Albright “Apologizes”
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0311c.asp
by Sheldon Richman
November 7, 2003
The Future of Freedom Foundation
In 1996 then-UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright was asked by 60 Minutes
correspondent Lesley Stahl, in reference to years of U.S.-led economic
sanctions against Iraq, “We have heard that half a million children
have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And,
you know, is the price worth it?”
To which Ambassador Albright responded, “I think that is a very hard
choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it.”
That remark caused no public outcry. In fact, in January the following
year Albright was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as President Clinton’s
secretary of state. In her opening statement to the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, which was considering her appointment, she said,
“We will insist on maintaining tough UN sanctions against Iraq unless
and until that regime complies with relevant Security Council
resolutions.”
Apparently no member of the committee asked her about her statement on
60 Minutes. Albright was confirmed.
Why bring this up now? Albright has just published her memoirs, Madam
Secretary, in which she clarifies her statement. Here’s what she
writes:
I must have been crazy; I should have answered the question by
reframing it and pointing out the inherent flaws in the premise behind
it. Saddam Hussein could have prevented any child from suffering simply
by meeting his obligations… As soon as I had spoken, I wished for
the power to freeze time and take back those words. My reply had been a
terrible mistake, hasty, clumsy and wrong. Nothing matters more than
the lives of innocent people. I had fallen into the trap and said
something I simply did not mean. That was no one’s fault but my own.
(p. 275)
In the paragraph before this one she complains about the 60 Minutes
report because “little effort was made to explain Saddam’s culpability,
his misuse of Iraqi resources, or the fact that we were not embargoing
medicine or food.”
When one reviews the facts, it is clear that Albright’s explanation is
woefully inadequate. First, it contains an apparent contradiction. She
says food and medicine were not embargoed, but then she says Saddam
Hussein could have avoided the suffering “simply by meeting his
obligations.” Does that mean more food would have been available had
Hussein done what the U.S. government wanted? If so, weren’t American
officials at least partly responsible for the harm done to the Iraqi
people? Hussein certainly did not let his people starve. The New York
Times and Washington Post have reported that in answer to the
sanctions, Saddam Hussein maintained an elaborate food-rationing
program for rich and poor, presumably to hold the loyalty of the Iraqi
people, which the sanctions were supposedly intended to dissolve.
Iraqis are reported to be reluctant to give up the program even though
Hussein is gone and the sanctions are over.
Albright is being disingenuous. Although food wasn’t formally embargoed
when the sanctions began in 1990, Iraq was hampered in importing it
because initially Iraqi oil couldn’t be exported. No exports, no
imports. The UN’s “oil for food” program, started six years later,
after Hussein dropped his opposition, was supposed to remedy that. But
it didn’t entirely. Counterpunch.org reported in 1999, “Proceeds from
such oil sales are banked in New York… Thirty-four percent is
skimmed off for disbursement to outside parties with claims on Iraq,
such as the Kuwaitis, as well as to meet the costs of the UN effort in
Iraq. A further thirteen percent goes to meet the needs of the Kurdish
autonomous area in the north.” With the remaining limited amount of
money, the Iraqi government could order “food, medicine, medical
equipment, infrastructure equipment to repair water and sanitation” and
other things. But — and here’s the rub — the U.S. government could veto
or delay any items ordered. And it did.
As Joy Gordon reported in the November 2001 Harper’s,
The United States has fought aggressively throughout the last decade to
purposefully minimize the humanitarian goods that enter the country…
Since August 1991 the United States has blocked most purchases of
materials necessary for Iraq to generate electricity, as well as
equipment for radio, telephone, and other communications. Often
restrictions have hinged on the withholding of a single essential
element, rendering many approved items useless. For example, Iraq was
allowed to purchase a sewage-treatment plant but was blocked from
buying the generator necessary to run it; this in a country that has
been pouring 300,000 tons of raw sewage daily into its rivers.
For Albright to say that food and medicine were not embargoed is to
evade the fact that critical public-health needs could not be addressed
because of the sanctions. Preventing a society from purifying its water
and treating its sewage is a particularly brutal way to inflict harm,
especially on its children. Disease was rampant, and infant mortality
rose because of the sanctions. Let’s not forget that destruction of
Iraq’s infrastructure was a deliberate aim of the U.S. bombing during
the 1991 Gulf War.
No wonder two UN humanitarian coordinators quit over the sanctions. As
one of them, Denis Halliday, said when he left in 1998, “I’ve been
using the word ‘genocide’ because this is a deliberate policy to
destroy the people of Iraq. I’m afraid I have no other view.”
Albright now writes that her answer to Stahl was “crazy” and that she
regretted it “as soon as [she] had spoken.” Yet she did not take back
her words between 1996 and Sept. 11, 2001. According to journalist Matt
Welch, after being plagued by student protesters she “quietly”
expressed regret for her statement in a speech at the University
Southern California shortly after 9/11. But neither her office nor the
Clinton administration issued a prominent clarification to the American
people or the world. Could that be because her initial answer was
sincere and that her belated apology was issued with her legacy in
mind? We can be sure of one thing: word of her response spread
throughout the Arab world. Maybe even among some of the 9/11
terrorists.
Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation,
and editor of Ideas on Liberty magazine and author of “‘Ancient
History’: U.S. Conduct in the Middle East since World War II and the
Folly of Intervention.”.
Comment:
When Albright made that comment there was no condemnation from the American Govt proving that this was in line with their foreign policy regarding iraq i.e weaken it with sanctions before invading under a false pretext and then install a puppet government,
