Tokyo Tightwad.com

How has Iraq attacked us? What is the threat that Iraq poses? You hear a lot of talk about the threat. You'll hear it tonight. Scan the TV channels: "Iraq poses a clear and present threat against America." "Saddam Hussein threatens our way of life!" Threatens our way of life! It's as though if I went off the coast of New York City there would be the Iraqi fleet ready to bomb us. If I go down to the Mexican border, there's the Iraqi Panzer divisions ready to come across the border. Iraq threatens us. Ladies and gentlemen, Iraq threatens nobody but the people of Iraq. Saddam Hussein is not capable of projecting his power outside of his borders. I was part of the effort that destroyed his military. And for over seven years I was inside that country uncovering the secrets of their weapons of mass destruction programs.

George Bush says, "Saddam, let the inspectors back in. Let us get back to the work of finding your weapons." You'll hear Richard Pearl, a very influential person, Paul Wolfowitz and others get on TV, my former boss, Richard Butler, on television and say "Iraq possesses biological weapons." Not "they might possess," "we think they're possessing." "They possess it." As if they know. "They possess chemical weapons." They don't. We destroyed the factories. We destroyed the weapons.

You'll hear that we were kicked out. We weren't kicked out. You know why weapons inspectors aren't there today? Because on December 15, 1998, the Deputy Ambassador of the United States in the United Nations picked up the phone, called Richard Butler and said, "get your inspectors out of Iraq." Why? Because on December 17 we started bombing. And what did we do when we bombed? We didn't go after weapons of mass destruction facilites. We went after Saddam Hussein to eliminate the president of Iraq... How did we target Saddam? We used the information collected by the weapons inspectors. So ask yourself, if you're an Iraqi, would you let the inspectors back in? I think not.

When I went there [Israel] in 1994, the director of military intelligence stated that Iraq was Israel's number one threat. When I left in 1998, Iraq was the number six threat faced by the state of Israel and falling. The reason why Israel had a change of heart in terms of the threat represented by Iraq was because of the close cooperation between the United Nations and Israeli intelligence which enabled us to investigate fully and thoroughly every piece of information Israel was concerned about inside Iraq. And we did so to the satisfaction of the Israeli government. You may not be aware of this, but in the last couple of weeks the Israelis have sent delegations to Washington DC encouraging George Bush not to make a move on Iraq. That to make a move on Iraq right now is unnecessary and unwise for the security of Israel. So, they view the threats as being elsewhere.

Now, missiles, I happen to know a little bit about ballistic missiles. [It's] the same thing. Even if Iraq possessed the long range missiles that they had during the Gulf War, the one's that they launched against Israel, take a look at the pathetic payload that these missiles had. You know, we're talking a couple hundred kilograms [payload]. The nuclear weapon that Iraq was designing was 1.2 tonnes. They didn't have a missile capable of delivering this. Even if they had shrunk the [payload] down to the proper diameter, they didn't had a missile capable of delivering this. It would have taken Iraq five to eight years of continuingly developing their program unhindered by weapons inspectors before they could come up with a delivery system capable of bringing a nuclear weapon, a nuclear device to Tel Aviv. But they don't have a missile program worthy of the name. We destroyed it.

They are allowed, under Security Council resolution, to produce a missile with a range of less than 150 kilometres and they have such a missile. It's called the al Sammud. I watched the al Sammud grow up since it was a little baby in 1994. And I'm telling you right now, in 1998, the last couple times the Iraqis launched it, it didn't work. ...We were there in the factory. We watched them design it. We watched them mill the parts. We watched them assemble it. We watched them do everything to that [missile]. Why? We were weapons inspectors. That was our job. That's the kind of intimacy we had of, not only the Iraqi missile program, but everything in Iraq. So... when I sit here and tell you that they don't have it, it's not guess work. It's not as though we're speculating. We know. Why? We were there. And we weren't there just being blocked by the Iraqis. Whenever the Iraqis blocked me and other inspectors from a site, these were sites that dealt with Saddam Hussein's personal security, not Saddam Hussein's weapons programs. These are sites that dealt with Saddam's bodyguards, with Iraqi intelligence, with Iraqi signal intelligence. Why [go there]? Because we thought they might be hiding documents. Not weapons. Documents. But when we went to the factories that capable of being converted to produce weapons of mass destruction, we were never once blocked. And since 1994, we monitored these factories. Not only did we find that they didn't have the capability, and that they weren't producing weapons of mass destruction, [we found] that it would take them 5 to 6 years, with full access to technology, with full access to money that's denied them by economic sanctions, to begin the reconstitute to a level that could be of concern to us.

April 2001, CIA report. CIA report says we have no proof, no evidence that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction or is producing any. We are concerned that they might be able to do so, be we have no evidence. The fact is, we don't know and we won't know until we get weapons inspectors back in. - http://radio4all.net/pub/archive5/mp3_3/ug113-hour1mix.mp3

...what you've seen is people convicting Saddam Hussein [of possessing weapons of mass destruction] without any evidence. They make flat out statements that Iraq is in possession of chemical weapons, biological weapons, nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles. There's nothing to substantiate this. These people put no facts on the table to back this up. Not only that, they'll avoid debate on the subject. The last thing they want to do is get into a substantive, factually based debate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability because the answer - and they know this - will probably emerge that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction capability. This is why the people who claim that Iraq has these weapons today are also the same people saying "we should not send weapons inspectors back into Iraq." Because they know very well that if you send weapons inspectors back to Iraq, the basis upon which they've made these outlandish statements about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction will be reduced to about zero, it will be discredited. It's stunning that... they are making these statements, but what's even more stunning is that the American media, the journalists refuse to demand substantive evidence to back up these statements.

Kadir Hamza portrays himself as "Saddam's bomb maker", as the preeminant nuclear scientist in Iraq. He is somebody who was educated in the west. He has a physicist's background. But he left the Iraqi nuclear program in the late 1980s and was transfered instead to the presidential office - the special security organization where he worked for Saddam Hussein's son-in-law Hussein Kamal. He [Kadir] was a procurement agent. And what this means in the Iraqi government is he was a corrupt bureaucrat who took kick-backs. And then he defected. And he claimed in his defection that he was Saddam's bomb maker - that he knew all the secrets about the Iraqi weapons programs. Well, the CIA tested him. [They] didn't believe him. Nobody believed him. Anybody who knows about the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program, nuclear program, knows that, you know, we've had real defectors come out who know what they're talking about, they've laid out the program. Hamza's information does not match this. We have administrative files seized in 1991 in which his name never once comes up. Neither his real name, nor any of the aliases he claims to have used. Kadir Hamza is a fraud. But he's a convincing fraud. He's a western educated fraud. And therefore they can put him on national TV and he can speak with his thick Iraqi accent and people take him seriously. And he makes just some outrageous statements about Iraq's past capabilities, current capabiities and future intentions - all of which have no basis in fact. I've challenged Kadir Hamza to a debate on TV, on radio, on public. And he has repeatedly backed down because he knows that should he appear on stage with me, he will be embarrassed. - http://stream.realimpact.org/rihurl.ram?file=webactive/cspin/cspin20020510.rm&start="10:44.3"

...Knight-Ridder reporters found: "A growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats privately have deep misgivings about the administration's double-time march toward war," the news service reported recently. "They charge that the administration squelches dissenting views and that intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument that Saddam poses such an immediate threat to the United States that pre-emptive military action is necessary."

Although close to President Bush, Tenet has, nevertheless, maintained a degree of independence. One example is the letter he recently sent to the House-Senate committee looking into the 9/11 attacks. In it, the CIA argued that it is unlikely Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would initiate a chemical or biological attack against the USA, unless he is first provoked by an American military strike.

When asked earlier by Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., what intelligence he had that necessitated a quick vote on whether to go to war, Tenet answered honestly. "He didn't have anything new," Byrd said later.

In his Oct. 7 address to the nation, Bush warned of Iraq's attempts to import hardened aluminum tubes "for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." But David Albright, a physicist and former United Nations weapons inspector, told The Guardian that it was far from clear that the tubes were intended for such a purpose. He also said skeptics at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California had been ordered to keep their doubts to themselves.

In his latest attempt to link Iraq and al-Qaeda, Bush referred to a "very senior al-Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year." But the administration has given no indication that Abu Musab Zarqawi collaborated with senior Iraqi officials.

Bush mentioned for the first time that the Iraqi regime was developing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) ? drones ? that "could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas." He warned, "We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States." But these have a maximum range of only a few hundred miles and in no way could be flown halfway around the world.

Bush cautioned that if Saddam managed to acquire radioactive material no bigger than "a softball," he could build a nuclear weapon. Even if that were true, he has no way to deliver a nuclear warhead to the United States. His ability to build sophisticated, skyscraper-size intercontinental ballistic missiles, along with launch platforms and control facilities, is at least decades away. - http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2002-10-24-oped-bamford_x.htm

Israeli defence officials have long dismissed demolished Iraq as a minor threat, even though it likely has between six and 18 old Scud missiles hidden away. Saddam did not use chemical weapons in 1991 for fear of Israeli nuclear retaliation. Israel now has the world's most advanced anti-missile system, Arrow, with two batteries operational, and numerous batteries of the latest U.S. Patriot missiles in place. - http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1110-07.htm

Top

The PR campaign for war with Iraq.

In some ways it [hearings by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee] was a sort is who's who for "let's bomb Iraq. That's how is panned out. The senate tried to spin it as though there was a wide range of views expressed, that there were a wide range of tactics discussed. But in reality, the memebers of the Senate Foreign Relations Commitee worked very diligently to keep an objective discussion on Iraq from happening in the United States. It was total subversion of any semblance of a democratic process.

There was a massive campaign launched by anti-sanctions groups and other concerned people around the United States to attempt to get people like Hans Von Sponneck, the former head of the UN humanitarian program in Iraq who resigned on protest, to testify. His predicessor, Dennis Halliday, again someone who has inside knowledge of Iraq, to testify. Scott Ritter, the former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, to testify. The Senate called none of these people. And what they were saying to activists was that "the list is already closed" that "we can't call anymore witnesses." And the next morning, after we were told by Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, we were told by his office after they had been inundated with calls - they said they had never received so many calls for a non-Wisconsin issue - the next day after they'd told us that the list was closed, Richard Butler was called as an additional witness; Casper Weinberger was called as an additional witness. These are people who have an agenda. These are people who are on Fox News every night talking about 'let's bomb Iraq'. And those are the people that were added. There were enough of those voices represented and not a single person who said "this is not a good idea; this is not in the best interest of America; this is not in the best interest of America's national security; this is wrong to punish Iraq." - http://stream.realimpact.org/rihurl.ram?file=webactive/demnow/dn20020805.ra&start=9:05.4

Top

A 9-11 connection? A justification of war?

In early months of Bush administration, the issue of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was not near the top of the foreign policy agenda. Revival of the issue after September 11 appeared primarily to be a pretext for settling unfinished business. Iraq's links to al-Qaeda have proved too tenuous to include Iraq directly in the "war on terrorism." Most recently, the FBI itself has raised doubts about the veracity of the story that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague. Hence the weapons issue has now taken center stage, with the US invoking UN resolutions and hoping to rally international support on this basis. - http://www.zmag.org/content/Iraq/merip_graham.cfm ( MERIP Press Information Note 96, "Sanctions Renewed on Iraq," by Sarah Graham-Brown, May 14, 2002.)

The United States is now set on war with Iraq. What justification is there for such a war? Occasionally it has been suggested that Iraq was somehow linked to the 11 September attacks. The strongest alleged link has been the supposed meeting of Mohammed Atta, the 11 September ringleader, and an Iraqi diplomat expelled from the Czech Republic for spying. The two are meant to have met in Prague in 2001, a 'fact' confirmed by Czech interior minister Stanislav Gross in Oct. 2001. When the Czech police completed their inquiry in Dec. 2001, however, 'Jiri Kolar, the police chief, said there were no documents showing that Atta visited Prague at any time this year [2001], although he had visited twice in 2000'. Another man by the name of Mohammed Atta did visit Prague in 2001, but according to a Czech intelligence source, 'He didn't have the same identity card number, there was a great difference in their ages, their nationalities didn't match, basically nothing. It was someone else.' (Daily Telegraph, 18 Dec. 2001, p. 10) Despite the disintegration of this fable, it continues to circulate and to be repeated as fact. Useful lies can live for a long time. As for any links between Baghdad and al-Qaeda, an anonymous former CIA officer has remarked that, 'The reality is that Osama bin Laden doesn't like Saddam Hussein. Saddam is a secularist who has killed more Islamic clergy than he has Americans. They have almost nothing in common except a hatred of the US. Saddam is the ultimate control freak, and for him terrorists are the ultimate loose cannon.' (Daily Telegraph, 20 Sept. 2001, p. 10)

Initially, Washington included Iraq on its list of countries with links to al-Qaeda, but when European governments insisted that there was no intelligence evidence connecting Baghdad to Osama bin Laden's organisation, the US changed tack. "Now the emphasis is on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programme and the danger that Saddam might send out his own agents armed with chemical or biological devices", one [British] official said.' (Times, 16 Feb. 2002, p. 19) The latest CIA report on the topic (Jan. 2002) says, that without 'an inspection-monitoring program' 'it is more difficult to determine the current status' of Iraq's biological and chemical weapons programmes. No smoking gun, then. Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter has written, 'Given the comprehensive nature of the monitoring regime put in place by UNSCOM [UN Special Commission weapons inspectors], which included a strict export-import control regime, it was possible as early as 1997 to determine that, from a qualitative standpoint, Iraq had been disarmed. Iraq no longer possessed any meaningful quantities of chemical or biological agent, if it possessed any at all, and the industrial means to produce these agents had either been eliminated or were subject to stringent monitoring. The same was true of Iraq's nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities.' (Arms Control Today, June 2000) According to Ritter, a former US Marine, 'manufacturing CW [chemical weapons] would require the assembling of production equipment into a single integrated facility, creating an infrastructure readily detectable by the strategic intelligence capabilities of the United States. The CIA has clearly stated on several occasions since the termination of inspections in December 1998 that no such activity has been detected.' As for biological weapons, 'The Iraqis do have enough equipment to carry out laboratory-scale production of BW agent. However, without an infusion of money and technology, expanding such a capability into a viable weapons program is a virtual impossibility. Contrary to popular belief, BW cannot simply be cooked up in the basement; it requires a large and sophisticated infrastructure, especially if the agent is to be filled into munitions. As with CW, the CIA has not detected any such activity concerning BW since UNSCOM inspectors left Iraq.' - http://www.zmag.org/content/Iraq/rai_no_justification_for_war.cfm

It is now clear that (despite intensive investigative efforts) there is simply no evidence of any Iraqi involvement in the terror attacks of September 11. The most popular theory, of a Prague-based collaboration between one of the 9/11 terrorists and an Iraqi official, has now collapsed. Just two weeks ago, the Prague Post quoted the director general of the Czech foreign intelligence service UZSI (Office of Foreign Relations and Information), Frantisek Bublan, denying the much-touted meeting between Mohamed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, and an Iraqi agent.

More significantly, the Iraqi regime's brutal treatment of its own population has generally not extended to international terrorist attacks. The State Department's own compilation of terrorist activity in its 2001 Patterns of Global Terrorism, released May 2002, does not document a single serious act of international terrorism by Iraq. Almost all references are either to political statements made or not made or hosting virtually defunct militant organizations.

We are told that we must go to war preemptively against Iraq because Baghdad might, some time in the future, succeed in crafting a dangerous weapon and might, some time in the future, give that weapon to some unknown terrorist group --maybe Osama bin Laden-- who might, some time in the future, use that weapon against the U.S. The problem with this analysis, aside from the fact that preemptive strikes are simply illegal under international law, is that it ignores the widely known historic antagonism between Iraq and bin Laden. According to the New York Times, "shortly after Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait in 1990, Osama bin Laden approached Prince Sultan bin Abdelaziz al-Saud, the Saudi defense minister, with an unusual proposition. … Arriving with maps and many diagrams, Mr. Bin Laden told Prince Sultan that the kingdom could avoid the indignity of allowing an army of American unbelievers to enter the kingdom to repel Iraq from Kuwait. He could lead the fight himself, he said, at the head of a group of former mujahideen that he said could number 100,000 men." Even if bin Laden's claim to be able to provide those troops was clearly false, bin Laden's hostility towards the ruthlessly secular Iraq remained evident. There is simply no evidence that that has changed.

Ironically, an attack on Iraq would increase the threat to U.S. citizens throughout the Middle East and perhaps beyond, as another generation of young Iraqis come to identify Americans only as the pilots of high-flying jet bombers and as troops occupying their country. While today American citizens face no problems from ordinary people in the streets of Baghdad or elsewhere in Iraq, as I documented during my visit to Iraq with five Congressional staffers in August 1999, that situation would likely change in the wake of a U.S. attack on Iraq. In other countries throughout the Middle East, already palpable anger directed at U.S. threats would dramatically escalate and would provide a new recruiting tool for extremist elements bent on harm to U.S. interests or U.S. citizens. It would become far more risky for U.S. citizens to travel abroad. - http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0802-02.htm

...after the September 11 attacks, many in the Bush Administration said, "Osama bin Laden could not have carried out this attack without state sponsorship..."... "Iraq had to be the ones responsible for this." And conveniently at that point in time defectors started coming out. Defectors talked about a terrorist training camp south of Bagdad in Salman Pak where they train people to take over airplanes conveniently in groups of four and five armed with knives. Amazing how this information came out after September 11. It's not true. I've been to that terrorist training camp. It's not a terrorist training camp, it's a hostage rescue camp put in place in the 1980s by by the British government to support Saddam Hussein because any nation that has a national airlines has an assault force capable of conducting hostage rescue of aircraft that have been subject to hijacking. We have it. Iraq has it. That's what Salman Pak is plain and simple.

As we speak, American Marines, soldiers, Seal commandos, Air Force personell are in Afghanistan. We've deafeted al Qaeda, at least militarily. We've occupied their camps. We've captured their caves. We've captured computers with harddrives. We've captured documents - thousands of them. And guess what we're finding? And in the months since we've captured these, we've arrested over a thousand al Qaeda members across the world because these documents give 'em up. We know who al Qaeda met with. We know who they plotted with. We know what they were trying to do. And guess what these documents don't show? Any linkage whatsoever with Iraq. See, there is no linkage between al Qaeda and Iraq. These are two totally separate entities. Two totally separate problems. That didn't stop the administration though, from keeping the beat of the war drum against Iraq. - http://radio4all.net/pub/archive5/mp3_3/ug113-hour1mix.mp3

As the White House searches for every possible excuse to go to war with Iraq, pressure has been building on the intelligence agencies to deliberately slant estimates to fit a political agenda. In this case, the agencies are being pressed to find a casus belli for war, whether or not one exists.

"Basically, cooked information is working its way into high-level pronouncements, and there's a lot of unhappiness about it in intelligence, especially among analysts at the CIA," Vince Cannistraro, the agency's former head of counterterrorism, told The Guardian, a London newspaper.

Bush also charged that "Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and deadly gases." Former CIA officer Robert Baer, who spent years following al-Qaeda, told The Guardian that there were contacts between Osama bin Laden and the Iraqi government in Sudan in the early 1990s and in 1998. "But," he added, "there is no evidence that a strategic partnership came out of it. I'm unaware of any evidence of Saddam pursuing terrorism against the United States." - http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2002-10-24-oped-bamford_x.htm

Top

What about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction?

By ignoring or suppressing these facts, together with the scale of a four-year bombing campaign by American and British aircraft (in 1999/2000, according to the Pentagon, the US flew 24,000 "combat missions" over Iraq), journalists have prepared the ground for an all-out attack on Iraq. The official premise for this - that Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction - has not been questioned. In fact, in 1998, the UN reported that Iraq had complied with 90 per cent of its inspectors' demands. That the UN inspectors were not "expelled", but pulled out after American spies were found among them in preparation for an attack on Iraq, is almost never reported. Since then, the world's most sophisticated surveillance equipment has produced no real evidence that the regime has renewed its capacity to build weapons of mass destruction. "The real goal of attacking Iraq now," says Eric Herring, "is to replace Saddam Hussein with another compliant thug." - http://www.zmag.org/content/MainstreamMedia/pilger_compliantpress.cfm

There is strong evidence that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have pretty much been destroyed. Earlier this year, Iraq fully cooperated with international nuclear weapons inspectors. Scott Ritter, a UN weapons inspector in Iraq for six years, asserts that 95% of Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons have been destroyed. On March 13, 2002, he wrote: "America claims that Iraq lied to inspectors and still has deadly stockpiles. But the Bush administration has shown little interest in sending the inspectors back. It has used their absence to hype the threat of a re-armed Iraq." Furthermore, the United States has presented no evidence that Iraq is harboring terrorists. - http://www.rmpjc.org/STOP-THE-WAR-AGAINST-IRAQ/WarAgainstIraqDefiesLaw-March2002.html

What are sanctions for? Eradicating Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, says the Security Council resolution. Scott Ritter, a chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq for five years, told me: "By 1998, the chemical weapons infrastructure had been completely dismantled or destroyed by UNSCOM (the UN inspections body) or by Iraq in compliance with our mandate. The biological weapons programme was gone, all the major facilities eliminated. The nuclear weapons programme was completely eliminated. The long range ballistic missile programme was completely eliminated. If I had to quantify Iraq's threat, I would say [it is] zero." Ritter resigned in protest at US interference; he and his American colleagues were expelled when American spy equipment was found by the Iraqis. To counter the risk of Iraq reconstituting its arsenal, he says the weapons inspectors should go back to Iraq after the immediate lifting of all non-military sanctions; the inspectors of the international Atomic Energy Agency are already back. At the very least, the two issues of sanctions and weapons inspection should be entirely separate. Madeleine Albright has said: "We do not agree that if Iraq complies with its obligations concerning weapons of mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted." If this means that Saddam Hussein is the target, then the embargo will go on indefinitely, holding Iraqis hostage to their tyrant's compliance with his own demise. Or is there another agenda? In January 1991, the Americans had an opportunity to press on to Baghdad and remove Saddam, but pointedly stopped short. A few weeks later, they not only failed to support the Kurdish and Shi'a uprising, which President Bush had called for, but even prevented the rebelling troops in the south from reaching captured arms depots and allowed Saddam Hussein's helicopters to slaughter them while US aircraft circled overhead. At they same time, Washington refused to support Iraqi opposition groups and Kurdish claims for independence." - http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Iraq/pilger.htm

"Let's talk about the weapons. In 1991, did Iraq have a viable weapons of mass destruction capability? You're darn right they did. They had a massive chemical weapons program. They had a giant biological weapons program. They had long-range ballistic missiles and they had a nuclear weapons program that was about six months away from having a viable weapon.

"Now after seven years of work by UNSCOM inspectors, there was no more (mass destruction) weapons program. It had been eliminated....When I say eliminated I'm talking about facilities destroyed....

"The weapons stock had been, by and large, accounted for - removed, destroyed or rendered harmless. Means of production had been eliminated, in terms of the factories that can produce this...."There were some areas that we didn't have full accounting for. And this is what plagued UNSCOM. Security Council 687 is an absolute resolution. It requires that Iraq be disarmed 100 percent. It's what they call 'quantitative disarmament.' Iraq will not be found in compliance until it has been disarmed to a 100 percent level. That's the standard set forth by the Security Council and as implementors of the Security Council resolution, the weapons inspectors had no latitude to seek to do anything less than that - 80 percent was not acceptable; 90 percent was not acceptable; only 100 percent was acceptable.

"And this was the Achilles tendon, so to speak, of UNSCOM. Because by the time 1997 came around, Iraq had been qualitatively disarmed. On any meaningful benchmark - in terms of defining Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability; in terms of assessing whether or not Iraq posed a threat, not only to its immediate neighbors, but the region and the world as a whole - Iraq had been eliminated as such a threat....

"What was Iraq hiding? Documentation primarily - documents that would enable them to reconstitute - at a future date - weapons of mass destruction capability....But all of this is useless...unless Iraq has access to the tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars required to rebuild the industrial infrastructure (necessary) to build these weapons. They didn't have it in 1998. They don't have it today. This paranoia about what Iraq is doing now that there aren't weapons inspectors reflects a lack of understanding of the reality in Iraq.

"The economic sanctions have devastated this nation. The economic sanctions, combined with the effects of the Gulf War, have assured that Iraq operate as a Third World nation in terms of industrial output and capacity. They have invested enormous resources in trying to build a 150-kilometer range ballistic missile called the Al Samoud.

"In 1998 they ran some flight tests of prototypes that they had built of this missile. They fizzled. One didn't get off the stand. The other flipped over on the stand and blew up. The other one got up in the air and then went out of control and blew up. They don't have the ability to produce a short-range ballistic missile yet alone a long-range ballistic missile....

"The other thing to realize is: they are allowed to build this missile. It's not against the law. The law says anything under 150 kilometers they can build and yet people are treating this missile as if it's a threat to regional security....It's a tactical battlefield missile, that's it. Yet, (Congressman Tom) Lantos and others treat this as though it's some sort of latent capability and requires a ballistic missile defense system to guard against it. It's ridiculous. Iraq has no meaningful weapons of mass destruction program today. - http://www.commondreams.org/views/030700-106.htm

There is no latitude for inspectors to accept anything less than 100 percent disarmament, which, given the combined effect of the passage of time and Iraqi intransigence, leaves the inspectors in the nearly impossible position of trying to prove a negative. The reality that, from a qualitative standpoint, Iraq has in fact been disarmed has been ignored. The chemical, biological, nuclear, and long-range ballistic missile programs that were a real threat in 1991 had, by 1998, been destroyed or rendered harmless. - http://www.commondreams.org/views/030900-101.htm

The lack of clarity in Bush administration pronouncements inevitably signals to the Iraqi leadership that even if they were to comply with WMD inspections, the US would still try to oust them. As in the past, moving the goalposts on sanctions and arms control leaves the Iraqi government with a reason not to comply -- citing a "no-win" situation. Furthermore, the leadership's long-held belief in the usefulness of chemical and biological weapons would suggest they would be even more likely to conceal and try to retain them if they were faced with a major attack.

For the US, the worst-case scenario would be for the UN inspectors to declare Iraq free of banned weapons and therefore call for the lifting of sanctions. Fear of this eventuality may be behind recent attacks on the arms control record of Hans Blix, formerly head of the IAEA and now of UNMOVIC. Asked to investigate him by Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, doyen of the regime change crowd, the CIA found that Blix had conducted inspections within the IAEA's parameters. But Wolfowitz's approach fits with the Bush administration policy of attacking or removing unwelcome chairpersons of international bodies -- working on human rights, climate change or chemical weapons -- with which the US has disagreements. Blix, for his part, has presented a firm view of UNMOVIC's work, stating that Iraq would need to give the inspectors hard proof that its WMD had been destroyed. At the same time, he has held out the possibility that if Iraq cooperated fully, sanctions could be lifted within a year. - http://www.zmag.org/content/Iraq/merip_graham.cfm ( MERIP Press Information Note 96, "Sanctions Renewed on Iraq," by Sarah Graham-Brown, May 14, 2002.)

There has been no solid information regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction since UNSCOM and IAEA arms inspectors left Iraq in December 1998 in advance of the U.S. Desert Fox bombing operation. Prior to their leaving, the inspectors' last report (November 1998) stated that although they had been stymied by Iraqi non-compliance in carrying out some inspections, "the majority of the inspections of facilities and sites under the ongoing monitoring system were carried out with Iraq's cooperation." The IAEA report was unequivocal that Iraq no longer had a viable nuclear program. The UNSCOM report was less definitive, but months earlier, in March 1998, UNSCOM chief Richard Butler said that his team was satisfied there was no longer any nuclear or long-range missile capability in Iraq, and that UNSCOM was "very close" to completing the chemical and biological phases.

Since that time, there have been no verifiable reports regarding Iraq's WMD programs. It is important to get inspectors back into Iraq, but U.S. threats have made that virtually impossible by setting a "negative incentive" in place. If Baghdad believes that a U.S. military strike as well as the maintaining of crippling economic sanctions, will take place regardless of their compliance with UN resolutions regarding inspections, they have no reason to implement their own obligations. If the United States refuses to abide by the rule of international law, why are we surprised when an embattled and tyrannical government does so?

Throughout the 1980s Baghdad received from the U.S. high-quality germ seed stock for anthrax, botulism, E.coli, and a host of other deadly diseases. (The Commerce Department's decisions to license those shipments, even after revelations of Iraq's 1988 use of illegal chemical weapons, are documented in the 1994 hearings of the Banking Sub-Committee.) It is certainly possible that scraps of Iraq's earlier biological and chemical weapons programs remain in existence, but there is no evidence Iraq has the ability or missile capacity to use them against the U.S. or U.S. allies. The notion that the U.S. would go to war against Iraq because of the existence of tiny amounts of biological material, insufficient for use in missiles or other strategic weapons and which the U.S. itself provided during the years of the U.S.-Iraq alliance in the 1980s, is simply unacceptable. - http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0802-02.htm

Video of former weapons inspector Scott Ritter on the threat posed by Iraq: "...the real threat is zero. None." - http://multimedia.carlton.com/ram/pilger/iraq/zero.ram

Scott Ritter on the propaganda surrounding the WMD issue - http://stream.realimpact.org/rihurl.ram?file=webactive/cspin/cspin20020510.rm&start="10:44.3"

Top

Didn't Saddam throw out the weapons inspectors and why won't he let them in again?

"The inspectors have to go back in under our terms, under no one else's terms," Colin Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, ignoring Iraq's concerns over the well-documented fact that the last inspection team in Iraq passed on intelligence information to the U.S. government in violation of its mission. - http://www.zmag.org/content/Iraq/arnove_iraq-crossfires.cfm

...the United States led to a fabricated crisis that had nothing to do with legitimate disarmament. This crisis led to the United States ordering UNSCOM inspectors out of Iraq two days before the start of Operation Desert Fox, a 72-hour bombing campaign executed by the United States and Great Britain that lacked Security Council authority. Worse, the majority of the targets bombed were derived from the unique access the UNSCOM inspectors had enjoyed in Iraq, and had more to do with the security of Saddam Hussein than weapons of mass destruction. Largely because of this, Iraq has to date refused to allow inspectors back to work. The ensuing uncertainty has created an atmosphere that teeters on the brink of war. - http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0731-09.htm

The inspectors were not thrown out of Iraq. [U.S. State Department] - http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/nea/iraq/factsheet.htm

I was advised on two occasions by the representative of the United States of America that it would be wise for me to consider withdrawing my people for the sake of their safety. They also advised the Secretary General to the same effect and the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency and in the light of that advice Kofi Annan agreed with me that I should withdraw my people for their safety. They are the facts. - http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/cta/events2000/talking_point/tp04jun.ram

There's a very easy way to get inspectors back in, and that is to say that once Iraq is disarmed, sanctions will be lifted. You do this and the Iraqis will come to play. I guarantee it. They've said it over and over again. ...Now Iraqis have been disarmed to a fundamental level. Ninty to ninty-five per cent disarmament has been achieved. This is fact. It's without dispute. The United Nations documentation backs this up. Every executive chairman... acknowledges this. It's not as though I'm fabricating this number. It's real. The question is what to do about the remaining five to ten per cent.

Under the old resolution, which required 100% disarmament, we had to go after that five to ten percent. Iraq could not be found in compliance without that five to ten percent. And we did go after it. That meant trying to find documentation that would enable us to figure out what happened to the stuff.... Which meant that we had to inspect... places that don't have anything to do with weapons of mass destruction other than the fact that somebody might have a document hidden in his desk. That's why we went there.

If you want to get weapons inspectors back into Iraq, I suggest we step away and talk about what is... the objective of the Security Council of the United Nations when they passed Resolution 687. Was it 100% disarmament to the letter of the law? No. It was getting rid of those weapons programs which they felt, as long as they are continuing to be in the possession of Saddam Hussein, represent a clear and present risk to international peace and security. These programs are gone. They've been gone since 1995-1996. [If] you want to get weapons inspectors back into Iraq, find Iraq to be fundamentally disarmed under Resolution 687. Therefore, lift the economic sanctions, but follow through with the rest of the resolutions. See, there's two more resolutions on the book. 715, which is ongoing monitoring and verification, passed in 1993, implemented in 1994. This calls for weapons inspectors to go into every industrial facility, indeed, any facility they want to in Iraq - no notice inspections - and monitor these facilities to ensure that Iraq doesn't reconstitute capability. Resolution 1051, passed in 1996, implemented since that time. The export/import control regime, which requires Iraq to declare - there's a thick list of dual use materials, that is machines that can be used not only for ligitimate civilian goods, but could be converted for prohibitted uses - these machines have to be declared to the United Nations. Anytime Iraq seeks to buy these machines, they have to declare it - not just Iraq, but the nation that sells it. And then the inspectors follow, track this material as it comes into Iraq and into the facilities, tag it and it can't be moved. We monitor how it's used. No secret. That's what we did. It worked. The beauty of it is, not only did Iraq accept this and implement it, but the Security Council accepted this.

If you take a look at 715 and 1051, the annexes that exist on both these resolutions, they are more stringent than what is being put forward by Colin Powell in these so-called "smart sanctions." - http://radio4all.net/pub/archive5/mp3_3/ug113-hour1mix.mp3

The Iraqi government has a very mixed record in terms of its cooperation with the weapons inspectors. There is a tremendous foundation of lies, cheating, of concealing that did take place. Our work in Iraq wasn't pretty, it wasn't easy, but it was successful ultimately. And it was successful because the Iraqi government, in the end, did cooperate with the weapons inspectors. I was kicked out of Iraq several times, so were other inspectors. But we got back in and we were able to do our mission, and by 1998 we had disarmed Iraq to a 90 to 95% level. We were monitoring Iraq's industrial infrastructure. We were disarming Iraq. In fact, Iraq had been disarmed. - http://stream.realimpact.org/rihurl.ram?file=webactive/cspin/cspin20020510.rm&start="10:44.3"

Top

Why did Saddam Hussein block some inspection sites?

Whenever the Iraqis blocked me and other inspectors from a site, these were sites that dealt with Saddam Hussein's personal security, not Saddam Hussein's weapons programs. These are sites that dealt with Saddam's bodyguards, with Iraqi intelligence, with Iraqi signal intelligence. Why [go there]? Because we thought they might be hiding documents. Not weapons. Documents. But when we went to the factories that capable of being converted to produce weapons of mass destruction, we were never once blocked. And since 1994, we monitored these factories. Not only did we find that they didn't have the capability, and that they weren't producing weapons of mass destruction, [we found] that it would take them 5 to 6 years, with full access to technology, with full access to money that's denied them by economic sanctions, to begin the reconstitute to a level that could be of concern to us. - http://radio4all.net/pub/archive5/mp3_3/ug113-hour1mix.mp3

Top

What will make the US lift Sanctions?

Previously the ambiguity in US policy was that key players would not say that if Iraq complied with inspections and was given a clean bill of health, sanctions would be lifted. When Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in March 2001 that if Iraq let weapons inspectors in, the US "may look at lifting sanctions," he continued the Clinton administration's strategy of using sanctions as a form of punitive control and containment, rather than enforcement of specific requirements on Iraq. - http://www.zmag.org/content/Iraq/merip_graham.cfm (MERIP Press Information Note 96, "Sanctions Renewed on Iraq," by Sarah Graham-Brown, May 14, 2002.)

...Madeleine Albright has said: "We do not agree that if Iraq complies with its obligations concerning weapons of mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted." If this means that Saddam Hussein is the target, then the embargo will go on indefinitely, holding Iraqis hostage to their tyrant's compliance with his own demise...." - http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Iraq/pilger.htm

August 6, 1990: United Nations Security Council passes Resolution 661, placing sanctions on Iraq to "restore the authority of the legitimate government of Kuwait."
(For U.N. resolutions, see: gopher://gopher.undp.org/11/undocs/scd/scouncil )

April 3, 1991: U.N. Security Council passes Resolution 687 which states that upon "the completion by Iraq of all actions contemplated in" specific paragraphs of the resolution, "the prohibitions against financial transactions ... shall have no further force or effect." The paragraphs cited have to do with weapons inspections. Other paragraphs in the resolution have to do with "return of all Kuwaiti property seized by Iraq" and Iraqi liability for losses and damage resulting from Iraq's occupation of Kuwait.

April 5, 1991: U.N. Security Council passes Resolution 688 that "demands that Iraq" end its repression "of all Iraqi citizens."

May 20, 1991: President George Bush: "At this juncture, my view is we don't want to lift these sanctions as long as Saddam Hussein is in power." James Baker, Secretary of State: "We are not interested in seeing a relaxation of sanctions as long as Saddam Hussein is in power.

January 13, 1993: As Bill Clinton is about to take office, he states: "I am a Baptist. I believe in death-bed conversions. If he [Hussein] wants a different relationship with the United States and the United Nations, all he has to do is change his behavior." (The New York Times, January 14, 1993)

January 14, 1993: In the face of criticism, particularly from The New York Times, that he might lift sanctions and even normalize relations with Iraq, Clinton backtracks: "There is no difference between my policy and the policy of the present Administration.... I have no intention of normalizing relations with him." (See The New York Times and Boston Globe, January 15, 1993) Incoming Secretary of State Warren Christopher: "I find it hard to share the Baptist belief in redemption.... I see no substantial change in the position and continuing total support for what the [Bush] administration has done."

January 12, 1995: While inspections are taking place, though not complete, Ambassador Madeleine Albright says the U.S. is "determined to oppose any modification of the sanctions regime until Iraq has moved to comply with all its outstanding obligations." She specifically cites the return of Kuwaiti weaponry and non-military equipment. (Reuters, January 12, 1995)

May 12, 1996: On "60 Minutes," Lesley Stahl asks Albright: "We have heard that a half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. Is the price worth it?" Albright responds: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it."

March 26, 1997: Albright, in her first major foreign policy address as Secretary of State: "We do not agree with the nations who argue that if Iraq complies with its obligations concerning weapons of mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted. Our view, which is unshakable, is that Iraq must prove its peaceful intentions. It can only do that by complying with all of the Security Council resolutions to which it is subjected. Is it possible to conceive of such a government under Saddam Hussein? When I was a professor, I taught that you have to consider all possibilities. As Secretary of State, I have to deal in the realm of reality and probability. And the evidence is overwhelming that Saddam Hussein's intentions will never be peaceful."

November 7, 1997: Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz: "The American government says openly, clearly, that it's not going to endorse lifting the sanctions on Iraq unless the leadership of Iraq is changed."

November 14, 1997: President Clinton. [During a standoff on weapons inspectors] "What he [Hussein] says his objective is, is to relieve the people of Iraq, and presumably the government, of the burden of the sanctions. What he has just done is to ensure that the sanctions will be there until the end of time or as long as he lasts. So I think that if his objective is to try to get back into the business of manufacturing vast stores of weapons of mass destruction and then try to either use them or sell them, then at some point the United States, and more than the United States, would be more than happy to try to stop that."

November 14, 1997: In response to the question "Is it his [Clinton's] opinion that the sanction will not be lifted ever as long as Saddam is in power, whatever he does?" National Security Adviser Sandy Berger states: "No. Let Saddam Hussein -- let Saddam Hussein come into compliance, and then we can discuss whether there are any circumstances... It has been our position consistently that Saddam Hussein has to comply with all the relative Security Council resolutions from this action.... I don't think, under these circumstances, when he has [sic] blatantly out of compliance, it is the right time for us to talk about how we lift the sanctions.... It's been the U.S. position since the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein comply -- has to comply with all of the relevant Security Council resolutions." In response to the question "but what the president said -- what he has just done is to ensure that the sanctions will be there until the end of time or as long as he lasts." Berger responds: "Well, that's right, and that's not inconsistent with what I've said. In other words, there's no way -- if he is -- if he's got to be in compliance, he can't be in compliance if he's thrown the UNSCOM people out. So it's a necessary condition. It may not be a sufficient condition."

November 20, 1997: [A stand-off is defused] A Russian-Iraqi communique is released pledging that Moscow will "energetically promote the speedy lifting of sanctions against Iraq on the basis of its compliance with the corresponding U.N. resolutions." Albright states that the lifting of the sanctions "will probably be discussed at some time, but the United States has not agreed to anything."

November 26, 1997: UNICEF reports that "The most alarming results are those on malnutrition, with 32 per cent of children under the age of five, some 960,000 children, chronically malnourished -- a rise of 72 per cent since 1991. Almost one quarter (around 23 per cent) are underweight -- twice as high as the levels found in neighbouring Jordan or Turkey." Philippe Heffinck, UNICEF Representative in Baghdad: "And what concerns us now is that there is no sign of any improvement since Security Council Resolution 986/1111 [oil-for-food] came into force." www.unicef.org/newsline/97pr60.htm

December 9, 1997: In response to the question: "The United States has given apparently contradictory criteria for when it will lift the sanctions. It says it will do it when UNSCOM is allowed into Iraq, when UNSCOM can get into the 'palaces,' when Iraq abides by all U.N. resolutions, including paying a few hundred billion in reparations, when Saddam Hussein is overthrown, or never. The question: When is it?" Richardson: "Our policy is clear. We believe that Saddam Hussein should comply with all the Security Council resolutions, and that includes 1137, those that deal with the UNSCOM inspectors, those that deal with human rights issues, those that deal with prisoners of war with Kuwait, those that deal with the treatment of his own people. We think that there are standards of international behavior."

December 16, 1997: President Clinton: "I am willing to maintain the sanctions as long as he does not comply with the resolutions.... There are those that would like to lift the sanctions. I am not among them. I am not in favor of lifting the sanctions until he complies.... But keep in mind, he has not come out, as some people have suggested, ahead on this last confrontation. Because now the world community is much less likely to vote to lift any sanctions on him..." In response to the question "How do you assess Saddam Hussein?" Clinton makes several points and then says: "Finally, I think that he felt probably that the United States would never vote to lift the sanctions on him no matter what he did. There are some people who believe that. Now I think he was dead wrong on virtually every point."

July 30, 1998: The New York Times reports: "Russia tried and failed to get Security Council action today on a resolution declaring that Iraq had complied with demands to destroy its nuclear weapons program and was ready to move away from intrusive inspections to long-term monitoring... Russia has been arguing that those files can be 'closed' one at a time, to give Iraq some motivation for further cooperation. The United States has held that all requirements must be met before sanctions can be altered."

August 14, 1998: The Washington Post front page: "U.S. Sought To Prevent Iraqi Arms Inspections; Surprise Visits Canceled After Albright Argued That Timing Was Wrong," regarding Scott Ritter.

August 17, 1998: Richardson: "Sanctions are going to stay forever, or until it complies fully." (The New York Times, August 18, 1998)

August 20, 1998: Richardson: "Sanctions may stay on in perpetuity." (The New York Times, August 21, 1998)

September 15, 1998: Martin Indyk, Assistant Secretary of State: "First of all, there is one serious consequence that has already occurred; that is, the Security Council has voted unanimously to suspend indefinitely sanctions reviews. That means there will be no sanctions reviews and sanctions will not be lifted." Indyk then claimed: "the Security Council resolutions provide in very specific terms for the lifting of sanctions when Iraq has fully complied with all the Security Council resolutions. And that is the crux of the matter; it's not a question that they'll never be lifted, but the conditions on which they'll be lifted will never appear to be fulfilled."

November 10, 1998: State Department spokesperson James Rubin: "We've stated very clearly that it is up to Saddam Hussein to comply with the resolutions of the Security Council that lay out the needs and requirements, including on weapons of mass destruction, coming back into compliance with those resolutions, including on Kuwaiti prisoners, Kuwaiti equipment, and, in short, demonstrating his peaceful intentions, in which case we are prepared to see an adjustment in the sanctions regime." A few moments later, Rubin states: "The Security Council has set out a very simple path to resolve this situation. And all it requires is him doing what he agreed to do, cooperating with UNSCOM -- not refusing cooperation with UNSCOM -- but providing them the information they need." - http://www.accuracy.org/iraq.htm

UN and Iraqi officials Friday admitted that negotiations on the return of UN weapons inspectors to the country, seen as a step toward lifting the 12-year-old embargo on Baghdad, had broken down.

"One or two states are responsible for this," Sabri told Iraqi Youth Television.

"With their right of veto in the Security Council, they are preventing the council from doing its job with Iraq," Sabri said, referring to the United States and Britain and their hardline policy on Baghdad.

The US administration has repeatedly threatened to launch a military strike on Iraq to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein, whom it accuses of developing weapons of mass destruction. [Saturday, July 6, 2002 by Agence France Presse ] - http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0706-03.htm

Arms inspectors must return to Iraq. The international community must be satisfied that weapons of mass destruction no longer exist. But as long as an ambiguous framework for inspections remains in place, any incentive for compliance is undermined.

The refusal of individual Security Council members to recognize incremental progress in disarmament by Iraq in the pre-1998 period constituted a fundamental mistake of historic proportions. Scott Ritter, a former U.S. inspector known for his thoroughness, has said that Iraq was already qualitatively disarmed when UN weapons inspectors were withdrawn at the request of the U.S. in 1998.

Dishonesty has not been limited to the Iraqi government. Some U.S. inspectors doubled as spies; this was not conducive to creating the kind of trust essential to resolving the current weapons inspection impasse. The Secretary- General must be in a position to guarantee no further misuse of UN weapons inspections. - http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0702-03.htm

Top

The U.S. wants to disarm Iraq.

This, of course was the last thing the United States wanted, because if you disarm Iraq, you have to lift economic sanctions. And if you lift economic sanctions, you break containment on Saddam Hussein, and our policy is getting rid of Saddam Hussein. So, the United States had to find a way to deal, not only with the problem of Saddam Hussein, but also the problem of the inspectors. And the best way to do this was to discredit the work of the inspectors and ensure that they were no longer at work inside Iraq.

They did this by manipulating the inspection process by putting pressure on Richard Butler - the Australian executive chairman of UNSCOM, the... United Nations weapons inspectors - to send an inspection team in to deliberately provoke confrontation with Iraq without permission of the Security Council. And then once Iraq fell for the bait, so to speak, I mean it comes down to the United Nations breaking an agreement that had been made in 1996 that any sensitive sites, that is political sites or security sites subjected to inspection would be done so by a limited number of inspectors. This agreement worked. The United States and Richard Butler unilaterally broke this agreement. The Iraqis said, if you're going to break the agreement, you're not welcome into the facility. And then the United States ordered the inspectors out. They weren't kicked out by Iraq, they were ordered out by the United States. And once the inspectors left, the United States used Iraqi noncompliance, or Iraqi refusal to fully cooperate as an excuse to bomb Iraq. And the targets that were bombed were targets that had been developed through the inspection process. That is the Unites States demonstrated that the inspectors had, in fact, been tools of espionage acting on behalf of the United States - a total contravention of their work that they were supposed to be doing in Iraq. So, the Iraqis didn't kick them out. And if you ask yourself "why aren't inspectors back in?" think about it. Why would the Iraqis allow inspectors back in - [inspectors] who had been so ergregiously misused by the United States? - http://stream.realimpact.org/rihurl.ram?file=webactive/cspin/cspin20020510.rm&start="10:44.3"

Top

What have been the effects of the Sanctions?

What has transpired in Iraq amounts to a children's holocaust. According to a Harvard study conduced in 1991, in the first eight months of that year 47,000 excess children deaths took place. In 1996, UNICEF put a number on the children dying as a result of the United Nations sanctions regime; it found that 4,500 children were dying every month from preventable hunger and disease. Garfield, in a study of mortality among Iraqi children, found that between 1991 and 1998 at least 100,000 -- but more likely 227,000 excess deaths -- took place, of which three quarters resulted from the consequences of United Nations sanctions. In a 1999 report, requested by the UN Security Council, it was found that in "marked contrast to the prevailing situation prior to the events of 1990-1991, infant mortality rates in Iraq today are among the highest in the world, low infant birth weight [of less than 2.5kg] affects at least 23 per cent of all births." The arrested growth of children has become widespread; with the UN secretary general noting, in 1997, that chronic malnutrition has resulted in 31 per cent of children having had their growth stunted, and 26 per cent being underweight. Kofi Annan concluded his report by stating: "one- third of children under five years of age ... are malnourished."

The overall effect of sanctions has been, according to Richard Garfield: "the only instance of a sustained, large increase in mortality in a stable population of more than 2 million in the last 200 years." This should come as little surprise as a UN Development Programme field report stated that "the country has experienced a shift from relative affluence to massive poverty." The International Committee of the Red Cross, which has had people on the ground throughout the 1990s, reported in 2000 that "daily life for ordinary Iraqis was a struggle for survival. The tragic effects of the embargo were seen in the steady deterioration of the health system and the breakdown of public infrastructure. Despite the increase in availability of food, medicines and medical equipment, following a rise in oil prices and the extension of the 'oil-for-food' programme, suffering remains widespread." - http://www.zmag.org/content/Iraq/allain_criminalenforcers.cfm

...Eric Hoskins - a Canadian doctor and coordinator of a Harvard study team on Iraq - reports that the allied bombardment "effectively terminated everything vital to human survival in Iraq - electricity, water, sewage systems, agriculture, industry and health care". (Quoted, Mark Curtis, 'The Ambiguities of Power - British Foreign Policy since 1945', Zed Books, 1995, pp.189-190) - http://www.zmag.org/content/MainstreamMedia/cohen_reply.cfm

September 24, 1992: The New England Journal of Medicine publishes the findings of Harvard researchers that 46,700 Iraqi children under five have died from the combined effects of war and trade sanctions in the first seven months of 1991.

October 4, 1996: United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) releases report on Iraq. "Around 4,500 children under the age of five are dying here every month from hunger and disease," said Philippe Heffinck, UNICEF's representative for Iraq. gopher://gopher.unicef.org/00/.cefdata/.prgva96/prgva35

October 3, 1997: A joint study by the United Nations' Food & Agriculture Organization and World Food Program, found the sanctions "significantly constrained Iraq's ability to earn foreign currency needed to import sufficient quantities of food to meet needs. As a consequence, food shortages and malnutrition became progressively severe and chronic in the 1990s." www.fao.org/WAICENT/faoinfo/economic/giews/english/alertes/srirq997.htm

April 30, 1998: UNICIF reports: "The increase in mortality reported in public hospitals for children under five years of age (an excess of some 40,000 deaths yearly compared with 1989) is mainly due to diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition. In those over five years of age, the increase (an excess of some 50,000 deaths yearly compared with 1989) is associated with heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, liver or kidney diseases." www2.unicef.org/pub/iraqsa

October 6, 1998: Denis Halliday, who had just resigned as the head of the "oil-for-food" program for Iraq, Assistant Secretary General of the UN, gives a speech on Capitol Hill, citing a "conservative estimate" of "child mortality for children under five years of age is from five to six thousand per month." Halliday states: "There are many reasons for these tragic and unnecessary deaths, including the poor health of mothers, the breakdown of health services, the poor nutritional intake of both adults and young children and the high incidence of water-born diseases as a result of the collapse of Iraq's water and sanitation system--and, of course, the lack of electric power to drive that system, both crippled by war damage following the 1991 Gulf War." (See remarks, www.accuracy.org/halliday.htm ) - http://www.accuracy.org/iraq.htm

Wednesday, 12 August 1999: The first surveys since 1991 of child and maternal mortality in Iraq reveal that in the heavily-populated southern and central parts of the country, children under five are dying at more than twice the rate they were ten years ago. UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said the findings reveal an ongoing humanitarian emergency.

The surveys reveal that in the south and center of Iraq -- home to 85 per cent of the country's population -- under-5 mortality more than doubled from 56 deaths per 1000 live births (1984-1989) to 131 deaths per 1000 live births (1994-1999). Likewise infant mortality -- defined as the death of children in their first year -- increased from 47 per 1000 live births to 108 per 1000 live births within the same time frame. The surveys indicate a maternal mortality ratio in the south and center of 294 deaths per 100,000 live births over the ten-year period 1989 to 1999.

Ms. Bellamy noted that if the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under-five in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998. As a partial explanation, she pointed to a March statement of the Security Council Panel on Humanitarian Issues which states: "Even if not all suffering in Iraq can be imputed to external factors, especially sanctions, the Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivations in the absence of the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of war."

"The large sample sizes -- nearly 24,000 households randomly selected from all governorates in the south and center of Iraq and 16,000 from the north -- helped to ensure that the margin of error for child mortality in both surveys was low," she noted. "Another important factor was the fact that, in the survey completed in the south and center of Iraq, all the interviewers were female and all were medical doctors. In the survey done in the northern autonomous region, fully 80 per cent of interviewers were female -- each team had at least one female interviewer - and all interviewers were trained health workers."

Among the report's additional findings in the south and central areas of Iraq:

Current levels of under-5 mortality -- as between girls and boys -- reveal that girls have a slightly lower rate, 125 deaths per 1000 live births as opposed to 136 deaths per 1000 live births among boys.
Children who live in rural areas have a higher mortality rate than children living in an urban area: 145 deaths per 1000 live births as opposed to 121 deaths per 1000 live births.
In the autonomous northern region, under-5 mortality rose from 80 deaths per 1000 live births in the period 1984-1989 to 90 deaths per 1000 live births during the years 1989-1994. The under-5 rate fell to 72 deaths per 1000 live births between 1994 and 1999. Infant mortality rates followed a similar pattern. Today's under-5 mortality rate of 131 per 1000 in south and central Iraq is comparable to current rates in Haiti (132) and Pakistan (136).

- http://www.unicef.org/newsline/99pr29.htm

Massive new irrigation systems stretching across the breadbasket regions of rural Iraq would normally be cause for celebration. In a nation where nearly a quarter of the children suffer chronic malnutrition, abundant crops of wheat and barley would signify hope and progress.

But when Hans von Sponeck, former assistant secretary general of the United Nations, visited Iraq last month he found neither: The spigots were turned off. Although the sophisticated sprinkler systems had survived the exhaustive screening of U.N. trade sanctions, the water pumps had not.

"The danger is these pumps could be used by the (Iraqi) military for other purposes," said von Sponeck, a 32-year veteran of the United Nations who resigned two years ago to protest the sanctions. "Anything that has a sophisticated pumping mechanism can be used for propelling weapons of mass destruction, I guess."

The ongoing collateral damage of the war and sanctions on Iraqi civilians has totaled more than 1 million deaths, half of which are children younger than 5, according to UNICEF and World Health Organization reports.

As U.S. lawmakers this summer debate whether the military should again strike at Saddam's regime or simply tighten the trade embargo, Iraqi civilians live in dread of the inevitable crossfire. More than 700 targets were bombed in 1991 to cripple Saddam - bridges, roads and electrical grids that powered 1,410 water-treatment plants for Iraq's 22 million people.

Coupled with the U.N. sanctions that blocked or rationed dual-use imports such as the water pumps, electric generators and chlorine ? that also can be used in the making of mustard gas ? epidemics ensued. Iraqi children died from dehydration and waterborne illnesses such as cholera, diarrhea and other intestinal diseases.

The United States, concerned with Saddam's potential for developing weapons of mass destruction, initiated roughly 90 percent of the blocks on humanitarian supplies by the U.N. Security Council.

"You wonder why there are terrorists?" Haddadin asked, according to writer Jane McBee, who toured the Middle East with members of the Physicians for Social Responsibility. "What do you think these children will be in 10 years? Do you think they'll join the Peace Corps?" - http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0804-04.htm

I deeply believe that sanctions as now applied to Iraq - and this has been the case for a number of years - have been utterly counterproductive to the disarmament purpose. And I think that the damage that they have done [to] the Iraqi people must stop. Now, ironically, I also think that they probably helped keep Saddam Hussein in power. - http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/cta/events2000/talking_point/tp04jun.ram

Because of sanctions, Saddam Hussein is a more secure leader in Iraq than he has been at any time since 1991. But what I'll also say is this, when you have economic sanctions that have resulted in the death of 1.5 million people, you can sit here and say that Saddam Hussein is to blame. I'll call him the trigger man for you, ok? We'll indict him as the trigger man. We'll say, "Saddam, you're the trigger man. You pulled the trigger on 1.5 million dead Iraqis because of economic sanctions. You had the key to solve this all. You cooperate with the inspectors, sanctions will be lifted, the food would come in, the people of Iraq would flourish." Ok, so Saddam is guilty. Let's find him guilty, let's condemn him right now. But let's do something else, too. Since 1991, the United States has had a policy in place that says we don't care if Saddam gives up his weapons of mass destruction. Keep in mind, sanctions are [to be] lifted when there is a finding of compliance. These aren't sanctions forever. They are lifted when Iraq complies with its disarmament obligation. Sanctions, according to the United States, will stay in place until such time as Saddam Hussein is removed from power regardless of his obligation to disarm. So, the United States has no intention of allowing these sanctions to be lifted. In 1997, Madeline Albright, when confronted with the number of Iraqi dead, dead Iraqi children, said, "that's a price we're willing to pay." [paraphrased] Alright, so Saddam's the trigger man. You know what we are? We're the getaway driver. - http://radio4all.net/pub/archive5/mp3_3/ug113-hour1mix.mp3

Top

Saddam Risk a Lie, Says UN Expert

UNITED Nations weapons inspectors colluded with British secret service agents to spread disinformation about Saddam Hussein's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs as part of a campaign to justify military strikes, according to the head of the UN inspection team in Iraq.

In an interview with The Herald, Scott Ritter, who led the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) team in Iraq for seven years in the 90s, claims he helped to leak propaganda to journalists. He resigned from the post in 1998 but said his experience then suggested that recent claims that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction should be treated skeptically.

...Ritter, a former intelligence officer in the US marines, maintains there is scant evidence that Iraq is a threat.

He says claims that Iraq is re-arming come from unreliable witnesses and that factories bombed in 1998 during Operation Desert Fox had not breached UN resolutions. "Every single one of those facilities was subjected to repeated inspections and never did we detect anything to remotely suggest that these were involved in producing anything prohibited. There's nothing there. Nothing." [Published on Monday, July 8, 2002 in The Herald (Scotland) ] - http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0708-05.htm

Top

The U.S. is gong to give Iraq a democracy. What's wrong with that?

We talk about democracy and caring for the Iraqis? Democracy in Iraq, a novel concept. Sixty per cent of the population is Shi'ia Muslim, the same sect of Islam that is in Iran today. Islamic, fundamentalist Iran. We want to give Iraq, with the second largest proven reserves of oil, we want to give control of that to the Shi'ia? I think not, so let's not talk about democracy. We talk about 23% are the Kurds. We want to help the Kurds? Show me a state in the area that wants an indepentent Kurdistan or Kurds with significant autonomy. Not us, not the Turks, not the Syrians, not the Iranians, not the Iraqis. Do we want democracy in Iraq? No. We want to turn power over to 17% of the population: the Sunnis. The same Sunnis were Saddam comes from. Now these Sunis, you think 17% they're not a homogenious entity. ...Saddams family has emerged dominant. Twenty thousand people in the Abu Nasir clan rule 20 million. That's the reality. You get rid of Saddam and you don't address this, somebody just like Saddam will take over. - http://radio4all.net/pub/archive5/mp3_3/ug113-hour1mix.mp3

Top

After Iraq, what's next?

But for all the propaganda about wicked Saddam, Iraq is not the main objective for the small but powerful coterie of Pentagon hardliners driving the Bush administration's national security policy. Nor is it for their intellectual and emotional peers in Israel's right-wing Likud party. The real target of the coming war is Iran, which Israel views as its principal and most dangerous enemy. Iraq merely serves as a pretext to whip America into a war frenzy and to justify insertion of large numbers of U.S. troops into Mesopotamia.

Iran is a different story. Iran is expected to produce a few nuclear weapons within five years to counter Israel's large nuclear arsenal, and is developing medium-range missiles, Shahab-3s and -4s, that can easily reach Tel Aviv.

With 68 million people and a growing industrial base, Iran is seen by Israel as a serious threat and major Mideast geopolitical rival. Both nations have their eye on Iraq's vast oil reserves.

In the U.S., Pentagon hardliners are drawing up plans to invade Iran once Iraq and its oil are "liberated." They hope civil war will erupt in Iran, which is riven by bitterly hostile factions, after which a pro-U.S. regime will take power. If this does not occur, then Iraq-based U.S. forces will be ideally positioned to attack Iran. Or, they could just as well move west and invade Syria, another of Israel's most bitter enemies.

By February or March, the U.S. media will likely be flooded with dire warnings about the threat to the world from Iran. Israel's American lobby will turn its guns from Iraq to Iran. "Links" will surely be "discovered" between Iran and al-Qaida. The cookie-cutter pattern that worked for whipping up war psychosis against Iraq should work just as well against Iran, Syria or Saudi Arabia - and win the next national election. - http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1110-07.htm

"Thanks to the oil-for-food program, the people of Iraq, especially those in the north, are getting needed foods and medicines" (U.S. State Department, March 2000).

The "oil-for-food" programme, in many ways, is a failure because sanctions are an outgrowth of a strategy conceived by the United States to simply inflict the most economic hardship on Iraq as possible. The programme mandates that 25 per cent of oil sale revenues be handed over to the UN Compensation Committee which administers reparations payments related to war damages, while 5 per cent of revenues are shared equally between Turkey, for the transportation costs of oil, and the United Nations, for its administration and operational costs related to Iraq. A further 13 per cent of revenues pay for the administration of the Kurdish territories which act autonomously under cover of the US-UK imposed "no-fly zone." Thus, the Iraqi Government receives only 58 per cent of the revenues from the "oil-for-food" programme, which are to be distributed among 87 per cent of the Iraqi population.

Of the items which had been given the green light, less than 50 per cent have made it to Iraq. As Abbas Alnasrawi, an economy professor at the University of Vermont, has noted, of "the $20.8 billion appropriated to all of Iraq, only $8.4 billion-worth of goods for all sectors of the economy had arrived in Iraq by the end of July 2000." Compounding the misery is the fact that once items make their way to Iraq, it is not guaranteed that they will be distributed in a timely fashion. A 1999 UN Report noted that nearly half of medical supplies which had been imported to Iraq "remained in warehouses and had not been distributed to local clinics and hospitals," in part, because Iraq has not been able to rebuild the infrastructures required to distribute these items. - http://www.zmag.org/content/Iraq/allain_criminalenforcers.cfm

...In March 1999 an expert 'Humanitarian Panel' convened by the Security Council concluded the UN's 'oil-for-food' programme could +not+ meet the needs of the Iraqi people...

The Panel continued:

"Regardless of the improvements that might be brought about - in terms of approval procedures, better performance by the Iraqi Government, or funding levels - the magnitude of the humanitarian needs is such that they cannot be met within the context of [the oil-for-food programme] ... Nor was the programme intended to meet all the needs of the Iraqi people ... Given the present state of the infrastructure, the revenue required for its rehabilitation is far above the level available under the programme." - http://www.zmag.org/content/MainstreamMedia/cohen_reply.cfm

MYTH: "Thanks to the oil-for-food program, the people of Iraq, especially those in the north, are getting needed foods and medicines" (U.S. State Department, March 2000).

FACT: Former UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, Denis Halliday, oversaw the oil-for-food program and believes otherwise. "The OFF program as conceived is completely inadequate. It was designed in fact not to resolve the situation, but to prevent further deterioration of both mortality rates and malnutrition. It has failed to do that; at best it has just about sustained the situation. It's grossly under-funded, and it has not even begun to address the needs, the dietary needs of the Iraqi people... And on top of that you have a medical sector which gobbles up the rest of the money to a great extent, so again we have not managed to provide the basic needs of the Iraqi people” (The Fire This Time, April 1999). Halliday resigned from his post in September 1998 in protest of the sanctions against Iraq. He had worked for the UN for 34 years. - http://zmag.org/ZMag/Articles/nov01lindemyer.htm

Top

"Iraqi obstruction of the oil-for-food program, not United Nations sanctions, is the primary reason the Iraqi people are suffering" (U.S. State Department, March 2000).

MYTH: "Iraqi obstruction of the oil-for-food program, not United Nations sanctions, is the primary reason the Iraqi people are suffering" (U.S. State Department, March 2000).

FACT: The UN sanctions were levied against Iraq in August 1990 and the oil-for-food program began in December 1996. It is therefore impossible to attribute the suffering of the Iraqi people to the obstruction of a program, which did not exist until six years after the fact. As Halliday explained, the oil-for-food program was set up by the UN Security Council as a response to the humanitarian crisis in Iraq created by the impact of the sanctions. The creation of the program demonstrates that the suffering of the Iraqi people preceded any possible interference. - http://zmag.org/ZMag/Articles/nov01lindemyer.htm

Top

"Iraq is mismanaging the oil-for-food program, either deliberately or through incompetence" (U.S. State Department, March 2000).

Their [former assistant secretary generals of the UN Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck] last appearance in the press was in the Guardian last November, when they wrote: "The most recent report ofthe UN secretary general, in October 2001, says that the US and UK governments' blocking of $4bn of humanitarian supplies is by far the greatest constraint on the implementation of the oil-for-food programme. The report says that, in contrast, the Iraqi government's distribution of humanitarian supplies is fully satisfactory...The death of some 5-6,000 children a month is mostly due to contaminated water, lack of medicines and malnutrition. The US and UK governments' delayed clearance of equipment and materials is responsible for this tragedy, not Baghdad."

They [Halliday and von Sponeck] are in no doubt that if Saddam Hussein saw advantage in deliberately denying his people humanitarian supplies, he would do so; but the UN, from the secretary general himself down, says that, while the regime could do more, it has not withheld supplies. Indeed, without Iraq's own rationing and distribution system, says the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, there would have been famine. Halliday and von Sponeck point out that the US and Britain are able to fend off criticism of sanctions with unsubstantiated stories that the regime is "punishing" its own people. If these stories are true, they say, why does America and Britain further punish them by deliberately withholding humanitarian supplies, such as vaccines, painkillers and cancer diagnostic equipment? This wanton blocking of UN-approved shipments is rarely reported in the British press. The figure is now almost $5bn in humanitarian-related supplies. Once again, the UN executive director of the oil-for-food programme has broken diplomatic silence to express "grave concern at the unprecedented surge in volume of holds placed on contracts [by the US]". - http://www.zmag.org/content/MainstreamMedia/pilger_compliantpress.cfm

In terms of the severe shortages of humanitarian supplies (food, medicine, etc) for the Iraqi people, how much can this be blamed on the economic sanctions, on the cumbersome UN process of approving imports, and on Saddam Hussein's misallocation of resources and perhaps intentional attempt to make his people suffer to win world sympathy.

All these factors play a part. Saddam Hussein, like all military dictators, is primarily concerned with protecting and privileging his military and political supporters. However, despite other economic cronyism, UN and other humanitarian agencies generally give high ratings to the Iraqi government food ration system; there is relatively egalitarian access to equally insufficient food. Iraq's government has used some money (obtained from smuggled oil sales as well as pre-war reserves) for new buildings and palaces, and for protecting Saddam Hussein's favored troops and political backers from the ravages of sanctions. However, the U.S.-led international sanctions have by far wrought a more devastating impact. Context must be recalled: Saddam Hussein's government was and has been a military dictatorship for 20 years; for 12 of those years, the U.S. supported that regime. It was still a dictatorship, and political human rights were still severely constrained. But prior to 1990 and the imposition of sanctions, the Iraqi population had among the highest standards of living in the Middle East: food access, education, health care and general quality of life approached that of developed countries. The most common problem faced by Iraqi pediatricians was childhood obesity. Today the Iraqi population still faces severe denial of human rights --political and civil rights-- by the Iraqi regime. But additionally, since 1990 it faces the lethal denial of other human rights --economic and social rights-- AS A DIRECT RESULT OF THE IMPOSITION OF SANCTIONS. The UNICEF figures indicate that 5,000-6,000 children under the age of five die each month as a direct result of sanctions. The deaths are not primarily from a lack of food, but lack of clean water, as well as medicine and equipment to treat easily curable (many water-borne) diseases. While the current ration-based "food basket" approaches the UN minimum caloric level, it does not include sufficient actual protein, vitamins, etc. for health or growth (A cup of oil and a cup of sugar would provide more than sufficient calories; it would not provide health.) UNICEF and other humanitarian agencies agree that conditions have continued to deteriorate even with the initiation of the Oil for Food program; Iraq's oil infrastructure (pumping and processing) is simply too "degraded" since the 1991 war to produce sufficient oil to bring in anything close to the top allowable amounts of money. Of the limited funds earned through Oil for Food, one-third off the top goes to pay for Kuwaiti reparations and the costs of UNSCOM. Although there have been some recent efforts at improvements, the Sanctions Committee (made up of the members of the Security Council) continues to impose near-crippling delays and denials of licensing for importing materials required for repairs and replacement of the oil and physical infrastructure, as well as for allowable consumer items. The committee's definitions of prohibited "dual use" goods includes such items as pencils for schoolchildren (because the graphite could be used in weapons production) and chlorine to purify untreated water (the water treatment system was destroyed in 1991 and not rebuilt). If there are international concerns that the suffering is designed to win sympathy, the answer should be ending of economic sanctions while tightening and expanding military restrictions[!]. - http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Iraq/bennisiraq.htm

Media Lens: "The British and US Governments claim that there are plenty of foodstuffs and medicines being delivered to Iraq, the problem is that they are being cynically withheld by the Iraqi regime. Is there any truth in that?"

[Denis] Halliday: "There's no basis for that assertion at all. The Secretary-General has reported repeatedly that there is no evidence that food is being diverted by the government in Baghdad. We have 150 observers on the ground in Iraq. Say a wheat shipment comes in from god knows where, in Basra, they follow the grain to some of the mills, they follow the flour to the