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December 7, 2001
David Vest
The Coen
Brothers'
Minstrel Show
Alexander
Cockburn
Sharon
or Arafat:
Who's the Terrorist?
December 6, 2001
CounterPunch Wire
Hampshire
College the First
to Condemn the War
Robert
Jensen
University
Teaching After
September 11
Jack McCarthy
Does
Tom Friedman Read
the New York Times?
Sam and
Leila Bahour
The
Psychology of a Suicide Attacker
December 5, 2001
Edward Hammond
The Only
Real Way to
Prevent Biowarfare
Harvey
Wasserman
Atomic
Treason in the House
Carl Estabrook
America's
Israel
Don Williams
Questions
Barbara Walters Didn't Ask George Bush
Cockburn/St. Clair
Liberals
Hail War as
Return of Big Government
Robert
Fisk
The
Last Colonial War?
Bahour/Dahan
It's About
the Occupation
December 4, 2001
Dave Marsh
A
Plea for Byron Parker
Rep. Ron Paul
Keep Your
Eye on the Target
Susan
Herman
Ashcroft
and the Patriot Act
Tariq Ali
The Afghan
King and the Nazis
November 30, 2001
Jordan
Green
Disappeared
in the Southland
Willliam Blum
Rebuilding
Afghanistan?
November 29, 2001
Phillip
Cryan
Defining
Terrorism
Robert Fisk
We Are the
War Criminals Now
November 28, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
A
Continuum of Terror
Patrick Cockburn
Tribal
Council:
Don't Blame It All on Taliban
Robert
Fisk
At
Last, The Truth about the Sabra and Chatila Massacres
Harry Browne
The Bill of
Rights:
They Threw It All Away
Sunil
Sharma
Suffer
Palestine's Children
November 27, 2001
Paul Coggins
Kafka and
the Patriot Act
Tariq
Ali
Tigris
and Euprhates
November 26, 2001
Robert Fisk
Blood and
Tears in Kandahar
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Boeing's
Sweet Deal
CounterPunch Wire
Human
Rights Abuses and
Nuke Waste Shipments
Alexander
Cockburn
Harry
Potter and Terrorism
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
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Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
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Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
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The New Intifada:
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December
6, 2001
Iraq: The Hostage Nation
By Hans von Sponeck and
Denis Halliday
A major shift is occurring in US policy on Iraq.
It is obvious that Washington wants to end 11 years of a self-serving
policy of containment of the Iraqi regime and change to a policy
of replacing, by force, Saddam Hussein and his government.
The current policy of economic sanctions
has destroyed society in Iraq and caused the death of thousands,
young and old. There is evidence of that daily in reports from
reputable international organizations such as Caritas, UNICEF
and Save the Children. A change to a policy of replacement by
force will increase that suffering.
The creators of the policy must no longer
assume that they can satisfy voters by expressing contempt for
those who oppose them. The problem is not the inability of the
public to understand the bigger picture, as former US secretary
of state Madeleine Albright likes to suggest. It is the opposite.
The bigger picture, the hidden agenda, is well understood by
ordinary people. We should not forget Henry Kissinger's brutally
frank admission that "oil is much too important a commodity
to be left in the hands of the Arabs".
How much longer can democratically elected
governments hope to get away with justifying policies that punish
the Iraqi people for something they did not do, through economic
sanctions that target them in the hope that those who survive
will overthrow the regime? Is international law only applicable
to the losers? Does the UN security council only serve the powerful?
The UK and the US, as permanent members
of the council, are fully aware that the UN embargo operates
in breach of the UN covenants on human rights, the Geneva and
Hague conventions and other international laws. It is neither
anti-UK nor anti-US to point out that Washington and London,
more than anywhere else, have in the past decade helped to write
the Iraq chapter in the history of avoidable tragedies.
The UK and the US have deliberately pursued
a policy of punishment since the Gulf war victory in 1991. The
two governments have consistently opposed allowing the UN security
council to carry out its mandated responsibilities to assess
the impact of sanctions policies on civilians. We know about
this first hand, because the governments repeatedly tried to
prevent us from briefing the security council about it. The pitiful
annual limits, of less than $170 per person, for humanitarian
supplies, set by them during the first three years of the oil-for-food
program are unarguable evidence of such a policy.
We have seen the effects on the ground
and cannot comprehend how the US ambassador, James Cunningham,
could look into the eyes of his colleagues a year ago and say:
"We (the US government) are satisfied that the oil-for-food
program is meeting the needs of the Iraqi people." Besides
the provision of food and medicine, the real issue today is that
Iraqi oil revenues must be invested in the reconstruction of
civilian infrastructure destroyed in the Gulf war.
Despite the severe inadequacy of the
permitted oil revenue to meet the minimum needs of the Iraqi
people, 30 cents (now 25) of each dollar that Iraqi oil earned
from 1996 to 2000 were diverted by the UN security council, at
the behest of the UK and US governments, to compensate outsiders
for losses allegedly incurred because of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
If this money had been made available to Iraqis, it could have
saved many lives.
The uncomfortable truth is that the west
is holding the Iraqi people hostage, in order to secure Saddam
Hussein's compliance to ever-shifting demands. The UN secretary-general,
who would like to be a mediator, has repeatedly been prevented
from taking this role by the US and the UK governments.
The imprecision of UN resolutions on
Iraq - "constructive ambiguity" as the US and UK define
it - is seen by those governments as a useful tool when dealing
with this kind of conflict. The US and UK dismiss criticism by
pointing out that the Iraqi people are being punished by Baghdad.
If this is true, why do we punish them further?
The most recent report of the 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 program The report
says that, in contrast, the Iraqi government's distribution of
humanitarian supplies is fully satisfactory (as it was when we
headed this program). 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.
The expectation of a US attack on Iraq
does not create conditions in the UN security council suited
to discussions on the future of economic sanctions. This year's
UK-sponsored proposal for "smart sanctions" will not
be retabled. Too many people realize that what looked superficially
like an improvement for civilians is really an attempt to maintain
the bridgeheads of the existing sanctions policy: no foreign
investments and no rights for the Iraqis to manage their own
oil revenues.
The proposal suggested sealing Iraq's
borders, strangling the Iraqi people. In the present political
climate, a technical extension of the current terms is considered
the most expedient step by Washington. That this condemns more
Iraqis to death and destitution is shrugged off as unavoidable.
What we describe is not conjecture. These
are undeniable facts known to us as two former insiders. We are
outraged that the Iraqi people continue to be made to pay the
price for the lucrative arms trade and power politics. We are
reminded of Martin Luther King's words: "A time has come
when silence is betrayal. That time is now."
We want to encourage people everywhere
to protest against unscrupulous policies and against the appalling
disinformation put out about Iraq by those who know better, but
are willing to sacrifice people's lives with false and malicious
arguments.
The US Defense Department, and Richard
Butler, former head of the UN arms inspection team in Baghdad,
would prefer Iraq to have been behind the anthrax scare. But
they had to recognize that it had its origin within the US.
British and US intelligence agencies
know well that Iraq is qualitatively disarmed, and they have
not forgotten that the outgoing secretary of defense, William
Powell, told incoming President George Bush in January: "Iraq
no longer poses a military threat to its neighbors". The
same message has come from former UN arms inspectors. But to
admit this would be to nail the entire UN policy, as it has been
developed and maintained by the US and UK governments.
We are horrified by the prospects of
a new US-led war against Iraq. The implications of "finishing
unfinished business" in Iraq are too serious for the global
community to ignore. We hope that the warnings of leaders in
the Middle East and all of us who care about human rights are
not ignored by the US government. What is now most urgently needed
is an attack on injustice, not on the Iraqi people.
Hans von Sponeck
was UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq from 1998 to 2000. Denis
Halliday held the same post from 1997 to 1998.
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