted to enter into bilateral agreements with
              foreign oil companies. These foreign oil companies would in turn be given
              permission to import spare parts and equipment.

              So, here is Iraq's choice.  Either submit to the will of the international
              community and hand over control of oil production to foreign oil companies,
              or continue to try to control its own oil resources and thus watch its
              children and its future die.

              Since 1990, the United States, with British support, has successfully
              manipulated the UN Security Council into committing in Iraq some of the
              worst atrocities of the century. Nothing has been resolved during the
              10-year war.  Saddam remains in power.  More than 1 million innocent Iraqi
              civilians are dead and an entire generation has been brutalized by war and
              deprivation. The population is so impoverished that it will take generations
              to recover.

              The Geneva Conventions, the Convention on Genocide, the Universal
              Declaration on Human Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and
              the goals and objectives of the United Nations for the peaceful resolution
              of conflict, have all become mere words on paper.