- In October of last year, a delegation from Voices in
the Wilderness, a pacifist group based in Chicago, visited a hospital in
the city of Basra in southern Iraq. A doctor at the hospital told the delegation
about the significant increase in birth defects, childhood cancers and
leukemia in Iraq since the 1991 Gulf war. The hundreds of tons of "depleted
uranium shells" fired by U.S. forces during the war are strongly suspected
as the cause of this increase. The shells exploded into microscopic fragments,
spreading radiation into the environment. And the destruction from the
war and the economic sanctions have devastated Iraq's health care system,
greatly magnifying the problem.
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- A member of the delegation, Bert Sacks, recalled a conversation
with the doctor about one of her young leukemia patients: "They did
have chemotherapy to give the child. But the child died because at the
age of one-and-a-half, when a child should normally get measles vaccines,
there were no vaccines. The child died from measles. To use sanctions to
deny adequate vaccinations and Tylenol and anesthetics, clean sheets for
the hospitals, is a terrible thing to be doing."
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- Sacks continued: "This doctor then looked up. She
was a very professional woman. But in the stress of this conversation she
began to cry. It certainly affected me very much. Then she looked up when
she composed herself. And she said, `This is a crime. This is a crime which
your country is doing.'"
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- *** Even before the surprise attack by U.S. and British
forces this December, Iraq and its people were deeply weakened by war and
economic sanctions. Every month 4,500 Iraqi children under the age of five
die from starvation and disease--because the sanctions, enforced by military
action of the U.S. and its allies, deprive Iraq of adequate food and medicine.
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- Then, for three nights in December, the U.S.-British
forces fired 400 cruise missiles at this already battered country. The
official justification was the supposed threat of "weapons of mass
destruction" from Iraq --which doesn't even have air defenses capable
of shooting down hostile aircraft flying over its territory.
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- Pentagon briefers praised the "accuracy" and
the "effectiveness" of the missiles and smugly noted that there
were no casualties among the American forces. But what about the people
of Iraq? How "accurate" were the missiles, when one aimed for
a target in southern Iraq landed across the border in Iran? How many more
neighborhoods were destroyed? How many more Iraqis lost their lives because
of what the U.S. warmakers call "collateral damage" from the
bombings?
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- In the days after the cruise missile attack, the U.S.
continued to pound Iraq. U.S. and British warplanes patrolling the "no
flight zones" in northern and southern Iraq fired several times at
Iraqi anti-aircraft crews for daring to fire, or even turn on their radars.
The U.S. has declared large parts of Iraq off limits to Iraqi aircraft.
Any attempt by Iraq to oppose these "no flight zones" are considered
"provocations" that justify U.S. retaliation.
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- The U.S. rulers have claimed for themselves the right
to reach out to a region of the world thousands of miles away, steal the
skies over a poor country, and then retaliate when that country tries to
take self-defense measures.
-
- These repeated poundings of Iraq seem like the insane
actions of a bully who is intent on pulverizing a helpless victim. But
there is deadly, cold-blooded logic behind this madness--the logic of imperialism.
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- Iraq is in a region that is the oil jugular of the world.
The U.S. itself imports a relatively small amount of oil from this area.
But many other countries depend on Gulf oil to fuel their economies. The
military and strategic control of this region is crucial to the U.S.'s
position as the world's imperialist superpower.
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- And in order to maintain this position, the U.S. ruling
class has felt compelled to exhibit its predominance by pummeling Iraq
time and time again. It seems that for the U.S. rulers, any assertion of
national sovereignty by poorer nations poses a threat to their imperialist
interests. Iraq refused to "assume the position" and open up
every corner of the country to intrusive searches by U.S.-controlled inspectors.
In the eyes of the U.S. rulers, this was reason enough to launch 400 cruise
missiles.
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- In the streets of the U.S., cops routinely shoot people
and then claim "justified homicide." The U.S. is doing this to
a whole country and its people.
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- The U.S. imperialist war and sanctions against Iraq are
totally without honor. The human cost of these shameful U.S. actions has
been immense: One million Iraqis have died as a result of the sanctions,
including 700,000 children.
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- *** Dr. Jasim Mazin is the chief resident at the Saddam
Central Teaching Hospital for Pediatrics in Baghdad. In his five years
at the hospital, almost all his leukemia patients have died. In countries
like the U.S., the cure rate for leukemia is close to 70 percent. But in
Iraq, where even basic medicines and surgical supplies are scarce, the
cure rate for leukemia is near zero.
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- Dr. Mazin talked to the New York Times about one of his
patients, three-year-old Isra Ahmed. "It's still not too late to save
this girl's life if we can give her a bone-marrow transplant. But we don't
have the equipment to perform that kind of operation. We're helpless.
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- Dr. Mazin pointed out that Iraq used to have one of the
best health systems in the Arab world. Now, the doctors can not even read
medical journals from overseas because they are among the items banned
by the U.S.-enforced embargo.
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- "I can't believe I use disposable syringes on one
patient after another, or perform operations with worn-out instruments
in operating theaters that are not even disinfected," he said. "It's
very difficult to work very hard on a patient, try to care for him, and
then lose him because you can't get some silly thing that you could pick
up in a drug store in any other country.
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- Then Dr. Mazin added an even more chilling comment: "And
this is the best-supplied children's hospital in Iraq. If you go out into
the provinces, you see that things are much worse."
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- *** The policymakers in the U.S. halls of power are perfectly
aware of the human suffering taking place in Iraq. But to these global
gangsters, the people dying in Iraq are just numbers in their murderous
calculations of empire.
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- Anyone who doubts this should check out what U.S. Secretary
of State Madeline Albright said on the CBS program 60 Minutes in 1996.
Albright was asked, "Half a million Iraqi children have died--more
children than died in Hiroshima. Is the price worth it?" Albright's
answer: "Yes, we think the price is worth it."
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- Can anyone sit in silence as those in power carry out
such horrific war crimes?
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- http://rwor.org/a/v20/980-89/989/iraq.htm
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