I am suspicious as to the timing of this article. It comes at a time when certain countries are trying to gain support for the cessation of sanctions.
It is hypocritcial of AP to publish this article now. Where were they 10 years ago when these sanctions were imposed? Where was the outrage?
Depleted Uranium Anyone ? Extra Crispy!
Propoganda or what
All these pro american extremist who continue to moan iraq has money and sanctions have no effect on food supplies and medicine supplies are jokers
why is it that not 1 but 2 head of UN food for sanction programmes have resigned in disgust due to the interference and blocking by America and britain of needy supplies!
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*Originally posted by Dil he Pakistani: *
Utd, Prove it !!!
And while your doing that, take a look in the Iraq folder.. you will learn a little more about WHY the sanctions alone are responsible for the deaths of 1.6 million children.
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You can go back and look yourself. You would still blame the U.S. rather than Saddam for Iraqs condition even if you knew he spent billions on wasteful projects would you not?
The fact that Saddam Hussein is spending hundreds of millions to build palaces and refusing to use the humanitarian programme the United Nations has authorised shows the hypocrisy of his claims that he is concerned about his people's suffering." - UN official
See the topic "Suffering of Iraqis through Saddam..." if you wish to learn more.
"funding for the maintenance and repair of State hospitals"
Perhaps those guys building the Mosques could be redeployed to maintain the State hospitals. In case you are unfamiliar with construction costs, building palaces and Mosques (250 METERs across!) costs more than a few million to build!
And frankly if Saddam had to have those funds authorized by the people, as in a democracy, do you really believe the people of Iraq would authorize the expense of these monuments to Saddam over medicine? If you were the father of a dying child, what would you think everytime you passed these grandiose monuments to a dictator?
Yes indeed. It would only be fair to publish an article like this at a time when nobody would try to do anything with the information contained in it. Sort of like the fictional character Major Major in Catch-22. No one was allowed into his office to see him when he was there. You were only allowed into his office to see him when he wasn’t there.
Utd, as you seem to be too busy :-P, I will bring you an excerpt about Martti Ahtisaari, the UN Special Rapporteur who made the following statement.
**The most draconian embargo ever imposed has resulted in a silent Hiroshima for Iraq’s population, one third of whom are under 15 years old. When Martti Ahtisaari, then United Nations Special Rapporteur, visited Iraq immediately after the 1991 day Gulf war, he said: “Nothing we had seen or heard could have prepared us for this particular devastation - a country reduced to a pre-industrial age for a considerable time to come.”
Since then, the country has slid from the impossible to the apocalyptic and over 6,000 children a month - the equivalent population of a small Irish town - die of embargo-related causes.**
**Silent Hiroshima culls a nation’s children **](http://www.gupistan.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=57638)
funny how this section of the article was not highlighted:
"U.S. and United Nations officials have repeatedly rejected complaints about the humanitarian impact of the sanctions, saying the sanctions could be eliminated if Iraq complies with demands that it prove it has eliminated its weapons of mass destruction. The United Nations has also criticized Iraq for spending only a tiny fraction of its U.N.-approved oil proceeds on improving nutrition for children. Also, medicine and food have never been prohibited under the sanctions. "
No doubt Dil the world failed the innocent Iraqi people when they failed to take out Saddam in 1991. I think the time to rectify this failure as best we can is approaching starting with the liberation of Iraq.
OG, The main point of that article is that the Sanctions regime imposed upon Iraq is responsible for the deaths of thousands of children.. as regards to WHAT IF scenarios, I very much doubt there was ever a will especially on the part of the Bush adminstration to lift the sanctions, even if Iraq complied with the UN resolutions. This is exactly what we are witnessing today.
Intresting, from our friends at the guardian.
April 16, 2001
Hands up if you know the answer to this: does Saddam Hussein want sanctions against Iraq to be lifted?
The question is trickier than it looks. Take last month’s Arab summit in Amman, for instance, where a call for the lifting of sanctions was abandoned because of opposition from one country - Iraq itself. The draft resolution also called for an end to American-British bombing in the no-fly zones and could, if approved, have been hailed as a major diplomatic success for Iraq.
Instead, Iraq ended up quarrelling with the countries it had been looking to for support. One Arab leader who attended the meeting described Iraq’s attitude as “perplexing”. In return for Arab support on the lifting of sanctions, the draft resolution did not require Iraq to do much beyond trying to resolve outstanding issues amicably and agreeing to respect the independence and sovereignty of Kuwait. Iraq objected on the grounds that it has already said that it respects Kuwait’s sovereignty, and asking it to say so again implies it cannot be trusted. Iraq’s objections to other parts of the draft were equally pedantic and trivial.
Away from the cameras and microphones, the Iraqi delegation behaved in a generally belligerent manner that included personally insulting King Abdullah of Jordan, who hosted the meeting. It became apparent to many of those attending that the Iraqi delegation had clear instructions from Saddam Hussein not to accept the resolution under any circumstances. This lends further support to the argument - advanced by a number of experts - that Saddam does not want sanctions to be lifted.
Sanctions, they suggest, have facilitated Saddam’s control over the population, partly because of food rationing and partly because the Iraqi government is able to use sanctions as an excuse for its own shortcomings. Internationally, the disastrous consequences of sanctions for ordinary Iraqis have delivered a series of propaganda victories to Saddam.
If that interpretation is correct, the way to inflict maximum damage on the Baghdad regime would be to lift sanctions immediately. But, while there is no doubt that sanctions in their present form have helped Saddam in some ways, they are also causing him serious difficulties in other areas - such as having oil revenue controlled by the UN. So the question is really whether the benefits for Saddam outweigh the disadvantages.
A more subtle interpretation of Iraq’s attitude - which could also explain the Iraqi delegation’s behaviour in Amman - is that Saddam finds sanctions an inconvenience, but not an intolerable one. He believes that they will fizzle out of their own accord and, if he makes no concessions in the meantime, he shall one day claim a final victory in the Mother of Battles.
In the dying days of the Clinton administration, it certainly looked as if sanctions might be on the point of collapsing. But Colin Powell, the new US secretary of state, has other ideas. Although Mr Powell’s plans for “smart” sanctions are not yet complete, the signs are that they will look gentler, but bite Saddam harder. The gentle bit is to take a much more relaxed approach towards trade with Iraq and to allow a resumption of commercial flights. This will not only help ordinary Iraqis but will also reduce the scope for controversy of the kind that has helped Iraq to win sympathy abroad in the past. Publicity-generating “humanitarian” flights, for example, will simply become unnecessary. The sting in the tail is that, even with greater freedom to import what it wants, Iraq’s oil revenue - its only significant source of income - will still have to be channelled through the UN. At the same time, more effort will be made to block any sources of income that are outside UN control (such as oil smuggling).
Apart from the compulsory deductions for Iraq’s oil revenue, which are made by the UN to feed the Kurdish minority in the north and to compensate victims of the invasion of Kuwait, this will mean that Saddam cannot regain full control of the country’s finances. Besides that, western efforts to cajole Saddam into allowing weapons inspectors to return - so triggering a suspension of sanctions - will probably stop.
Sanctions, for all practical purposes, will be permanent so long as Saddam remains in power. This ought to worry Saddam, since it combines the disadvantages (from his point of view) of lifting sanctions with the disadvantages of retaining them. Before long, he could be regretting his missed opportunity in Amman.
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*Originally posted by underthedome: *
No doubt Dil the world failed the innocent Iraqi people when they failed to take out Saddam in 1991. I think the time to rectify this failure as best we can is approaching starting with the liberation of Iraq.
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I think Sadam should of been ousted long ago... but ask yourself.. did they really want to take him out during the last war? "
Also, WHY should the Iraqi children have to suffer again and again because of past FAILED policies?
Dil,
You may not be old enough to remember, but sanctions were actually considered to be the preferred method for ousting Saddam. None other than Anti-US peacenik Noam Chomsky publicly came out in favor of sanctions towards then end of the Gulf War. Look it up!
OG, that may of been the position after the last war... but sanctions have FAILED disastrously in that they have not had the desired effects... instead they have unleashed terrible hardships upon millions of Iraqis..
No Dil,
This was Chomsky’s alternative to the last gulf war. Here is the direct quote:
We might take a moment to review the standard arguments against sanctions. Advocates of force observed somberly that there is no guarantee that sanctions would work. That is quite true; there is also no guarantee that the sun will rise tomorrow. There is, however, a strong probability that in this case sanctions would have been effective, if only because of their extraordinary severity, and because – for once – the usual “sanctions busters” (the U.S., Britain, and their allies) happen to be on board, a simple truth that plainly cannot be expressed.
It was also argued that we cannot delay until sanctions have an effect. Why can’t we wait?
Funny, all the peaceniks WANTED sanctions instead of war, and look where we are today.
One has to be really quite suspicious of an argument that can only point the finger at admittedly a sometimes faulty democracy, while not reserving the even the slightest bit of scorn or even criticism for a genocidal dictator vis a vis culpability. It truly cannot be taken seriously. I think this fact alone completely undermines your own position, DHP.
If on the other hand, I were to tell you that I agree that sanctions are not working and have had a devastating effect on the Iraqi population, but I still want a solution to the "Sadaam Problem", how can you help me? Will you support his ouster, a change in the sanctions, a war, an assasination? Toss me a bone. Beyond ending the sanctions, what are your thoughts on helping the Iraqi people while considering the legitimate security concerns of the U.N. and U.S.? Is that a consideration at all?
OG, thats politics !!
Regardless of Chomskys/others past views, from a humanitarian point of view we should support the well being of millions of innocent Iraqi civilians who are caught in this devastating situation. War is the last thing that these people need in that part of the world.. their infrastructure was all but destroyed in the last war, much of it was never rebuilt. The economic embargo has destroyed the once bustling Iraqi economy. There are goods available in the shops but ONLY the more affluent members of society (a small minority) can afford to buy them. The average monthly salaries have dropped from the equivalent of $500 to $10.
Despite all of this, the Bush Administration wants to attack Iraq… AGAIN.. 
STORCH, Ive already said that Sadam is a Tyrant and needs to be removed.. but NOT at the cost of millions of Iraqi lives....
As for his threat to other nations.. Do you not think if he wanted to attack another nation he would of done so by now?? Military analysts beleive most of his military power, men and equipment were destroyed in the last war.
Dil,
You finally got it!
“ONLY the more affluent members of society”
Don’t you find it ironic that the ONLY people who can live large in Iraq are those who “have connections”. The sanctions give Saddam complete control over the society, who is rich, and who is not. Any bad consequences he can blame on the US! Perfect!
Read on:
"You can see exactly why UN sanctions are failing to put much pressure on the Iraqi government if you go to Mosul, the city in Iraq’s lush, green north where anyone who’s anyone goes for a spring holiday.
I went during the Eid al-Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice which marks the climax of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca and is the biggest celebration in the Muslim year. Mosul’s three best hotels were all packed with holidaying families happily paying 6,000 dinars per person per night for a bed - that’s only $4.60 because the dinar has collapsed against the dollar, but it’s what an office worker earns in a month.
These people are Iraq’s political and business elite. Who else gives their kid a Saddam Hussein T-shirt for the Eid? They’re able to ride out the sanctions in their air-conditioned Mercedes saloons because they’ve got connections. They earn high salaries (I know a journalist who used to make 50,000 dinars a month at Uday Hussein’s weekly newspapers) or they’ve got the inside track on sanctions-busting business deals.
The elite is not untouched by sanctions. Nobody can be. Your child’s asthma drug might be available on the black market for a price, but you’ve still got to track it down. You might have a good job, but there’s a whole web of family and friends who are relying on you to push money their way by giving them minor jobs in your organisation, getting their sons into the army, or lobbying for their company to get a contract.
But if you’re one of these people, do the sanctions make you feel that President Saddam Hussein ought to roll over and give UN weapons inspectors the entire files of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons programme? No way. These people feel like Britain in the Blitz - we might stand alone against the most mighty nation on earth, but we’re not defeated. (Anyone who wonders how Saddam Hussein has managed to present the 1991 Gulf War as the Mother of Victories should look at how Britain turned the rout of Dunkirk into a heroic legend.) Let the Americans go to hell, we’re off to Mosul for four days of fun and food.
Mosul’s a rich city and ordinary families also managed to celebrate the Eid. The shrine of the Prophet Jonah, Mosul’s top Muslim holy place, was jam packed on Friday with families queuing up to touch the Prophet’s tomb, pray, and buy their children an ice cream.
An hour’s drive northeast of the city, Syrian Orthodox Christians from Mosul visited the fourth-century monastery of Saint Matthew, which hangs on the side of a cliff with a breathtaking view across miles of rolling green landscape - the Eid is a four-day public holiday, so everyone is off work and non-Muslims join in the celebrations.
The slopes below the monastery were dotted with families picnicking. These were not the rich - families had packed themselves into battered orange and white taxis, borrowed minibuses and even the cabs of haulage trucks to get out into the countryside."