Return to Home Page
(posted 5/2/99)
MYTH: The UN sanctions allow Iraq to buy enough food and medicine for its people. If the people are hungry and sick its Saddam Hussein's fault.
FACT: 80% of Iraq's farms were destroyed in the Gulf War, so Iraq can't feed itself. Iraq is technically allowed to import food and medicine under the sanctions, but it can't afford to because oil sales are the country's main source of income, and the sanctions ban most oil exports. The UN "Food for Oil" program allows Iraq to buy some food and medicine, but according to Denis Halliday, who coordinated all UN humanitarian programs in Iraq before resigning this fall in protest against the sanctions, the program is wrought with "painful delays, frustration, politics, and bureaucracy." Iraq is allowed to sell $5.2 billion worth of oil every six months. Out of that it must pay reparations to Kuwait and money to the UN. What's left -- about fifty cents per person per day -- can be used to buy food and medicine. Some medical and agricultural equipment is by the UN banned because it also has military uses. Because of the sanctions, 1.5 million Iraqis have died of starvation and disease -- over half of them children under the age of 5.
MYTH: Iraq has nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and poses a military threat to its neighbors.
FACT: The international Atomic Energy Commission is ready to certify that Iraq has eliminated its nuclear weapons program. Raymond Zalnikas, a UN weapons inspector from the US with two tours of duty in Iraq, has said that by 1995 weapons inspectors had destroyed all chemical and biological weapons facilities in Iraq. Iraq's ability to wage a conventional war was greatly diminished by the Gulf War.
Iraq is not the only country to have tried to develop nuclear weapons in violation of international law. Israel has developed a nuclear arsenal in violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), and it may have helped South Africa and India develop nuclear weapons. India and Pakistan have very active nuclear weapons programs. None of these countries have been threatened with bombing or subjected to intrusive inspections. The NPT also requires the US and other nuclear nations to work to abolish their own nuclear weapons -- the World Court has affirmed this obligation, The US has openly defied the treaty.
MYTH: If Iraq complied with UN weapons inspections the sanctions would be lifted.
FACT: In April 1997, Secretary of State Madeline Albright said that sanctions would not be lifted as long as Saddam Hussein is in power. Because the sanctions were put in place by the UN Security Council and the US has veto power in the Security Council, the US can block the lifting of sanctions indefinitely. In August, 1997 UN Ambassador Bill Richardson said "Sanctions may stay on in perpetuity."
MYTH: Saddam Hussein doesn't care about his people.
FACT: Saddam Hussein has brutally repressed dissidents and Iraq's Kurdish minority. But he is also responsible for using Iraq's oil revenues to build a modern infrastructure and the best medical end educational systems in the Arab world while neighboring nations allowed a few wealthy people to hold onto their oil wealth. Before the Gulf War Iraq had one of the highest standards of living in the Middle East because Saddam Hussein's government had invested money in improving the lives of poor and middle class Iraqis. If Saddam Hussein cared about his people before the war why would he stop caring after the war? Saddam Hussein is guilty of many crimes, but failing to care about or meet the basic needs of his people is not one of them.
MYTH: The UNSCOM (the committee charged with the weapons inspections) has been professional, respectful, and impartial in performing its duties.
FACT: UN humanitarian workers have described the UNSCOM inspectors as arrogant and openly hostile to the Iraqis. Some inspectors have insisted on flying American flags on their vehicles. Clergy, professors, and international journalists have reported abuses of power by UNSCOM including burning chemistry books in a university library, demanding to be allowed to dig up the graves of nuns at a convent, and sending armed inspectors to search an elementary school while classes were in session, frightening the children. On November 11, 1998 NBC news reported that UNSCOM has been supplying intelligence, including military targeting intelligence to the US -- a clear violation of neutrality.
MYTH: In the Gulf War the US mainly attacked military targets.
FACT: The US deliberately targeted Iraq's infrastructure in the Gulf War. It bombed many major roads and bridges, water, sewer, and electrical systems, 688 schools, 94 hospitals, and 80% of Iraq's farms. Under the sanctions Iraq has been unable to rebuild its infrastructure, so people are drinking dirty water and human waste runs into the streets and the water. After the war a Pentagon analyst told a Washington Post reporter: "People say 'You didn't recognize that it was going to have an effect on water and sewage.' Well, what were we trying to do with the sanctions -- help out the Iraqi people? No. What we were doing with the attacks on the infrastructure was to accelerate the effect of sanctions."
MYTH: The US fought the Gulf War to liberate Kuwait.
FACT: In their recent book, A World Transformed, George Bush and his National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft admit that the main reason for the war was to insure that "no hostile regional power could hold hostage much of the world's oil supply" and that the Bush administration eventually tried to provoke a war. There is considerable evidence that the US may have even provoked the invasion of Kuwait. Certainly the US does not have a strong record of protecting small countries from invasion by their larger neighbors. The US approved, assisted, and subsidized Indonesia's invasion and occupation of East Timor -- an occupation that has led to the deaths of 1/3 of the people of East Timor. And we have been shamefully silent about China's invasion and occupation of Tibet. Why would the US suddenly care about the sovereignty of Kuwait if oil weren't the main issue?