BITTER FRUIT FROM SEEDS OF HATE
ORLANDO SENTINEL + Sunday Herald below
Published: Sunday, November 26, 2000
Section: EDITORIAL
Page: G2
by Charley Reese, Sentinel Columnist
MOST AMERICANS DON'T REALIZE HOW HEINOUS OUR OWN GOVERNMENT HAS BEEN
"The Sunday Herald, a Scottish newspaper, last September reported that the United States and its allies deliberately destroyed Iraq's water supply and in the nine years since have deliberately prevented it from being repaired by keeping out the equipment and chemicals necessary.
"A George Washington University professor has obtained a seven-page document, prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency, that pointed out the vulnerability of the water system, its dependence on imported equipment and chemicals, and the likely consequences of its destruction.
"The report was dead accurate. The United States and its allies destroyed the system. The Sunday Herald reported that eight multipurpose dams were
repeatedly bombed, smashing the infrastructure for flood control, municipal and industrial water storage, irrigation and hydroelectric power. Four of Iraq's seven major pumping stations were destroyed, as were 31 municipal water and sewage facilities.
"The result: Water-borne diseases -- typhoid, dysentery, hepatitis, cholera and polio -- have killed thousands of civilians in Iraq. There is always a rough justice in the universe, however. The Sunday Times has reported that tens of thousands of American and British troops are suffering from radiation poisoning from the depleted uranium shells fired during the Gulf War. No wonder both governments are trying to deny that Gulf War Syndrome even exists.
"The water-supply system, which we attacked, had absolutely nothing to do with supplying or supporting the Iraqi troops in Kuwait. It was a deliberate, cold-blooded attack, intended to kill and sicken Iraqi civilians. It was a war crime.
"People who like to yap about the rule of law should see to it that their own government obeys the law.
"The new president of Yugoslavia has our number when it comes to the rule of law. He said, "Washington introduced into the rule of law everything that is opposed to the rule of law: voluntarianism, insecurity and arbitrariness."
"It's one thing to knock out communications towers, bridges and ammunition dumps, but a city's sewer and water system has nothing to do with the military.
"Taking those out seems more malicious than any American would be capable of -- unless you've met some of the unthinking automatons and some of the heartless sharks who infect the Beltway. They flit around like wraiths, whispering their poisonous malice into the ears of the office holders.
"It would be comforting to imagine that one day the American people will elect to public office men and women who make clear to the world that we do not make war on women and children.
"Unfortunately, I fear that the cruelty and disregard for human life and human rights is a reflection of the American people's own attitudes. So long as the victims are "the others" -- foreigners -- most Americans don't seem to give a flip what is done to them.
"One hates to keep returning to the universal wisdom of religion, but what one sows one reaps. Our government has, in our name, been sowing hate, and one day we will reap the fruit of that hate. It will be bitter fruit.
"It will not be much consolation, if one day someone poisons our water supply, to know that that person got the idea from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. We need a new, more benign emperor in our Rome on the Potomac."
4 January 2001
Allies deliberately poisoned Iraq
public water supply in Gulf War
investigation
Publication Date: Sep 17 2000
The US-led allied forces deliberately destroyed
Iraq's water supply during the Gulf War - flagrantly
breaking the Geneva Convention and causing
thousands of civilian deaths.
Since the war ended in 1991 the allied nations have
made sure than any attempts to make
contaminated water safe have been thwarted.
A respected American professor now intends to
convene expert hearings in a bid to pursue criminal
indictments under international law against those
responsible.
Professor Thomas J Nagy, Professor of Expert
Systems at George Washington University with a
doctoral fellowship in public health, told the Sunday
Herald: "Those who saw nothing wrong in producing
[this plan], those who ordered its production and
those who knew about it and have remained silent
for 10 years would seem to be in violation of Federal
Statute and perhaps have even conspired to
commit genocide."
Professor Nagy obtained a minutely detailed
seven-page document prepared by the US Defence
Intelligence Agency, issued the day after the war
started, entitled Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities
and circulated to all major allied Commands.
It states that Iraq had gone to considerable trouble
to provide a supply of pure water to its population. It
had to depend on importing specialised equipment
and purification chemicals, since water is "heavily
mineralised and frequently brackish".
The report stated: "Failing to secure supplies will
result in a shortage of pure drinking water for much
of the population. This could lead to increased
incidents, if not epidemics, of disease and certain
pure-water dependent industries becoming
incapacitatedÉ"
The report concludes: "Full degradation of the water
treatment system probably will take at least another
six months."
During allied bombing campaigns on Iraq the
country's eight multi-purpose dams had been
repeatedly hit, simultaneously wrecking flood
control, municipal and industrial water storage,
irrigation and hydroelectric power. Four of seven
major pumping stations were destroyed, as were 31
municipal water and sewerage facilities - 20 in
Baghdad, resulting in sewage pouring into the
Tigris. Water purification plants were incapacitated
throughout Iraq.
Article 54 of the Geneva Convention states: "It is
prohibited to attack, destroy or render useless
objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian
population" and includes foodstuffs, livestock and
"drinking water supplies and irrigation works".
The results of the allied bombing campaign were
obvious when Dr David Levenson visited Iraq
immediately after the Gulf War, on behalf of
International Physicians for the Prevention of
Nuclear War.
He said: "For many weeks people in Baghdad -
without television, radio, or newspapers to warn
them - brought their drinking water from the Tigris,
in buckets.
"Dehydrated from nausea and diarrhoea, craving
liquids, they drank more of the water that made
them sick in the first place."
Water-borne diseases in Iraq today are both
endemic and epidemic. They include typhoid,
dysentery, hepatitis, cholera and polio (which had
previously been eradicated), along with a litany of
others.
A child with dysentery in 1990 had a one in 600
chance of dying - in 1999 it was one in 50.
The then US Navy Secretary John Lehman
estimated that 200,000 Iraqis died in the Gulf War.
Dr Levenson estimates many thousands died from
polluted water.
Chlorine and essential equipment parts needed to
repair and clear the water system have been
banned from entering the country under the UN
"hold"system.
Ohio Democrat Representative Tony Hall has
written to American Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright, saying he shares concerns expressed by
Unicef about the "profound effects the deterioration
of Iraq's water supply and sanitation systems on
children's health". Diarrhoeal diseases he says are
of "epidemic proportions" and are "the prime killer of
children under five".
"Holds on contracts for water and sanitation are a
prime reason for the increase in sickness and
death." Of 18 contracts, wrote Hall, all but one on
hold were placed by the government in the US.
Contracts were for purification chemicals,
chlorinators, chemical dosing pumps, water tankers
and other water industry related items.
"If water remains undrinkable, diseases will continue
and mortality rates will rise," said the Iraqi trade
minister Muhammed Mahdi Salah. The country's
health ministry said that more than 10,000 people
died in July of embargo-related causes - 7457 were
children, with diarrhoeal diseases one of the prime
conditions.
In July 1989, the figure was 378. Unicef does not
dispute the figures.
The problem will not be helped by plans for the giant
Ilisu Dam project (to which the British government is
to give £200 million in export credit guarantees),
which will give Turkey entire control of the water
flow to Iraq and Syria.
Constructors Balfour Beatty write in their
environmental impact report, that for the three years
of construction, water flow to Iraq will be reduced by
40%. Iraq has also suffered a three year drought,
with the Tigris the lowest in living memory.
copyright SUNDAY HERALD, 2000, All Rights Reserved
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