Chicago Tribune
              September 13 2000
              By Kathy Kelly

              I just returned from a seven week visit to Iraq. Our small team lived with
              impoverished families in southern Iraq. We tried to understand the effect of
              economic sanctions against Iraq by learning what it's like to live without
              electricity for 14 hours per day in 120-degree heat, to share meals made
              >from meager rations, and to be cut off from communication with the rest of
              the world.

              Recently, it's been reported that Iraq refused to allow a new group of UN
              experts to assess the impact of sanctions. But we should recall that Iraq
              already pays the salaries of 400 UN workers in the country. These workers
              file regular reports about conditions within Iraq. Instead of
              asking Iraq to foot the bill for new assessment teams, why not heed reports
              already filed by UN workers in Iraq? Why not draw from the conclusions of
              Mr. Denis Halliday and Mr. Hans von
              Sponeck, both of whom resigned their senior UN posts because they couldn't
              in conscience continue to supervise UN policies that directly harm Iraqi
              civilians. For Iraqis, decimated by ten years of sanctions, new assessment
              missions begin to look like nothing more than delaying tactics to excuse the
              inaction of diplomats in New York.

              Supporters of sanctions have criticized visits like ours, saying that the
              Iraqi government welcomes us only because we are useful for propaganda
              purposes. But our visits give us the insights necessary to balance the
              reports, which prevail in the US media, and the claims of government
              officials who have no direct knowledge of Iraq. Democracy is based on
              information. Our accounts of living with needy families in southern Iraq are
              necessary if the US public is to make clear, informed decisions about our
              relations with Iraqi people. We don't return with government propaganda. We
              report what we've seen and heard. Our main contact in Basra is the Catholic
              Archbishop who is in union with Rome. The Pope has called the sanctions
              cruel and pitiless and, with numerous other religious leaders, heads of
              state, members of Parliament, and two Nobel laureates, has called for an end
              to sanctions. Are all of these people anti-sanctions activists?

              US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright asserts that the US now believes
              force is not the answer to remedy Iraq's rejection of a new UN weapons
              inspection team. If force is not the answer, then why has the US been
              regularly bombing Iraq? While I was there, US and British planes attacked a
              railway station, a grain storage area, and decrepit tire stores in a rundown
              area? I visited each of these spots and was bewildered by the show of force.
              A fraction of the money used to launch the daily sorties that patrol and
              bomb in the no-fly zones could solve a host of problems for Iraqi civilians.

              Albright told news reporters that religious groups who believe the US
              engineered sanctions are the cause of suffering in Iraq hold Alice in
              Wonderland fantasies. Yet Ms.Albright fantasizes that the whole problem can
              be reduced to simple, cartoonized terms of the "good guys," - US policy
              makers - and the demonized "bad guy," Saddam Hussein. Ms. Albright says it's
              very simple-he is the villain. Those words work well for public relations
              purposes, but the imagined simplicity of the situation hardly coheres with
              the complex reality that afflicts Iraqis with whom I lived this summer.

              If you're a child, the villain is not Saddam Hussein and it's not Bill
              Clinton. If you're a child with a queasy stomach, nausea and weakness, the
              villain is diahhreah that might become dysentery and the villain is a
              terrible sickness you can't control. If you're a child who wears the same
              clothes every day and sleeps in those clothes and can't go to school because
              you have no shoes, the villain is poverty, relentless, inescapable poverty.
              I grew very close to radiant little girls with gleaming eyes who, upon
              hearing US warplanes fly overhead, instantly plugged up their ears and
              shouted out loud to drown out the sound. The villain is panicky fear that
              the plane will again bomb your street.

              Is it an Alice in Wonderland fantasy to allow people to sell their products
              in a classic capitalist manner and buy what they need? If you don't allow
              people to sell what they have and buy what they need, they suffer. That's
              reality, not fantasy.

              Ms. Albright claims that the regime's strategy is to ignore UN charters and
              seek to produce at all costs the deadliest weapons humanity has ever known.
              It sounds like she should be talking about another country. The US has
              sought to preserve, at all costs, its ability to sell weapons to Iraq's
              neighboring states. Meanwhile, the US has rejected the nuclear
              non-proliferation weapon treaty, refused to ratify the comprehensive test
              ban treaty, refused to sign the land mines treaty and insisted it can bomb
              Iraq without authorization from the UN Security Council. The country that
              has developed, stored, sold and used more weapons of mass destruction than
              any other country on earth is the United States.

              Scott Ritter, a former US Marine employed by the UN as a chief weapons
              inspector says Iraq is quantitatively disarmed. He strongly favors lifting
              sanctions.

              Iraq has been criticized for turning down an offer from the UK to provide
              free medial treatment in the form of a "flying hospital," a project already
              approved by the UN sanctions committee. At first glance, this may seem
              unwise, but we should consider this offer from the perspective of a country
              dealing with two other countries, the US and the UK, that regularly bomb
              Iraq and that have vowed to overthrow Iraq's government. Would the US accept
              a flying hospital from a country actively bombing us at the same time? Is
              the flying hospital going to take care of the people who've just been
              bombed? Britain is participating in the no-fly zone patrol that hasn't been
              approved by the UN.

              Ms. Albright says "We must continue to do all we can to ease the hardships
              faced by Iraq's people, but we must also defend the integrity of this
              institution (the UN) our security and international law." Rather than defend
              the integrity of the UN, the US led sanctions have turned the UN into an
              instrument of economic warfare waged directly against children. From the
              Gulf War onward, the US has violated international law by targeting civilian
              populations. Iraq does not pose a threat to its neighbors, most of whom have
              steadily built their own arsenals with US made weapons, making purchases
              that prop up our economy. Iraq poses a threat to the US only because it
              threatens the US ability to control Iraq's most precious resources.

              The US State Dept had the opportunity to remove Saddam Hussein from power in
              1991, following the Gulf War, and chose not to. The Bush administration
              explained that it did not want Iraq to become fragmented and that it felt
              the Baath party was the only group that could hold it together. They
              continue to want the current regime to be strong internally and weak
              externally. They want to keep Saddam Hussein in power, crippled, but as a
              convenient excuse to maintain the economic sanctions and US dominance in the
              region. This is their policy, but they don't want to verbalize it. This is
              what they've achieved, but they've achieved it at a terrible price for Iraqi
              children

              If I am an Alice in Wonderland for believing that the lives of over a half
              million children are not an acceptable price for this so-called achievement,
              then head me toward the looking glass.

              Kathy Kelly