10 ASPECTS THAT SHOULD BE KNOWN ABOUT IRAQ
Ivan Agenda | 04.09.2002 12:01
1. Child mortality – By the late 1980s infant mortality was at 45 per 1,000 – By 1998 it was up to 100 per 1,000. On the basis of the downwards trends in mortality rates observed between 1960 and 1990, Unicef estimates that some 500,000 excess deaths of children under the age of five may have occurred between the period of 1991 and 1998. Unicef: Child and Maternal Mortality Surveys: Southern and Central Iraq. August 1999.
Quote: “We think the price is worth it”. – Madeleine Albright then Secretary of State being asked on CBS programme if the death of half a million children was worth it.
2. Oil for food – Iraq sells more than $5.26 billion of oil every six months. Transactions from these accounts are then approved by the UN security council. These funds are kept in a US third party account with the Bank of Paris, New York. Approx 30% of these funds go to war reparations. Approx 5% is used for UN administration costs in Iraq; Approx 2% is used for repairing oil pipelines, 15% for humanitarian supplies for 3 million Kurds in Northern Iraq.
http://www.un.org/depts/oip/reports/basfact.html
Quote: “we are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is illegal and immoral”. – Denis Halliday who ran the UN oil for food programme in Baghdad
3. Agriculture – Soil was heavily contaminated with heavy metals during bombing, reducing seed germination and permeability, pollination and fertilization. About 74% of the irrigated lands, mainly in South-Central Iraq, have salinity problems; as a result, several thousand hectares are going out of cultivation annually, in an area where only 28% was arable. - UN Food and Agriculture Organisation http://www.fao.org/giews
Quote: “As with every other aspect of life in Iraq, the production and distribution of food have been severely affected…the agricultural sector has completely deteriated”. – Mohammed Farah, Co-ordinator for North Iraq for the Food and Agriculture Organisation.
4. Depleted uranium (DU) – During the Gulf War, and what is now common practice in war, is the use of Depleted Uranium on shells. When test firing of these are done, they are fired into an open sided concrete building and the radioactive residues are washed off, sealed in cement, and transported to Cumbria for disposal. In the Gulf war US tanks fired 5,000 DU shells, US aircraft many tens of thousands. The tank ammunition alone will be an amount of 50,000lb. Across Iraq a fourfold increase has occurred in cancers in the South of the country. Symptoms found on the Iraqi people are the same as those found on Gulf War veterans, called ‘Gulf War Syndrome’. See Robert Fisk Independent or www.Gulfweb.org
Quote: “DU rounds may become politically unacceptable and thus be deleted from the arsenal. If DU penetrators proved their worth…we should ensure their future existence. (Until something better is developed). – Letter sent from a US lieutenant colonel at the Los Alamos National Laboratory to a Major Larson at the studies and Analysis Branch
5. Environment – The bombing produced massive damage to flora, fauna, and the food chain. Animals, which could not escape the war zone, were killed and those that did move had their breeding adversely affected. Black rain from various toxins fell all over the country, due to the destruction of oil installations, pipeline, refineries, storage facilities etc. making its way into the food cycle – A rapid assessment of the impacts of the Iraqi-Kuwait conflict on terrestrial Ecosystems. Nabiel M. Alla El-Din et al
Quote: “Rates of pollution are escalating because of the continuation of comprehensive sanctions, which has paralysed efforts to control environmental degradation”. – Dr Huda S. Ammash environmental biologist and author of many papers on environmental and biological impacts of sanctions.
6. No fly zone – According to the US and UK, the No fly zone is there to protect the Kurdish population in the North and Southern Shiites. However Turkey has been allowed to fly into Iraq, to bomb Kurdish communities. – See Matthew Rothschild “A Misguided policy Towards Iraq”. San Diego Tribune, September 5th 1996.
Quote: “Apparently the killing of Iraqi Kurds by Turkish planes is not considered a violation of the ‘No-fly zone”. So this is a very limited definition of what no-fly means. – Phyllis Bennis is an author and journalist and has written about UN and Middle East issues for twenty years.
7. Resolutions – UN resolution 687, paragraph 14, calls for regional disarmament as the basis for reducing Iraq’s arsenal. By arming Iraq’s neighbours in the Middle East, the US is contravening the same UN resolution with which it maintains arguments for sustaining the sanctions. Israel posses more than 200 thermonuclear weapons and has violated scores of UN mandates. The US remains silent. – UN security council Resolution 687 paragraph 14. http://www.un.org
Quote: “The list of consumers of American military technology in the Middle East reads like a ‘who’s who’ of international terrorists, human rights violators and dictators”. – Voices in the wilderness, activist organisation against the sanctions, writing in Iraq under siege.
8. The weapons inspectors – According to Richard Butler director of weapons inspectors, UNSCOM - they removed themselves from Iraq prior to the 1998 bombardment. According to Butler’s own records, his team made unimpeded visits the week before the bombing began. This is contrary to reports of Iraq ‘throwing the weapons inspectors out’. – See Financial Times March 21 1998. The US also admitted - after a Washington Post story – that they had been using Unscom to spy on Iraq. - See Washington Post March 2, 1999.
Quote: “95 percent of (UMSCOM’s) work proceeds unhindered”. – Raymond Zilinskas, Former weapons inspector February 1998
9. Arsenal – US aircraft alone dropped 88,000 tons of explosives on Iraq, the equivalent of nearly five Hiroshima nuclear blasts. Eric Schmitt – New York Times “US weighs the value of bombing to coerce Iraq”. 1,800 bombs were dropped on more than 450 targets. Every cruise missile used cost $1 million, there were more than 300 used in 1998. The pentagon alone spent more than $1 billion to maintain its force of 200 airplanes, nineteen warships, and 22,000 troops who are part of the operation. 70% of so called smart bombs missed their target. – Myers, “In intense but little noticed fight, Allies have bombed Iraq all year.”
Quote: “We’re down to the last outhouse”. “There are still some things left, but not many”. – Unnamed US pentagon officials. Wall Street Journal, October 22, 1999.
10. Weapons of Mass Destruction –The US supplied Iraq with most of its weapons. One day before Iraq invaded Kuwait – George Bush Senior signed a shipment of advanced data equipment to Iraq. The US, and UK governments were the major suppliers of chemical and biological weapons to Iraq in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war. – See Noam Chomsky, ‘What we say goes’ – See also Andrew and Patrick Cockburn ‘ The resurrection of Saddam Hussein.
The US possesses, and keeps on alert, more nuclear weapons than the rest of worlds combined, and is the only nation in the world to ever drop a nuclear bomb. The Hiroshima bomb killed 140,000 people – and according to UNICEF - sanctions have aided the deaths of over 500,000 children. See UNICEF Child and Maternal Mortality Survey. August 1999.
Quote: “Iraq today possesses no meaningful weapons of mass destruction”. - Former chief inspector of UMSCOM Scott Ritter. Interview with Scott Ritter Sept- Oct 1999.
Quote: “We think the price is worth it”. – Madeleine Albright then Secretary of State being asked on CBS programme if the death of half a million children was worth it.
2. Oil for food – Iraq sells more than $5.26 billion of oil every six months. Transactions from these accounts are then approved by the UN security council. These funds are kept in a US third party account with the Bank of Paris, New York. Approx 30% of these funds go to war reparations. Approx 5% is used for UN administration costs in Iraq; Approx 2% is used for repairing oil pipelines, 15% for humanitarian supplies for 3 million Kurds in Northern Iraq.
http://www.un.org/depts/oip/reports/basfact.html Quote: “we are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is illegal and immoral”. – Denis Halliday who ran the UN oil for food programme in Baghdad
3. Agriculture – Soil was heavily contaminated with heavy metals during bombing, reducing seed germination and permeability, pollination and fertilization. About 74% of the irrigated lands, mainly in South-Central Iraq, have salinity problems; as a result, several thousand hectares are going out of cultivation annually, in an area where only 28% was arable. - UN Food and Agriculture Organisation
http://www.fao.org/giews Quote: “As with every other aspect of life in Iraq, the production and distribution of food have been severely affected…the agricultural sector has completely deteriated”. – Mohammed Farah, Co-ordinator for North Iraq for the Food and Agriculture Organisation.
4. Depleted uranium (DU) – During the Gulf War, and what is now common practice in war, is the use of Depleted Uranium on shells. When test firing of these are done, they are fired into an open sided concrete building and the radioactive residues are washed off, sealed in cement, and transported to Cumbria for disposal. In the Gulf war US tanks fired 5,000 DU shells, US aircraft many tens of thousands. The tank ammunition alone will be an amount of 50,000lb. Across Iraq a fourfold increase has occurred in cancers in the South of the country. Symptoms found on the Iraqi people are the same as those found on Gulf War veterans, called ‘Gulf War Syndrome’. See Robert Fisk Independent or www.Gulfweb.org
Quote: “DU rounds may become politically unacceptable and thus be deleted from the arsenal. If DU penetrators proved their worth…we should ensure their future existence. (Until something better is developed). – Letter sent from a US lieutenant colonel at the Los Alamos National Laboratory to a Major Larson at the studies and Analysis Branch
5. Environment – The bombing produced massive damage to flora, fauna, and the food chain. Animals, which could not escape the war zone, were killed and those that did move had their breeding adversely affected. Black rain from various toxins fell all over the country, due to the destruction of oil installations, pipeline, refineries, storage facilities etc. making its way into the food cycle – A rapid assessment of the impacts of the Iraqi-Kuwait conflict on terrestrial Ecosystems. Nabiel M. Alla El-Din et al
Quote: “Rates of pollution are escalating because of the continuation of comprehensive sanctions, which has paralysed efforts to control environmental degradation”. – Dr Huda S. Ammash environmental biologist and author of many papers on environmental and biological impacts of sanctions.
6. No fly zone – According to the US and UK, the No fly zone is there to protect the Kurdish population in the North and Southern Shiites. However Turkey has been allowed to fly into Iraq, to bomb Kurdish communities. – See Matthew Rothschild “A Misguided policy Towards Iraq”. San Diego Tribune, September 5th 1996.
Quote: “Apparently the killing of Iraqi Kurds by Turkish planes is not considered a violation of the ‘No-fly zone”. So this is a very limited definition of what no-fly means. – Phyllis Bennis is an author and journalist and has written about UN and Middle East issues for twenty years.
7. Resolutions – UN resolution 687, paragraph 14, calls for regional disarmament as the basis for reducing Iraq’s arsenal. By arming Iraq’s neighbours in the Middle East, the US is contravening the same UN resolution with which it maintains arguments for sustaining the sanctions. Israel posses more than 200 thermonuclear weapons and has violated scores of UN mandates. The US remains silent. – UN security council Resolution 687 paragraph 14.
http://www.un.org Quote: “The list of consumers of American military technology in the Middle East reads like a ‘who’s who’ of international terrorists, human rights violators and dictators”. – Voices in the wilderness, activist organisation against the sanctions, writing in Iraq under siege.
8. The weapons inspectors – According to Richard Butler director of weapons inspectors, UNSCOM - they removed themselves from Iraq prior to the 1998 bombardment. According to Butler’s own records, his team made unimpeded visits the week before the bombing began. This is contrary to reports of Iraq ‘throwing the weapons inspectors out’. – See Financial Times March 21 1998. The US also admitted - after a Washington Post story – that they had been using Unscom to spy on Iraq. - See Washington Post March 2, 1999.
Quote: “95 percent of (UMSCOM’s) work proceeds unhindered”. – Raymond Zilinskas, Former weapons inspector February 1998
9. Arsenal – US aircraft alone dropped 88,000 tons of explosives on Iraq, the equivalent of nearly five Hiroshima nuclear blasts. Eric Schmitt – New York Times “US weighs the value of bombing to coerce Iraq”. 1,800 bombs were dropped on more than 450 targets. Every cruise missile used cost $1 million, there were more than 300 used in 1998. The pentagon alone spent more than $1 billion to maintain its force of 200 airplanes, nineteen warships, and 22,000 troops who are part of the operation. 70% of so called smart bombs missed their target. – Myers, “In intense but little noticed fight, Allies have bombed Iraq all year.”
Quote: “We’re down to the last outhouse”. “There are still some things left, but not many”. – Unnamed US pentagon officials. Wall Street Journal, October 22, 1999.
10. Weapons of Mass Destruction –The US supplied Iraq with most of its weapons. One day before Iraq invaded Kuwait – George Bush Senior signed a shipment of advanced data equipment to Iraq. The US, and UK governments were the major suppliers of chemical and biological weapons to Iraq in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war. – See Noam Chomsky, ‘What we say goes’ – See also Andrew and Patrick Cockburn ‘ The resurrection of Saddam Hussein.
The US possesses, and keeps on alert, more nuclear weapons than the rest of worlds combined, and is the only nation in the world to ever drop a nuclear bomb. The Hiroshima bomb killed 140,000 people – and according to UNICEF - sanctions have aided the deaths of over 500,000 children. See UNICEF Child and Maternal Mortality Survey. August 1999.
Quote: “Iraq today possesses no meaningful weapons of mass destruction”. - Former chief inspector of UMSCOM Scott Ritter. Interview with Scott Ritter Sept- Oct 1999.
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