Colin Powell

Read This and Weep: Dennis Kucinich on Iraq Invasion and Lies as Weapons of Mass Destruction

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Venezuela is breached, and Cuba, Iran, and others are in the sights of the US government. Dennis Kucinich’s article from 2023 and the upcoming anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq are alarms that urgently need to be sounded over and over again.

IRAQ PLUS 20 – Lies as Weapons of Mass Destruction

Part One: The Script for the Lead-Up to War

Dennis Kucinich
March 15, 2023

Twenty years ago this month, America was led into a $5 trillion war.  It cost the lives of more than a million Iraqis and thousands of U.S. soldiers. The Iraq War was based on the transparent lies of leaders whose judgment was hijacked by neoconservative ideologues.  The neocons see America as the center of the universe, from which we must rule the world and seize its resources.  When that is one’s starting point, diplomacy is archaic.  

Events after 9/11 were deliberately twisted by the mad martinets of the Project for the New American Century, those monomaniacal specimens locked in the amber of a Post WWII, unipolar era.   

It was those same neocons who impressed upon us their preconceived but instrumental narrative that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein (who had nothing to do with 9/11) was the great evil in the world, requiring he and his nation be destroyed. 

Once accomplished, the neocons leapt over the wreckage they have created.  On to the next conjured enemy. Empire, always empire:  Bleed Russia, using the brave Ukrainians as a pawn, then pivot to China, war in no less than three years!

The western media, with few exceptions (Pentagon Papers and Watergate), have been dutiful spear-carriers for the U.S. government.  Those who raised questions about the perilous path in Iraq 20 years ago were condemned as useful idiots, censored and cancelled.  It is happening again, this time with the lock-step march toward war with China.  Ukraine is being sold out.  It has never been about freedom.  It has been about controlling an energy market.

Post-hoc analysis of war is always painful.  “If I only knew then what I know now, I would not have supported the war,” is a favorite apologia of some of the more stalwart supporters of invading Iraq.  I was a member of the United States Congress from 1997-2013.   Over a period of a dozen years, I delivered at least 341 speeches on the floor of the House in opposition to the Iraq war, which I saw as a criminal misuse of power.  I knew then and I know now. 

Just as we ignored diplomacy in Iraq, America has refused diplomacy that could have prevented bloodshed in Ukraine, choosing instead to pursue a geopolitical fantasy of deposing Putin with the help of Europe. 

The U.S. is escalating with Russia at this writing, as a U.S. drone and a  Russian fighter jet collided above the Black Sea. The U.S. has been practicing missile launches in the direction of St. Petersburg, sending B-52s over the Baltics towards Russia.  Simultaneously the U.S. ratchets up aggression against China, as we threaten to make Taiwan our next Ukraine.

Iraq stands as an important tale of U.S. government arrogance, deception and depravity and the increased danger when there is a media buy-in. The cavalcade of Iraq chaos recited in the timeline below, demonstrates that the perils of prevarication are extreme and the consequences earth shattering. 

Please tell me it can’t happen again…!

Twenty years ago, America descended into war, pronouncement by pronouncement. Read the words below, and the certainty with which those who took us to war expressed themselves as they led us blindly into a maelstrom of deceit and mass murder rocking the cradle of civilization.  Tell me it can’t happen again. 

In the days following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, as intelligence agencies stumbled and dissembled in often chaotic private briefings with members of Congress, I heard rumors around Capitol Hill that Iraq was going to be made to pay the price for the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  Iraq?  What did Iraq have to do with 9/11? Nothing. But it had everything to do with dying embers of a unipolar world.

Through the following year, the highest U.S. administrative officials made concerted efforts to conflate Iraq with 9/11 and to make claims that were unsubstantiated or and even rejected by intelligence agencies.   

This timeline and quotes are by no means complete. But they are characteristic of the much-publicized accusations made against Iraq that led to the March 19, 2003 United States attack on that nation and its people.

Read this and weep, not just for the Iraqi people,
but for our own children and grandchildren:

1/29/02: [States such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea] “and their terrorist allies constitute an Axis of Evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world, by seeking weapons of mass destruction. These regimes pose a grave and growing danger.” –President Bush, State of the Union address.

2/2/02:  “His [Saddam Hussein’s] regime has had high-level contacts with al Qaeda going back a decade and has provided training to al Qaeda terrorists.” — Vice President Cheney, Speech to Air National Guard Senior Leadership.

3/17/02:  “We know they [Iraqis] have biological and chemical weapons.”  — Vice President Cheney, Press Conference with Crown Prince of Bahrain.

3/19/02:  “…and we know they are pursuing nuclear weapons.” — Vice President Cheney, Press Briefing with Israeli Prime Minister Sharon in Israel.

3/24/02:  “He [Hussein] is actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time…”  — Vice President Cheney, CNN Late Edition.

3/24/02: “The notion of a Saddam Hussein with his great oil wealth, with his inventory that he already has of biological and chemical weapons… is I think, a frightening proposition for anybody who thinks about it.” — Vice President Cheney on CBS’ Face the Nation.

5/19/02:  “We know he’s got chemicals and biological (sic) and we know he’s working on nuclear.”  — Vice President Cheney, NBC’s Meet the Press.

8/26/02:  “We know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons…Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction.  He is amassing them to use against our friends, our enemies and against us.” — Vice President Cheney to the VFW 103rd Convention.

9/8/02:  “We know he has the infrastructure, nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon… The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons.  But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” — President Bush’s National Security Adviser, Dr. Condoleeza Rice.  CNN with Wolf Blitzer.

9/8/02:  “…he [Saddam Hussein] has indeed stepped up his capacity to produce and deliver biological weapons, that he has reconstituted his nuclear program to develop a nuclear weapon, that there are efforts under way inside Iraq to significantly expand his capability.”  — Vice President Cheney, NBC Meet the Press.

9/8/02:  “He is, in fact, actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.” — Vice President Cheney, NBC Meet the Press.

9/12/02:  “Saddam Hussein’s regime is a grave and gathering danger. To suggest otherwise is to hope against the evidence.”  — President Bush to UN General Assembly.

9/16/02: “Iraq continues to defy us and the world, we will move deliberately, yet decisively, to hold Iraq to account….”  — President Bush, speech in Iowa.

9/19/02:  No “terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people than the regime of Saddam Hussein and Iraq.” — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Statement to Congress.

9/28/02: “We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al Queda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases.” –President Bush, Weekly Radio Address to the Nation.

10/2/02:  “The regime has the scientists and facilities to build nuclear weapons, and is seeking the materials needed to do so.”  — President Bush from the White House.

10/5/02:  “In defiance of the United Nations, Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons.” — President Bush speech.

Early on October 2, 2002,  President Bush, surrounded by leaders of both political parties, including Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt, a future presidential candidate,  announced White House-prepared legislation to be brought to Congress entitled “Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002.” (Also known as the Iraq War resolution.)

When I first read the text of the Iraq War Resolution, I was incredulous.

So, this was the factual narrative the White House intended to pursue to attempt to persuade Congress to authorize a military attack on Iraq?

I immediately went to work, dissecting the claims made in the war resolution, quickly reviewing massive notebooks I had prepared since 9/11, jammed with internal congressional reports, private notes written after intelligence briefings, media accounts, and even reports from Iraq arms inspectors.  I saw no evidence from the National Intelligence Estimate, the Central Intelligence Agency or the Defense Intelligence Agency that Iraq posed the kind of threat the Bush Administration was projecting.

The truth was, no matter what the Bush Administration and Congressional leaders said, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.  Iraq had nothing to do with al Qaeda’s role.  Iraq did not have the intention to attack the United States.  Iraq, with a military budget about 1% of the U.S. Pentagon expenditures, did not have the capability to attack our nation.  Most significantly, it was fairly easy to determine that there was absolutely no proof that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and, as such, was not preparing to use them against our nation. 

I wrote a report on my congressional letterhead categorically discounting the Iraq Resolution’s cause of war, and, on October 2, 2002, I went to the floor of the House of Representatives and, through the next week, personally placed my analysis in the hands of  about 250 members of the House, of both the Democrat and Republican parties, with a request that it be read before the vote. 

Despite my efforts and that of several of my colleagues in the House, the legislation passed the House on October 10, 2002, by a vote of 296-133.   Most significantly, an overwhelming number of Democrats voted against going to war in Iraq, 126 nays to 81 yeas.  Fully 60% of House Democrats rejected the war.  Only six Republicans, including Ron Paul voted “no.”   Bernie Sanders, Independent, also voted “no.”

House Democratic Whip, Nancy Pelosi voted “no,” having issued a statement that included these telling lines:  “Because I do not believe we have exhausted all diplomatic remedies, I cannot support the Administration’s resolution regarding the use of force in Iraq.”

Late that evening, the US Senate approved the Iraq War Resolution by a vote of 77-23, with all Republicans voting “yes.”  Noteworthy Democratic votes for the Iraq War Resolution included Senators Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Edwards, Harkin and Kerry, all of whom were past or future presidential candidates.  Those senators voting “no” included Feingold and Wellstone as well as one-time presidential candidates Graham and Ted Kennedy, with whom I worked closely during the run-up to the vote.

On October 16, 2002, flanked by Secretary of State Powell and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, President Bush signed the resolution into law, with then senator and future president, Joe Biden, standing close by.

Thus as the United States began preparing to use the full might of its military against Iraq, a horrific realization settled into my heart that the lives of millions of innocent Iraqis were being put at risk, based on fiction promoted by the White House, proliferated by the media and swallowed whole by most congressional leaders. America’s sons and daughters were going to be sent abroad to kill or be killed in pursuit of a mission that was not supported by intelligence agencies and despite easily ascertainable facts and common sense. 

After Congress passed the Iraq War Resolution, the Administration accelerated its effort to cement public approval and international participation in the coming war, focusing on a narrative that Iraq was obtaining uranium for enrichment, preliminary to the building of a nuclear weapon. 

10/30/02:  “…but the danger is so great, with respect to Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction and perhaps terrorists getting hold of such weapons that …. the President is prepared to act with likeminded nations.”  — Secretary of State Colin Powell, interview with Ellen Ratner, Talk Radio News.

11/20/02:  “Today the world is also uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq.  A dictator who has used weapons of mass destruction on his own people must not be allowed to produce or posses those weapons.  We will not permit Saddam Hussein to blackmail and/or terrorize nations which love freedom.” — President Bush to Prague Atlantic Student Summit.

1/20/03: “The [Iraqi] report also failed to deal with issues which have arisen since 1998, including attempts to acquire uranium and the means to enrich it.” –President Bush, letter to Vice President Cheney and the Senate.

1/28/03: “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.….Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production…. [Saddam Hussein]…could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own…”  — President Bush, State of the Union Address.

2/5/03:   “Every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources.  These are not assertions.  What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence… Most US experts think [these tubes] are intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium…”  — Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations.

2/5/03:  “But the risk of doing nothing, the risk of the security of this country being jeopardized at the hands of a madman with weapons of mass destruction far exceeds the risk of any action we may be forced to take.” — President Bush to the National Economic Council at the White house.

2/6/03:  “All the world has now seen the footage of an Iraqi Mirage aircraft with a fuel tank modified to spray biological agents over wide areas… A UAV launched from a vessel off the American coast could reach hundreds of miles inland.”  –President Bush, Statement from the White House.

3/6/03:  “With every step the Iraqi regime takes toward gaining and deploying the most terrible weapons, our own options to confront that regime will narrow.  And if an emboldened regime were to supply these weapons to terrorist allies, then the attacks of September 11th would be a prelude to far greater horrors.”   — President Bush, Statement in National Press Conference.

3/16/03:  “We believe he [Saddam Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.” — Vice President Cheney, Meet the Press.

3/18/03: “Reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone with neither (A) protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq nor (B) likely lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq…”  — President Bush letter to Congress.

3/21/03:  “I directed U.S. Armed Forces, operating with other coalition forces, to commence combat operations on March 19, 2003.”  — President Bush, in a letter to Congress.

https://kucinichreport.substack.com/p/iraq-plus-20-lies-as-weapons-of-mass

26 years ago, 1991 Iraq Gulf War: The massacre at the “highways of death”

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From Global Research

April 4th, 2016
by Joyce Chediac

The indiscriminate bombing of tens of thousands of Iraqi troops and civilians retreating from Kuwait is one of the most heinous war crimes in history.

I want to give testimony on what are called the “highways of death.” These are the two Kuwaiti roadways, littered with remains of 2,000 mangled Iraqi military vehicles, and the charred and dismembered bodies of tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers, who were withdrawing from Kuwait on February 26th and 27th 1991 in compliance with UN resolutions.

US planes trapped the long convoys by disabling vehicles in the front, and at the rear, and then pounded the resulting traffic jams for hours. “It was like shooting fish in a barrel,” said one US pilot. The horror is still there to see.

On the inland highway to Basra is mile after mile of burned, smashed, shattered vehicles of every description – tanks, armored cars, trucks, autos, fire trucks, according to the March 18, 1991, Time magazine. On the sixty miles of coastal highway, Iraqi military units sit in gruesome repose, scorched skeletons of vehicles and men alike, black and awful under the sun, says the Los Angeles Times of March 11, 1991. While 450 people survived the inland road bombing to surrender, this was not the case with the 60 miles of the coastal road. There for 60 miles every vehicle was strafed or bombed, every windshield is shattered, every tank is burned, every truck is riddled with shell fragments. No survivors are known or likely. The cabs of trucks were bombed so much that they were pushed into the ground, and it’s impossible to see if they contain drivers or not. Windshields were melted away, and huge tanks were reduced to shrapnel.

“Even in Vietnam I didn’t see anything like this. It’s pathetic,” said Major Bob Nugent, an Army intelligence officer. This one-sided carnage, this racist mass murder of Arab people, occurred while White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater promised that the US and its coalition partners would not attack Iraqi forces leaving Kuwait. This is surely one of the most heinous war crimes in contemporary history.

The Iraqi troops were not being driven out of Kuwait by US troops as the Bush administration maintains. They were not retreating in order to regroup and fight again. In fact, they were withdrawing, they were going home, responding to orders issued by Baghdad, announcing that it was complying with Resolution 660 and leaving Kuwait. At 5:35 p.m. (Eastern standard Time) Baghdad radio announced that Iraq’s Foreign Minister had accepted the Soviet cease-fire proposal and had issued the order for all Iraqi troops to withdraw to positions held before August 2, 1990 in compliance with UN Resolution 660. President Bush responded immediately from the White House saying (through spokesman Marlin Fitzwater) that “there was no evidence to suggest the Iraqi army is withdrawing. In fact, Iraqi units are continuing to fight. . . We continue to prosecute the war.” On the next day, February 26, 1991, Saddam Hussein announced on Baghdad radio that Iraqi troops had, indeed, begun to withdraw from Kuwait and that the withdrawal would be complete that day. Again, Bush reacted, calling Hussein’s announcement “an outrage” and “a cruel hoax.”

Eyewitness Kuwaitis attest that the withdrawal began the afternoon of February 26, 1991 and Baghdad radio announced at 2:00 AM (local time) that morning that the government had ordered all troops to withdraw.

The massacre of withdrawing Iraqi soldiers violates the Geneva Conventions of 1949, Common Article III, which outlaws the killing of soldiers who are out of combat. The point of contention involves the Bush administration’s claim that the Iraqi troops were retreating to regroup and fight again. Such a claim is the only way that the massacre which occurred could be considered legal under international law. But in fact the claim is false and obviously so. The troops were withdrawing and removing themselves from combat under direct orders from Baghdad that the war was over and that Iraq had quit and would fully comply with UN resolutions. To attack the soldiers returning home under these circumstances is a war crime.

Iraq accepted UN Resolution 660 and offered to withdraw from Kuwait through Soviet mediation on February 21, 1991. A statement made by George Bush on February 27, 1991, that no quarter would be given to remaining Iraqi soldiers violates even the US Field Manual of 1956. The 1907 Hague Convention governing land warfare also makes it illegal to declare that no quarter will be given to withdrawing soldiers. On February 26,199 I, the following dispatch was filed from the deck of the USS. Ranger, under the byline of Randall Richard of the Providence Journal:

Air strikes against Iraqi troops retreating from Kuwait were being launched so feverishly from this carrier today that pilots said they took whatever bombs happened to be closest to the flight deck. The crews, working to the strains of the Lone Ranger theme, often passed up the projectile of choice . . . because it took too long to load.

New York Times reporter Maureen Dowd wrote, “With the Iraqi leader facing military defeat, Mr. Bush decided that he would rather gamble on a violent and potentially unpopular ground war than risk the alternative: an imperfect settlement hammered out by the Soviets and Iraqis that world opinion might accept as tolerable.” In short, rather than accept the offer of Iraq to surrender and leave the field of battle, Bush and the US military strategists decided simply to kill as many Iraqis as they possibly could while the chance lasted. A Newsweek article on Norman Schwarzkopt, titled “A Soldier of Conscience” (March 11,1991), remarked that before the ground war the general was only worried about “How long the world would stand by and watch the United States pound the living hell out of Iraq without saying, ‘Wait a minute – enough is enough.’ He [Schwarzkopf] itched to send ground troops to finish the job.” The pretext for massive extermination of Iraqi soldiers was the desire of the US to destroy Iraqi equipment. But in reality the plan was to prevent Iraqi soldiers from retreating at all. Powell remarked even before the start of the war that Iraqi soldiers knew that they had been sent to Kuwait to die. Rick Atkinson of the Washington Post reasoned that “the noose has been tightened” around Iraqi forces so effectively that “escape is impossible” (February 27, 1991). What all of this amounts to is not a war but a massacre.

There are also indications that some of those bombed during the withdrawal were Palestinians and Iraqi civilians. According to Time magazine of March 18, 1991, not just military vehicles, but cars, buses and trucks were also hit. In many cases, cars were loaded with Palestinian families and all their possessions. US press accounts tried to make the discovery of burned and bombed household goods appear as if Iraqi troops were even at this late moment looting Kuwait. Attacks on civilians are specifically prohibited by the Geneva Accords and the 1977 Conventions.

How did it really happen? On February 26, 1991 Iraq had announced it was complying with the Soviet proposal, and its troops would withdraw from Kuwait. According to Kuwaiti eyewitnesses, quoted in the March 11, 1991 Washington Post, the withdrawal began on the two highways, and was in full swing by evening. Near midnight, the first US bombing started. Hundreds of Iraqis jumped from their cars and their trucks, looking for shelter. US pilots took whatever bombs happened to be close to the flight deck, from cluster bombs to 500 pound bombs. Can you imagine that on a car or truck? US forces continued to drop bombs on the convoys until all humans were killed. So many jets swarmed over the inland road that it created an aerial traffic jam, and combat air controllers feared midair collisions.

The victims were not offering resistance. They weren’t being driven back in fierce battle, or trying to regroup to join another battle. They were just sitting ducks, according to Commander Frank Swiggert, the Ranger Bomb Squadron leader. According to an article in the March 11, 1991 Washington Post, headlined “US Scrambles to Shape View of Highway of Death,” the US government then conspired and in fact did all it could to hide this war crime from the people of this country and the world. What the US government did became the focus of the public relations campaign managed by the US Central Command in Riyad, according to that same issue of the Washington Post. The typical line has been that the convoys were engaged in “classic tank battles,” as if to suggest that Iraqi troops tried to fight back or even had a chance of fighting back. The truth is that it was simply a one-sided massacre of tens of thousands of people who had no ability to fight back or defend themselves.

The Washington Post says that senior officers with the US Central Command in Riyad became worried that what they saw was a growing public perception that Iraqi forces were leaving Kuwait voluntarily, and that the US pilots were bombing them mercilessly, which was the truth. So the US government, says the Post, played down the evidence that Iraqi troops were actually leaving Kuwait.

US field commanders gave the media a carefully drawn and inaccurate picture of the fast-changing events. The idea was to portray Iraq’s claimed withdrawal as a fighting retreat made necessary by heavy allied military pressure. Remember when Bush came to the Rose Garden and said that he would not accept Saddam Hussein’s withdrawal? That was part of it, too, and Bush was involved in this cover up. Bush’s statement was followed quickly by a televised military briefing from Saudi Arabia to explain that Iraqi forces were not withdrawing but were being pushed from the battlefield. In fact, tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers around Kuwait had begun to pull away more than thirty-six hours before allied forces reached the capital, Kuwait City. They did not move under any immediate pressure from allied tanks and infantry, which were still miles from Kuwait City.

This deliberate campaign of disinformation regarding this military action and the war crime that it really was, this manipulation of press briefings to deceive the public and keep the massacre from the world is also a violation of the First Amendment of the US Constitution, the right of the people to know.

Joyce Chediac is a Lebanese-American journalist who has traveled in the Middle East and writes on Middle East issues. Her report was presented at the New York Commission hearing, May 11, 1991.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/twenty-five-years-ago-the-1991-iraq-gulf-war-america-bombs-the-highway-of-death/5518407

Michael Parenti: What the US did to Iraq prior to 9-11 and why the US did it

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Defying the Sanctions: A Flight to Iraq
January 2001 [written 8 months before 9-11]

Upon disembarking from the Olympic Airways plane that brought me to Iraq in November 2000, I could see some of the effects of the Western-imposed sanctions. What was once a busy international airport is now a desolate strip. Two lonely planes sit as if abandoned on the vast tarmac. There are no airport personnel to speak of, no baggage carts or utility vehicles, not even any visible security. On a wall inside the empty terminal is a handmade sign in Arabic and imperfect English; it reads: “Down USA.” A large portrait of Saddam Hussein gazes down upon us. His image can be found along the road to the city, in the hotel, and on various public buildings.

 I am part of an international delegation of Greeks, Britons, Canadians, and Americans. Included are journalists, peace advocates, and members of the Greek parliament. Margarita Papandreou, former first lady of Greece and devoted political activist, leads the group. It is an especially moving moment for her. It has been her dream for ten years to be able to fly directly to Baghdad. And ours is the first flight to Iraq by a state-owned commercial airline from the West in defiance of US/UN sanctions. The Iraqi officials who greet us do not try to hide how pleased they are about our arrival. “Your presence is a statement against the inhuman means used against us. Iraq is a prosperous country capable of fulfilling the basic needs of the people but we are being prevented from doing so by the UN sanctions,” one of them says. “Feel free to go anywhere and speak to anyone.”

Killing Iraq

Most Americans do not know that Saddam Hussein was put into power by a CIA-engineered coup to stop the Iraqi revolution—which he did by massacring the communists and the left-wing of his own Baath party. But in time Saddam proved to be a disappointment to his mentors in Washington. Instead of becoming the comprador ruler who opened his country to free-market capital penetration on terms that were thoroughly favorable to Western investors, he devoted a substantial portion of Iraq’s export earnings to human services and economic development. In 1972, Iraq nationalized its oil industry, and was immediately denounced by US leaders as a “terrorist” nation.

Before the six weeks of air attacks known as the Gulf War (which ended in February 1991), Iraq’s standard of living was the highest in the Middle East. Iraqis enjoyed free medical care and free education. Literacy had reached about 80 percent. Most Iraqi youth were educated up through secondary school. University students of both genders received scholarships to study at home and abroad. In the eyes of Western leaders, Saddam was that penultimate evil, an economic nationalist, little better than a communist. He would have to be taught a lesson. His country needed to be bombed back into the Third World from which it was emerging.

The high explosive tonnage delivered upon Iraq during the Gulf War was more than twice the combined Allied air offensive of World War II. Within the first few days of bombing, there was no running water in the country. More than 90 percent of Iraq’s electrical capacity was destroyed. Its telecommunication systems, including television and radio stations, were demolished, as were its flood control, irrigation, sewage treatment, water purification, and hydroelectic systems. Farm herds and poultry farms suffered heavy losses. US planes burned wheat and grain fields with incendiary bombs, and hit hundreds of schools, hospitals, rail stations, bus stations, air-raid shelters, mosques, and historic sites. Factories that produced textiles, cement, chlorine, petrochemicals, and phosphate were hit repeatedly. So were the refineries, pipelines, and storage tanks of Iraq’s oil industry. Iraqi civilians and soldiers fleeing Kuwait were slaughtered by the thousands on what became known as the “Highway of Death.” Also massacred were Iraqi soldiers who tried to surrender to US forces on a number of occasions. In all, some 200,000 Iraqis were killed in those six weeks. Nearly all US planes, Ramsey Clark notes, “employed laser-guided depleted-uranium missiles, leaving 900 tons of radioactive waste spread over much of Iraq with no concern for the consequences to future life.”

Our delegation got a grim glimpse of the war’s aftermath. We visited the Al-Amerya bomb shelter where over four hundred civilians, mostly women and children were incinerated by two US missiles. Blackened ossified body parts, including a child’s hand can still be seen melded into the ceiling. Along one wall is the irradiated shadow of a woman holding a baby in her arms, a ghoulish fresco created by the heat blast of the missiles. The shadow of another figure can be seen on the cement floor. The shelter has been made into a shrine, with candles, plastic flowers, and pictures of the victims. The guide notes that US reconnaissance saw civilians using the shelter on a nightly basis during the early days of the bombing, yet it was still chosen as a target.

In the ten years of “peace” since February 1991, an additional 400 tons of explosives have been dropped on Iraq, three hundred people have been killed and many hundreds wounded. The United States and United Kingdom, with the participation of France, imposed a no-fly zone over the northern region of the country, ostensibly to protect the Kurds. This newly found humanitarian concern did not extend to the Kurds residing on the Turkish side of the border. The next year, another no-fly zone was imposed in the south, reputedly to protect Shiite settlements, effectively dividing the country into three parts. By 1998, the French had withdrawn from both zones, but US and British air attacks on military and civilian targets have continued almost on a daily basis, including strafing raids against Iraqi agricultural developments. Baghdad’s repeated protests to the United Nations have gone unheeded. Since 1998, three members of the Security Council—Russia, China, and France; and various nonpermanent members have condemned the raids as illegal and unauthorized by the Security Council.

To drive the point home to us, on the second day of our visit, US warplanes fired four missiles at the village of Hmaidi in the southern province of Basra, one of which struck the Ali Al-Hayaini school, wounding four children and three teachers. Several homes were also hit.

Picking Up the Pieces

Despite the years of bombings and the even greater toll on human life taken by the sanctions, visitors to Baghdad do not see a city in ruins. Much of the wreckage has been cleared away, much has been repaired. In our hotel there is running water throughout the day, hot water in the morning. Various streets in Baghdad are lined with little stores, surprisingly well-stocked with household appliances, hardware goods, furniture, and clothes (much of which has a second-hand look).

We see no derelicts or homeless people on the streets of Baghdad, no prostitutes or ragged bands of abandoned children, though there are occasional youngsters eager to shine shoes or solicit spare change. But even they seem to be well-fed and decently clothed. Obviously, despite all the destruction wrought by the sanctions, Iraq still has not undergone sufficient free-market “structural adjustment.”

A British member of our delegation who has made more than a dozen trips to Iraq over the past decade sees some changes for the better. A few years ago, the cars all looked like “death traps”; tires were patched beyond recognition, windows were cracked, and doors were falling off the hinges, she tells me. Now the Iraqis seem to have procured vehicles that are in better repair. In addition, large swaths of the city used to be shrouded in complete darkness; now there are lights just about everywhere, though mostly on the dim side. There are more shops with more goods, “although 70 percent of the people can’t buy anything.” Still, “people used to feel hopelessly isolated and now there seems to be more hope and better morale,”[and the worst was to come in two years — Shock and Awe] she concludes.

The Silent Cries of Children

 Not everyone shows better morale. It is said that the most depressed officials in Iraq can be found in the Ministry of Health, not surprisingly given the tragedies they confront. Aside from the 200,000 Iraqis slaughtered during the Gulf War, an additional 1.5 million civilians have died since 1991 as a result of the sanctions, according to UNICEF reports and the Red Cross, many from what normally would be treatable and curable illnesses. Of these victims, 600,000 are children under 5 years of age. Maternal mortality rates have more than doubled, and 70 percent of Iraqi women suffer from anemia. Given the tons of depleted uranium used during the Allied attacks, cancer rates have skyrocketed: the childhood leukemia rate is now the highest in the world. Most of the leukemia increase is in southern Iraq where the bombing was heaviest.

We visit a children’s hospital in Baghdad. The familiar sight of skeletal-looking infants, racked with diseases that make it impossible for them to retain or digest nutrients are no longer evident. Such dying children still can be found in parts of Iraq but not at this hospital. Instead we encounter something equally ominous: children suffering from acute forms of multiple malignancies. Shrouded mothers stand by the beds like mournful sentinels, their eyes filled with unspoken grief. The journalists, photographers, and TV crews in our delegation descend upon these sad people, clicking and flashing away with that intrusive irreverence that is the press’s modus operandi. A mother weeps quietly against the wall. One of the doomed children smiles up at us—which almost causes me to start weeping.

Things are getting worse, a doctor tells us; more and more children are turning up with leukemia. The medical staff is overwhelmed. One doctor says he sees three hundred patients in three hours: “We cannot treat them properly.” Some of the hospital rooms are lined with incubators that contain what look like premature births. These turn out to be infants who are the products of depleted uranium, born with serious deformities and malfunctions, urgently in need of surgical intervention. The hospital lacks the special instruments needed to operate on infants, not to mention ordinary medications, anesthetics, antibiotics, bandages, intravenous sets, and diagnostic equipment. Iraq’s excellent national health care system, with its universal coverage, is now in shambles because of the embargo.

Things were supposed to get better when the sanctions were eased in 1996, allowing Iraq to make “oil for food” sales. Since then, $32 billion in oil was sold abroad but only $8 billion worth of materials has reached Iraq, less than $5 or $6 a month per person. Another $10 billion has been allocated for “war compensation,” in effect forcing the Iraqis to pay the costs incurred by the UN aggressors when destroying Iraq. Another $11 billion in cash sits in Western banks. Worse still, many essential things needed to rebuild the infrastructure—including the technological, medical, educational, communicational, and industrial systems of the nation—are still not available. Under the deleterious “dual use” doctrine, many vital commodities and materials needed for humanitarian and civilian purposes are banned because they conceivably could also be used by the military: computers, components for electrical transmitters and water pumps, even glycerin tablets needed for heart ailments. (It would take millions of glycerin tablets mixed with nitrogen to make one small explosive.)

The Foreign Minister Speaks

 Iraq’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Tariq Aziz, a calm congenial man, meets with our delegation. [Tariq Aziz died June 5, 2015, in prison, convicted on trumped up charges. His abusive treatment in prison included being denied visitation, adequate food, and access to medication. His imprisonment and death at the hands of the U.S. and “interim” Iraq vassal government are chronicled here] In clear and precise English, he makes the following points: Before 1990, the United Nations had placed sanctions upon only a few nations, such as Rhodesia and South Africa, on a voluntary basis. “It was left to the countries themselves and the world to implement those sanctions or not implement them.” Hence the effects were mild. But since 1990,US leaders with their so-called New World Order have imposed the severest embargo, “encircling Iraq with warships and airplanes that prevent even ordinary trips and ordinary cargoes.” As with the sanctions against Yugoslavia, the minister notes, this policy has created a lot of suffering. “Therefore, when we say that this embargo is an international issue, it’s not just anti-American propaganda. It’s the truth. And it is quit horrid.” The collapse of the Soviet Union has created a different international scene, he adds. With the end of the Cold War, “a new hot war and warm war” has been imposed on many nations, with Iraq as a prime target.

 In spite of all the reports made by United Nations agencies themselves “informing the Security Council about the sufferings of the Iraqi people, and the deaths of so many children, and the deterioration of the Iraqi economy,” Aziz reminds us, there is no likelihood of any change in UN policy on sanctions because of the Security Council veto wielded by the United States and Britain. Still the people of Iraq have not been merely passive victims. They have “refused to yield to American pressure and American blackmail.” In addition, there is “the will of other peoples, the free women and men in this world” who refuse to support injustice and imperialism. After ten years, US propaganda “is wearing thin,” and “a lot of facts have become known to the peoples of the world” bringing a dramatic increase in support for Iraq—as measured by the growing number of air flights from various nations in defiance of the sanctions. Not only Iraq but its trading partners have sustained substantial commercial losses because of the ten-year embargo. In 2000, more than 1,500 international companies from forty-five countries participated in the Iraqi trade fair. So, for both moral and legitimate commercial reasons, “the embargo is beginning to crack.”

Ten years ago, concludes Aziz, we were told: history is over; from now on we will live according to the diktat of US leaders in a Pax Americana. And those who do not accept this are “rogue nations.” But US leaders are beginning to realize “that this new imperialism is not working. . . . Despite all its power, the United States is not God. It’s not the Almighty. It’s an imperialist force.” And “when a nation succeeds in refusing the dictate of imperialists, [and] succeeds in preserving its sovereignty, and its independence and dignity, that is an achievement.” Aziz’s closing plea was that we not rely on “the manipulated media” of the United States, Britain and Canada. “One of the basic human rights is that you have the right to make your own judgment, not to buy judgments made by others that might not be honest and true. So I hope that you will use this short visit to know what is going on in this country and what the realities are.”

The “Realities”

On the closing day of our trip, members of our delegation lay plans to carry on the battle against sanctions. These include: lobbying the UN Compensation Committee, which refuses to release the $11 billion in Iraqi oil-for-food earnings; joining with Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and other NGOs to lobby the UN Security Council; lobbying the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva and the parliament of the European Union; lobbying elected representatives and religious leaders in various countries; and sending messages through the Internet.

The sanctions wall is not about to crumble but it is showing cracks. In 1998 Scott Ritter, chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq since 1991, resigned and accused the US government of undercutting UN weapons inspectors. Meanwhile US leaders and the press continued to portray Iraq as bent on nuclear aggression, despite the fact that Baghdad cooperated fully with UN inspectors who scoured the country in a vain search for weapons of mass destruction or the capacity to build them.

Also in 1998, Denis Halliday, UN Assistant Secretary General and Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, resigned in protest of what the sanctions were doing to that country. In early 2000, Hans von Sponeck, UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq and Jutta Burghart, head of UN World Food Program in Baghdad, resigned in protest of the sanctions.

Still, the State Department and the US media continue to blame Saddam, not the sanctions, for the misery endured by the Iraqi people. The claim that sanctions hurt ordinary Iraqis “is outweighed by the sad truth that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep portions of his population in poverty,” intones a Washington Post editorial reprinted in the International Herald Tribune (November 14, 2000). The Iraqi leader, the Post assures us, is a “warmongering dictator” who needs to be contained by a still more severe application of sanctions. Upon being selected as the new US Secretary of State in December 2000, General Colin Powell echoed this position, announcing that he would strive to “reenergize” the sanctions against Iraq.

 The Iraqi leadership could turn US policy completely around by uttering just two magic words: “free market.” All they would have to do is invite the IMF and World Bank into Iraq, eliminate free education and free medical care, abolish the minimal food ration that goes to every Iraqi, abolish the housing subsidies and transportation subsidies, and hand over the country’s oil industry to the corporate cartels. To lift the sanctions, Iraq must surrender to the tender mercies of the free-market paradise as Yugoslavia has recently done under the newly minted, Western-sponsored president, Kostunica, and as so many other nations have done. Until then, Iraq will continue to be designated a “rogue nation” by those policymakers in Washington who themselves are the meanest profit-driven, power-mongering rogues on earth.

*     *     * Michael Parenti’s most recent books are To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia (Verso) and History as Mystery (City Lights).

http://www.michaelparenti.org/DefyingSanctions.html