Coastal Post Article - October 1999
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The Coastal Post - October 1999
Genocide, American Style
By Edward W. Miller
Distracted by our media's unrelenting vilification of Saddam Hussein, and
now by the crisis in East Timor, Americans are missing one of the most
egregious genocides of this century. Since the Gulf War, over a million and
a half Iraqis, mostly the elderly, children and babies, have been
slaughtered by the US-British-UN program designed to kill.
There were actually two Gulf Wars. One, to recall Saddam's troops from
Kuwait; the second, to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq, "bombing it back
into the pre-industrial age," as General Schwartzkopf put it. The
destruction of telecommunications, water supplies, sewage treatment plants
and oil facilities had nothing to do with Kuwait, but with the unspoken
U.S.-UN intent to destroy Iraq with those apocalyptic weapons of mass
destruction: war, famine, pestilence and death. Noam Chomsky correctly
called this "biological warfare."
As writer John Pilger points out in his book Hidden Agendas, despite all the
media pictures, the Pentagon finally admitted less than seven percent of
their weapons were "smart." Of the 88,500 tons of bombs (seven Hiroshimas)
dropped on Iraq, over 70 percent missed their mark. The Gulf War rendered
1.8 million Iraqis homeless and killed over 150,000 Iraqi troops.
Americans have also forgotten that on December 16, 1998, while sexual
McCarthyism played out on the floor of Congress, Patriot and Tomahawk
missiles again began to hail down on Baghdad. Operation Desert Fox (called
Monica in the Mideast) created extensive damage, killed over 25 civilians,
and targeted one of the few oil refineries still able to function. To
interrupt the Republican impeachment process, Clinton, before he set the
attack in motion, had carefully crafted Chief UN Inspector Butler's report
to make certain it appeared Saddam was interfering with the UNSCOM team.
By 1998, Rich McDowell, whose Voice in the Wilderness group had visited Iraq
many times since 1991, reported, "As of 1995, over a million Iraqis have
died, 576,000 of them children, and three million risk acute starvation...
More children have died...than the total the two atomic bombs killed in
Japan." He noted the Oil for Food program was a failure since reparations to
Kuwait, paying for UNSCOM and support for the Kurds ate up over 40 percent,
leaving less than 25 cents per person per day for the Iraqis. McDowell said
UN Security Council sanctions which embargo pipes, pumps, filters, chlorine,
ambulance tires, and everything necessary to produce potable water represent
a "war of collective punishment."
In October, 1998, Dennis J. Halliday, Assistant Secretary-General of the UN
and Chief of UNSCOM's Oil for Food, resigned in disgust over the
U.S.-British interference with his program in an "all-out effort to starve
to death as many Iraqis as possible." He added, "We see the member
states...of the Security Council manipulating the organization for their own
national interests." Halliday reported UN sanctions had reduced a once-proud
civilization to Third World Status, resulting in crime, prostitution,
beggary, family breakdown and corruption. He said Iraqis were "selling their
belongings for food."
Under Saddam Hussein, Halliday has noted, "Iraq had had the best
civilization in the Mideast, with universal medical care, the finest
hospitals, free university education for all qualified and overseas grants
for graduate students."
As UN expert and author Phyllis Bennis noted in an interview (Z magazine,
July/August '99), "For 20 years the Iraqi government denied pretty
consistently the civil and political rights of the population. At the same
time, the economic and social rights were very well respected. It was a
country with a high standard of living, a terrific educational system, and
the best public health in the region. Many Iraqis had access to advanced
education and to training abroad for advanced degrees...but now in the
context of the sanctions, they also have no economic and no social rights.
So the U.S. response to the denial of one kind of human rights is to deny
all the other human rights...a tragically ironic policy decision on the U.S.
side."
Dennis J. Halliday, Ex-Attorney Ramsey Clark and others are reporting mass
starvation, waterborne diseases previously unknown in Iraq (such as
diarrhea, cholera, strep infections and typhoid), plus animal plagues such
as hoof and mouth disease for which the U.S. forbids the importation of the
vaccine used worldwide. Screw worm, introduced by our CIA, has been killing
off the sheep and goat population on which the people largely depend.
No need to fire plague-bearing missiles into a country when you have already
contaminated the drinking water with sewage, and with a strict embargo,
forbade the import of every single item necessary to clean it up. Iraqis are
dying not only from biological warfare and starvation, but also from the
massive use (over 300 tons) in the southern state of Basra of depleted
uranium in our anti-tank shells. Malformed babies and a marked rise in
pediatric leukemia are being reported. The United States, the only country
to employ the carnage of atomic weapons against a civilian population
(Hiroshima and Nagasaki), is again the first, with Britain, to use long-term
atomic radiation against a foreign people. Since the half-life of depleted
uranium is 125,000 years, the lethal radiation from our shells will continue
killing the civilian population in southern Iraq for generations.
The U.S. and Britain are pursuing this devastation despite rising world
criticism. As late as August, 1999, their north and south overflights (never
authorized by the UN), plus a total of 119 bombing missions in which over
1,100 missiles were fired, were still destroying Saddam's economy and
killing his people.
Iraq's out-of-date anti-aircraft batteries can never reach high-flying
U.S.-British planes, so bombing in retaliation "because their radar locked
on" is but another cheap excuse for further killing.
To pursue this mayhem, the U.S. simply ignores the Security Council where
Russia, China and France, among others, have asked to quit the sanctions and
normalize trade. Even ex-UNSCOM officer Scott Ritter called by-passing the
Security Council while pursuing a campaign to remove Saddam, "a failing and
contradictory U.S. policy."
On August 20, France's Interior Minister said his government "will not
support a policy which victimizes innocent Iraqi citizens." The French
government noted when Saddam tossed out UNSCOM inspectors last year, "they
had tracked down and destroyed all the existing nuclear, biological and
chemical weapons capacity they were ever going to find." UN expert Phyllis
Bennis reported that the Security Council has prevented UNSCOM from making
its findings public. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan again in August asked
the U.S.-controlled UN Committee, "to stop blocking the export to Iraq of
goods like water and sanitation equipment."
In the face of this growing anti-U.S. sentiment, Washington has turned to
its media hotshots to counter the accusations with a series of outright
lies. As reported in the New York Times (September 14), Clinton's
public-relations spokesman James P. Rubin stated," The [Iraqi] government
has failed to distribute about 50 percent of the medicine, about 60 percent
of the supplies for clean water...and 40 percent of [the funds for]
education... Fact is, Saddam...has decided to deprive the Iraqi people of
many requirements while providing luxuries for a small clique of regime
supporters. Another of Clinton's spokesmen, Martin Indyk, White House
advisor on Mideast policy, a Zionist Jew who was working for Prime Minister
Shamir in Tel Aviv before our President made him an instant American
citizen, went on CNN this last week with the same lies. Indyk, who
represents AIPAC, our powerful Jewish lobby, has publicly expressed Israel's
intent to destroy Iraq.
Not one of the many Americans who are almost daily in touch with the Iraqi
people lend any credence to Washington's on-going anti-Saddam campaign.
Halliday, ex-Attorney General Ramsey Clark, the Voices in the Wilderness
group, Amnesty International, the International Red Cross and the Red
Crescent as well as the Russian, French, Chinese and other UN Security
Council members all decry our on-going genocide in Iraq.
Forty-four Congressmen recently sent Clinton a letter demanding the
sanctions be lifted. Dennis Halliday has said, "I went to Iraq to administer
the largest humanitarian challenge in UN history. I didn't realize the level
of complicity in the suffering.... It is to the point of madness. One day we
will be called to account."
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