A CALL TO THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT:

the US "anti-war" movement is, for the most part, doing little. every couple of months there is a large demonstration against war, the IMF/WB, evil, that sort of thing, with thousands (hopefully) of people from all walks of leftist life, liberal to anarchist, reformist to revolutionary. there seems to be a role for everyone to play, protesters, police, protester police, that is almost invariably followed. the organizers declare "victory," radicals complain in their isolated pockets about the lack of "diversity of tactics," and the majority of people in attendance, who know this country's foreign and domestic policies are fucked, go home feeling good about the day, but not being any closer to knowing what they can do collectively to be more effective. i wonder if october and january will be any different.

and the fact of the matter is that, though the government takes us pretty seriously due to their constant harrassment, surveillance and intimidation at these protests and even in the daily lives of some organizers and groups, the "anti-war/corporate globalization" movement isn't really much of a threat at all to the established power structure. for the most part, we handicap ourselves, relatively content to reap the benefits of capitalist colonialism that we loudly denounce in our flyers and propaganda.

only when the cost of continuing the "war on terrorism" is greater to the ruling elites than the the cost of maintaining it will there be major policy changes. for now it's just the same insincere corporate political party posturing and indignation at the actions of one another.

militancy and effectiveness in this country will come when the feeling the majority of people have of the weight of the economic recession bearing down upon them intersects with their anger, rage and willingness to stand up against the violence of everyday life in a more organized, collective fashion.

i hope the dc anti-capitalist convergence is organizing for these demonstrations as well, as somewhat of a counterweight to ANSWER/liberal groups who are more than happy to channel rage into their version of the "acceptable" channels.

ANSWER=International Action Center=Worker's World Party

ANSWER -> International Action Center -> Worker's World Party

A 9-11 connection? A justification of war?

In early months of Bush administration, the issue of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was not near the top of the foreign policy agenda. Revival of the issue after September 11 appeared primarily to be a pretext for settling unfinished business. Iraq's links to al-Qaeda have proved too tenuous to include Iraq directly in the "war on terrorism." Most recently, the FBI itself has raised doubts about the veracity of the story that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague. Hence the weapons issue has now taken center stage, with the US invoking UN resolutions and hoping to rally international support on this basis. - http://www.zmag.org/content/Iraq/merip_graham.cfm ( MERIP Press Information Note 96, "Sanctions Renewed on Iraq," by Sarah Graham-Brown, May 14, 2002.)

The United States is now set on war with Iraq. What justification is there for such a war? Occasionally it has been suggested that Iraq was somehow linked to the 11 September attacks. The strongest alleged link has been the supposed meeting of Mohammed Atta, the 11 September ringleader, and an Iraqi diplomat expelled from the Czech Republic for spying. The two are meant to have met in Prague in 2001, a 'fact' confirmed by Czech interior minister Stanislav Gross in Oct. 2001. When the Czech police completed their inquiry in Dec. 2001, however, 'Jiri Kolar, the police chief, said there were no documents showing that Atta visited Prague at any time this year [2001], although he had visited twice in 2000'. Another man by the name of Mohammed Atta did visit Prague in 2001, but according to a Czech intelligence source, 'He didn't have the same identity card number, there was a great difference in their ages, their nationalities didn't match, basically nothing. It was someone else.' (Daily Telegraph, 18 Dec. 2001, p. 10) Despite the disintegration of this fable, it continues to circulate and to be repeated as fact. Useful lies can live for a long time. As for any links between Baghdad and al-Qaeda, an anonymous former CIA officer has remarked that, 'The reality is that Osama bin Laden doesn't like Saddam Hussein. Saddam is a secularist who has killed more Islamic clergy than he has Americans. They have almost nothing in common except a hatred of the US. Saddam is the ultimate control freak, and for him terrorists are the ultimate loose cannon.' (Daily Telegraph, 20 Sept. 2001, p. 10)

Initially, Washington included Iraq on its list of countries with links to al-Qaeda, but when European governments insisted that there was no intelligence evidence connecting Baghdad to Osama bin Laden's organisation, the US changed tack. "Now the emphasis is on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programme and the danger that Saddam might send out his own agents armed with chemical or biological devices", one [British] official said.' (Times, 16 Feb. 2002, p. 19) The latest CIA report on the topic (Jan. 2002) says, that without 'an inspection-monitoring program' 'it is more difficult to determine the current status' of Iraq's biological and chemical weapons programmes. No smoking gun, then. Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter has written, 'Given the comprehensive nature of the monitoring regime put in place by UNSCOM [UN Special Commission weapons inspectors], which included a strict export-import control regime, it was possible as early as 1997 to determine that, from a qualitative standpoint, Iraq had been disarmed. Iraq no longer possessed any meaningful quantities of chemical or biological agent, if it possessed any at all, and the industrial means to produce these agents had either been eliminated or were subject to stringent monitoring. The same was true of Iraq's nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities.' (Arms Control Today, June 2000) According to Ritter, a former US Marine, 'manufacturing CW [chemical weapons] would require the assembling of production equipment into a single integrated facility, creating an infrastructure readily detectable by the strategic intelligence capabilities of the United States. The CIA has clearly stated on several occasions since the termination of inspections in December 1998 that no such activity has been detected.' As for biological weapons, 'The Iraqis do have enough equipment to carry out laboratory-scale production of BW agent. However, without an infusion of money and technology, expanding such a capability into a viable weapons program is a virtual impossibility. Contrary to popular belief, BW cannot simply be cooked up in the basement; it requires a large and sophisticated infrastructure, especially if the agent is to be filled into munitions. As with CW, the CIA has not detected any such activity concerning BW since UNSCOM inspectors left Iraq.' - http://www.zmag.org/content/Iraq/rai_no_justification_for_war.cfm

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What about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction?

By ignoring or suppressing these facts, together with the scale of a four-year bombing campaign by American and British aircraft (in 1999/2000, according to the Pentagon, the US flew 24,000 "combat missions" over Iraq), journalists have prepared the ground for an all-out attack on Iraq. The official premise for this - that Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction - has not been questioned. In fact, in 1998, the UN reported that Iraq had complied with 90 per cent of its inspectors' demands. That the UN inspectors were not "expelled", but pulled out after American spies were found among them in preparation for an attack on Iraq, is almost never reported. Since then, the world's most sophisticated surveillance equipment has produced no real evidence that the regime has renewed its capacity to build weapons of mass destruction. "The real goal of attacking Iraq now," says Eric Herring, "is to replace Saddam Hussein with another compliant thug." - http://www.zmag.org/content/MainstreamMedia/pilger_compliantpress.cfm

There is strong evidence that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have pretty much been destroyed. Earlier this year, Iraq fully cooperated with international nuclear weapons inspectors. Scott Ritter, a UN weapons inspector in Iraq for six years, asserts that 95% of Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons have been destroyed. On March 13, 2002, he wrote: "America claims that Iraq lied to inspectors and still has deadly stockpiles. But the Bush administration has shown little interest in sending the inspectors back. It has used their absence to hype the threat of a re-armed Iraq." Furthermore, the United States has presented no evidence that Iraq is harboring terrorists. - http://www.rmpjc.org/STOP-THE-WAR-AGAINST-IRAQ/WarAgainstIraqDefiesLaw-March2002.html

What are sanctions for? Eradicating Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, says the Security Council resolution. Scott Ritter, a chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq for five years, told me: "By 1998, the chemical weapons infrastructure had been completely dismantled or destroyed by UNSCOM (the UN inspections body) or by Iraq in compliance with our mandate. The biological weapons programme was gone, all the major facilities eliminated. The nuclear weapons programme was completely eliminated. The long range ballistic missile programme was completely eliminated. If I had to quantify Iraq's threat, I would say [it is] zero." Ritter resigned in protest at US interference; he and his American colleagues were expelled when American spy equipment was found by the Iraqis. To counter the risk of Iraq reconstituting its arsenal, he says the weapons inspectors should go back to Iraq after the immediate lifting of all non-military sanctions; the inspectors of the international Atomic Energy Agency are already back. At the very least, the two issues of sanctions and weapons inspection should be entirely separate. Madeleine Albright has said: "We do not agree that if Iraq complies with its obligations concerning weapons of mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted." If this means that Saddam Hussein is the target, then the embargo will go on indefinitely, holding Iraqis hostage to their tyrant's compliance with his own demise. Or is there another agenda? In January 1991, the Americans had an opportunity to press on to Baghdad and remove Saddam, but pointedly stopped short. A few weeks later, they not only failed to support the Kurdish and Shi'a uprising, which President Bush had called for, but even prevented the rebelling troops in the south from reaching captured arms depots and allowed Saddam Hussein's helicopters to slaughter them while US aircraft circled overhead. At they same time, Washington refused to support Iraqi opposition groups and Kurdish claims for independence." - http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Iraq/pilger.htm

"Let's talk about the weapons. In 1991, did Iraq have a viable weapons of mass destruction capability? You're darn right they did. They had a massive chemical weapons program. They had a giant biological weapons program. They had long-range ballistic missiles and they had a nuclear weapons program that was about six months away from having a viable weapon.

"Now after seven years of work by UNSCOM inspectors, there was no more (mass destruction) weapons program. It had been eliminated....When I say eliminated I'm talking about facilities destroyed....

"The weapons stock had been, by and large, accounted for - removed, destroyed or rendered harmless. Means of production had been eliminated, in terms of the factories that can produce this...."There were some areas that we didn't have full accounting for. And this is what plagued UNSCOM. Security Council 687 is an absolute resolution. It requires that Iraq be disarmed 100 percent. It's what they call 'quantitative disarmament.' Iraq will not be found in compliance until it has been disarmed to a 100 percent level. That's the standard set forth by the Security Council and as implementors of the Security Council resolution, the weapons inspectors had no latitude to seek to do anything less than that - 80 percent was not acceptable; 90 percent was not acceptable; only 100 percent was acceptable.

"And this was the Achilles tendon, so to speak, of UNSCOM. Because by the time 1997 came around, Iraq had been qualitatively disarmed. On any meaningful benchmark - in terms of defining Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability; in terms of assessing whether or not Iraq posed a threat, not only to its immediate neighbors, but the region and the world as a whole - Iraq had been eliminated as such a threat....

"What was Iraq hiding? Documentation primarily - documents that would enable them to reconstitute - at a future date - weapons of mass destruction capability....But all of this is useless...unless Iraq has access to the tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars required to rebuild the industrial infrastructure (necessary) to build these weapons. They didn't have it in 1998. They don't have it today. This paranoia about what Iraq is doing now that there aren't weapons inspectors reflects a lack of understanding of the reality in Iraq.

"The economic sanctions have devastated this nation. The economic sanctions, combined with the effects of the Gulf War, have assured that Iraq operate as a Third World nation in terms of industrial output and capacity. They have invested enormous resources in trying to build a 150-kilometer range ballistic missile called the Al Samoud.

"In 1998 they ran some flight tests of prototypes that they had built of this missile. They fizzled. One didn't get off the stand. The other flipped over on the stand and blew up. The other one got up in the air and then went out of control and blew up. They don't have the ability to produce a short-range ballistic missile yet alone a long-range ballistic missile....

"The other thing to realize is: they are allowed to build this missile. It's not against the law. The law says anything under 150 kilometers they can build and yet people are treating this missile as if it's a threat to regional security....It's a tactical battlefield missile, that's it. Yet, (Congressman Tom) Lantos and others treat this as though it's some sort of latent capability and requires a ballistic missile defense system to guard against it. It's ridiculous. Iraq has no meaningful weapons of mass destruction program today. - http://www.commondreams.org/views/030700-106.htm

There is no latitude for inspectors to accept anything less than 100 percent disarmament, which, given the combined effect of the passage of time and Iraqi intransigence, leaves the inspectors in the nearly impossible position of trying to prove a negative. The reality that, from a qualitative standpoint, Iraq has in fact been disarmed has been ignored. The chemical, biological, nuclear, and long-range ballistic missile programs that were a real threat in 1991 had, by 1998, been destroyed or rendered harmless. - http://www.commondreams.org/views/030900-101.htm

In early months of Bush administration, the issue of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was not near the top of the foreign policy agenda. Revival of the issue after September 11 appeared primarily to be a pretext for settling unfinished business. Iraq's links to al-Qaeda have proved too tenuous to include Iraq directly in the "war on terrorism." Most recently, the FBI itself has raised doubts about the veracity of the story that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague. Hence the weapons issue has now taken center stage, with the US invoking UN resolutions and hoping to rally international support on this basis.

The lack of clarity in Bush administration pronouncements inevitably signals to the Iraqi leadership that even if they were to comply with WMD inspections, the US would still try to oust them. As in the past, moving the goalposts on sanctions and arms control leaves the Iraqi government with a reason not to comply -- citing a "no-win" situation. Furthermore, the leadership's long-held belief in the usefulness of chemical and biological weapons would suggest they would be even more likely to conceal and try to retain them if they were faced with a major attack.

For the US, the worst-case scenario would be for the UN inspectors to declare Iraq free of banned weapons and therefore call for the lifting of sanctions. Fear of this eventuality may be behind recent attacks on the arms control record of Hans Blix, formerly head of the IAEA and now of UNMOVIC. Asked to investigate him by Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, doyen of the regime change crowd, the CIA found that Blix had conducted inspections within the IAEA's parameters. But Wolfowitz's approach fits with the Bush administration policy of attacking or removing unwelcome chairpersons of international bodies -- working on human rights, climate change or chemical weapons -- with which the US has disagreements. Blix, for his part, has presented a firm view of UNMOVIC's work, stating that Iraq would need to give the inspectors hard proof that its WMD had been destroyed. At the same time, he has held out the possibility that if Iraq cooperated fully, sanctions could be lifted within a year. - http://www.zmag.org/content/Iraq/merip_graham.cfm ( MERIP Press Information Note 96, "Sanctions Renewed on Iraq," by Sarah Graham-Brown, May 14, 2002.)

Video of former weapons inspector Scott Ritter on the threat posed by Iraq: "...the real threat is zero. None." - http://multimedia.carlton.com/ram/pilger/iraq/zero.ram

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Didn't Saddam throw out the weapons inspectors and why won't he let them in again?

By ignoring or suppressing these facts, together with the scale of a four-year bombing campaign by American and British aircraft (in 1999/2000, according to the Pentagon, the US flew 24,000 "combat missions" over Iraq), journalists have prepared the ground for an all-out attack on Iraq. The official premise for this - that Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction - has not been questioned. In fact, in 1998, the UN reported that Iraq had complied with 90 per cent of its inspectors' demands. That the UN inspectors were not "expelled", but pulled out after American spies were found among them in preparation for an attack on Iraq, is almost never reported. Since then, the world's most sophisticated surveillance equipment has produced no real evidence that the regime has renewed its capacity to build weapons of mass destruction. "The real goal of attacking Iraq now," says Eric Herring, "is to replace Saddam Hussein with another compliant thug." - http://www.zmag.org/content/MainstreamMedia/pilger_compliantpress.cfm

“The inspectors have to go back in under our terms, under no one else’s terms,” Colin Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, ignoring Iraq’s concerns over the well-documented fact that the last inspection team in Iraq passed on intelligence information to the U.S. government in violation of its mission. - http://www.zmag.org/content/Iraq/arnove_iraq-crossfires.cfm

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Saddam Risk a Lie, Says UN Expert

UNITED Nations weapons inspectors colluded with British secret service agents to spread disinformation about Saddam Hussein's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs as part of a campaign to justify military strikes, according to the head of the UN inspection team in Iraq.

In an interview with The Herald, Scott Ritter, who led the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) team in Iraq for seven years in the 90s, claims he helped to leak propaganda to journalists. He resigned from the post in 1998 but said his experience then suggested that recent claims that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction should be treated skeptically.

...Ritter, a former intelligence officer in the US marines, maintains there is scant evidence that Iraq is a threat.

He says claims that Iraq is re-arming come from unreliable witnesses and that factories bombed in 1998 during Operation Desert Fox had not breached UN resolutions. "Every single one of those facilities was subjected to repeated inspections and never did we detect anything to remotely suggest that these were involved in producing anything prohibited. There's nothing there. Nothing." [Published on Monday, July 8, 2002 in The Herald (Scotland) ] - Saddam Risk a Lie, Says UN Expert Common Dreams

What will make the US lift Sanctions?

Previously the ambiguity in US policy was that key players would not say that if Iraq complied with inspections and was given a clean bill of health, sanctions would be lifted. When Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in March 2001 that if Iraq let weapons inspectors in, the US "may look at lifting sanctions," he continued the Clinton administration's strategy of using sanctions as a form of punitive control and containment, rather than enforcement of specific requirements on Iraq. - http://www.zmag.org/content/Iraq/merip_graham.cfm (MERIP Press Information Note 96, "Sanctions Renewed on Iraq," by Sarah Graham-Brown, May 14, 2002.)

...Madeleine Albright has said: "We do not agree that if Iraq complies with its obligations concerning weapons of mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted." If this means that Saddam Hussein is the target, then the embargo will go on indefinitely, holding Iraqis hostage to their tyrant's compliance with his own demise...." - http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Iraq/pilger.htm

August 6, 1990: United Nations Security Council passes Resolution 661, placing sanctions on Iraq to "restore the authority of the legitimate government of Kuwait."
(For U.N. resolutions, see: gopher://gopher.undp.org/11/undocs/scd/scouncil)

April 3, 1991: U.N. Security Council passes Resolution 687 which states that upon "the completion by Iraq of all actions contemplated in" specific paragraphs of the resolution, "the prohibitions against financial transactions ... shall have no further force or effect." The paragraphs cited have to do with weapons inspections. Other paragraphs in the resolution have to do with "return of all Kuwaiti property seized by Iraq" and Iraqi liability for losses and damage resulting from Iraq's occupation of Kuwait.

April 5, 1991: U.N. Security Council passes Resolution 688 that "demands that Iraq" end its repression "of all Iraqi citizens."

May 20, 1991: President George Bush: "At this juncture, my view is we don't want to lift these sanctions as long as Saddam Hussein is in power." James Baker, Secretary of State: "We are not interested in seeing a relaxation of sanctions as long as Saddam Hussein is in power.

January 13, 1993: As Bill Clinton is about to take office, he states: "I am a Baptist. I believe in death-bed conversions. If he [Hussein] wants a different relationship with the United States and the United Nations, all he has to do is change his behavior." (The New York Times, January 14, 1993)

January 14, 1993: In the face of criticism, particularly from The New York Times, that he might lift sanctions and even normalize relations with Iraq, Clinton backtracks: "There is no difference between my policy and the policy of the present Administration.... I have no intention of normalizing relations with him." (See The New York Times and Boston Globe, January 15, 1993) Incoming Secretary of State Warren Christopher: "I find it hard to share the Baptist belief in redemption.... I see no substantial change in the position and continuing total support for what the [Bush] administration has done."

January 12, 1995: While inspections are taking place, though not complete, Ambassador Madeleine Albright says the U.S. is "determined to oppose any modification of the sanctions regime until Iraq has moved to comply with all its outstanding obligations." She specifically cites the return of Kuwaiti weaponry and non-military equipment. (Reuters, January 12, 1995)

May 12, 1996: On "60 Minutes," Lesley Stahl asks Albright: "We have heard that a half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. Is the price worth it?" Albright responds: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it."

March 26, 1997: Albright, in her first major foreign policy address as Secretary of State: "We do not agree with the nations who argue that if Iraq complies with its obligations concerning weapons of mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted. Our view, which is unshakable, is that Iraq must prove its peaceful intentions. It can only do that by complying with all of the Security Council resolutions to which it is subjected. Is it possible to conceive of such a government under Saddam Hussein? When I was a professor, I taught that you have to consider all possibilities. As Secretary of State, I have to deal in the realm of reality and probability. And the evidence is overwhelming that Saddam Hussein's intentions will never be peaceful."

November 7, 1997: Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz: "The American government says openly, clearly, that it's not going to endorse lifting the sanctions on Iraq unless the leadership of Iraq is changed."

November 14, 1997: President Clinton. [During a standoff on weapons inspectors] "What he [Hussein] says his objective is, is to relieve the people of Iraq, and presumably the government, of the burden of the sanctions. What he has just done is to ensure that the sanctions will be there until the end of time or as long as he lasts. So I think that if his objective is to try to get back into the business of manufacturing vast stores of weapons of mass destruction and then try to either use them or sell them, then at some point the United States, and more than the United States, would be more than happy to try to stop that."

November 14, 1997: In response to the question "Is it his [Clinton's] opinion that the sanction will not be lifted ever as long as Saddam is in power, whatever he does?" National Security Adviser Sandy Berger states: "No. Let Saddam Hussein -- let Saddam Hussein come into compliance, and then we can discuss whether there are any circumstances... It has been our position consistently that Saddam Hussein has to comply with all the relative Security Council resolutions from this action.... I don't think, under these circumstances, when he has [sic] blatantly out of compliance, it is the right time for us to talk about how we lift the sanctions.... It's been the U.S. position since the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein comply -- has to comply with all of the relevant Security Council resolutions." In response to the question "but what the president said -- what he has just done is to ensure that the sanctions will be there until the end of time or as long as he lasts." Berger responds: "Well, that's right, and that's not inconsistent with what I've said. In other words, there's no way -- if he is -- if he's got to be in compliance, he can't be in compliance if he's thrown the UNSCOM people out. So it's a necessary condition. It may not be a sufficient condition."

November 20, 1997: [A stand-off is defused] A Russian-Iraqi communique is released pledging that Moscow will "energetically promote the speedy lifting of sanctions against Iraq on the basis of its compliance with the corresponding U.N. resolutions." Albright states that the lifting of the sanctions "will probably be discussed at some time, but the United States has not agreed to anything."

November 26, 1997: UNICEF reports that "The most alarming results are those on malnutrition, with 32 per cent of children under the age of five, some 960,000 children, chronically malnourished -- a rise of 72 per cent since 1991. Almost one quarter (around 23 per cent) are underweight -- twice as high as the levels found in neighbouring Jordan or Turkey." Philippe Heffinck, UNICEF Representative in Baghdad: "And what concerns us now is that there is no sign of any improvement since Security Council Resolution 986/1111 [oil-for-food] came into force." http://www.unicef.org/newsline/97pr60.htm

December 9, 1997: In response to the question: "The United States has given apparently contradictory criteria for when it will lift the sanctions. It says it will do it when UNSCOM is allowed into Iraq, when UNSCOM can get into the 'palaces,' when Iraq abides by all U.N. resolutions, including paying a few hundred billion in reparations, when Saddam Hussein is overthrown, or never. The question: When is it?" Richardson: "Our policy is clear. We believe that Saddam Hussein should comply with all the Security Council resolutions, and that includes 1137, those that deal with the UNSCOM inspectors, those that deal with human rights issues, those that deal with prisoners of war with Kuwait, those that deal with the treatment of his own people. We think that there are standards of international behavior."

December 16, 1997: President Clinton: "I am willing to maintain the sanctions as long as he does not comply with the resolutions.... There are those that would like to lift the sanctions. I am not among them. I am not in favor of lifting the sanctions until he complies.... But keep in mind, he has not come out, as some people have suggested, ahead on this last confrontation. Because now the world community is much less likely to vote to lift any sanctions on him..." In response to the question "How do you assess Saddam Hussein?" Clinton makes several points and then says: "Finally, I think that he felt probably that the United States would never vote to lift the sanctions on him no matter what he did. There are some people who believe that. Now I think he was dead wrong on virtually every point."

July 30, 1998: The New York Times reports: "Russia tried and failed to get Security Council action today on a resolution declaring that Iraq had complied with demands to destroy its nuclear weapons program and was ready to move away from intrusive inspections to long-term monitoring... Russia has been arguing that those files can be 'closed' one at a time, to give Iraq some motivation for further cooperation. The United States has held that all requirements must be met before sanctions can be altered."

August 14, 1998: The Washington Post front page: "U.S. Sought To Prevent Iraqi Arms Inspections; Surprise Visits Canceled After Albright Argued That Timing Was Wrong," regarding Scott Ritter.

August 17, 1998: Richardson: "Sanctions are going to stay forever, or until it complies fully." (The New York Times, August 18, 1998)

August 20, 1998: Richardson: "Sanctions may stay on in perpetuity." (The New York Times, August 21, 1998)

September 15, 1998: Martin Indyk, Assistant Secretary of State: "First of all, there is one serious consequence that has already occurred; that is, the Security Council has voted unanimously to suspend indefinitely sanctions reviews. That means there will be no sanctions reviews and sanctions will not be lifted." Indyk then claimed: "the Security Council resolutions provide in very specific terms for the lifting of sanctions when Iraq has fully complied with all the Security Council resolutions. And that is the crux of the matter; it's not a question that they'll never be lifted, but the conditions on which they'll be lifted will never appear to be fulfilled."

November 10, 1998: State Department spokesperson James Rubin: "We've stated very clearly that it is up to Saddam Hussein to comply with the resolutions of the Security Council that lay out the needs and requirements, including on weapons of mass destruction, coming back into compliance with those resolutions, including on Kuwaiti prisoners, Kuwaiti equipment, and, in short, demonstrating his peaceful intentions, in which case we are prepared to see an adjustment in the sanctions regime." A few moments later, Rubin states: "The Security Council has set out a very simple path to resolve this situation. And all it requires is him doing what he agreed to do, cooperating with UNSCOM -- not refusing cooperation with UNSCOM -- but providing them the information they need." - AUTOPSY OF A DISASTER: THE U.S. SANCTIONS POLICY ON IRAQ

UN and Iraqi officials Friday admitted that negotiations on the return of UN weapons inspectors to the country, seen as a step toward lifting the 12-year-old embargo on Baghdad, had broken down.

"One or two states are responsible for this," Sabri told Iraqi Youth Television.

"With their right of veto in the Security Council, they are preventing the council from doing its job with Iraq," Sabri said, referring to the United States and Britain and their hardline policy on Baghdad.

The US administration has repeatedly threatened to launch a military strike on Iraq to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein, whom it accuses of developing weapons of mass destruction. [Saturday, July 6, 2002 by Agence France Presse ] - Iraq Blames US for Breakdown in Talks with UN

Arms inspectors must return to Iraq. The international community must be satisfied that weapons of mass destruction no longer exist. But as long as an ambiguous framework for inspections remains in place, any incentive for compliance is undermined.

The refusal of individual Security Council members to recognize incremental progress in disarmament by Iraq in the pre-1998 period constituted a fundamental mistake of historic proportions. Scott Ritter, a former U.S. inspector known for his thoroughness, has said that Iraq was already qualitatively disarmed when UN weapons inspectors were withdrawn at the request of the U.S. in 1998.

Dishonesty has not been limited to the Iraqi government. Some U.S. inspectors doubled as spies; this was not conducive to creating the kind of trust essential to resolving the current weapons inspection impasse. The Secretary- General must be in a position to guarantee no further misuse of UN weapons inspections. - Too Much Collateral Damage: 'Smart Sanctions' Hurt Innocent Iraqis C.D.


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What have been the effects of the Sanctions?

What has transpired in Iraq amounts to a children's holocaust. According to a Harvard study conduced in 1991, in the first eight months of that year 47,000 excess children deaths took place. In 1996, UNICEF put a number on the children dying as a result of the United Nations sanctions regime; it found that 4,500 children were dying every month from preventable hunger and disease. Garfield, in a study of mortality among Iraqi children, found that between 1991 and 1998 at least 100,000 -- but more likely 227,000 excess deaths -- took place, of which three quarters resulted from the consequences of United Nations sanctions. In a 1999 report, requested by the UN Security Council, it was found that in "marked contrast to the prevailing situation prior to the events of 1990-1991, infant mortality rates in Iraq today are among the highest in the world, low infant birth weight [of less than 2.5kg] affects at least 23 per cent of all births." The arrested growth of children has become widespread; with the UN secretary general noting, in 1997, that chronic malnutrition has resulted in 31 per cent of children having had their growth stunted, and 26 per cent being underweight. Kofi Annan concluded his report by stating: "one- third of children under five years of age ... are malnourished."

The overall effect of sanctions has been, according to Richard Garfield: "the only instance of a sustained, large increase in mortality in a stable population of more than 2 million in the last 200 years." This should come as little surprise as a UN Development Programme field report stated that "the country has experienced a shift from relative affluence to massive poverty." The International Committee of the Red Cross, which has had people on the ground throughout the 1990s, reported in 2000 that "daily life for ordinary Iraqis was a struggle for survival. The tragic effects of the embargo were seen in the steady deterioration of the health system and the breakdown of public infrastructure. Despite the increase in availability of food, medicines and medical equipment, following a rise in oil prices and the extension of the 'oil-for-food' programme, suffering remains widespread." - http://www.zmag.org/content/Iraq/allain_criminalenforcers.cfm

...Eric Hoskins - a Canadian doctor and coordinator of a Harvard study team on Iraq - reports that the allied bombardment "effectively terminated everything vital to human survival in Iraq - electricity, water, sewage systems, agriculture, industry and health care". (Quoted, Mark Curtis, 'The Ambiguities of Power - British Foreign Policy since 1945', Zed Books, 1995, pp.189-190) - http://www.zmag.org/content/MainstreamMedia/cohen_reply.cfm

September 24, 1992: The New England Journal of Medicine publishes the findings of Harvard researchers that 46,700 Iraqi children under five have died from the combined effects of war and trade sanctions in the first seven months of 1991.

October 4, 1996: United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) releases report on Iraq. "Around 4,500 children under the age of five are dying here every month from hunger and disease," said Philippe Heffinck, UNICEF's representative for Iraq. gopher://gopher.unicef.org/00/.cefdata/.prgva96/prgva35

October 3, 1997: A joint study by the United Nations' Food & Agriculture Organization and World Food Program, found the sanctions "significantly constrained Iraq's ability to earn foreign currency needed to import sufficient quantities of food to meet needs. As a consequence, food shortages and malnutrition became progressively severe and chronic in the 1990s." http://www.fao.org/WAICENT/faoinfo/economic/giews/english/alertes/srirq997.htm

April 30, 1998: UNICIF reports: "The increase in mortality reported in public hospitals for children under five years of age (an excess of some 40,000 deaths yearly compared with 1989) is mainly due to diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition. In those over five years of age, the increase (an excess of some 50,000 deaths yearly compared with 1989) is associated with heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, liver or kidney diseases." www2.unicef.org/pub/iraqsa

October 6, 1998: Denis Halliday, who had just resigned as the head of the "oil-for-food" program for Iraq, Assistant Secretary General of the UN, gives a speech on Capitol Hill, citing a "conservative estimate" of "child mortality for children under five years of age is from five to six thousand per month." Halliday states: "There are many reasons for these tragic and unnecessary deaths, including the poor health of mothers, the breakdown of health services, the poor nutritional intake of both adults and young children and the high incidence of water-born diseases as a result of the collapse of Iraq's water and sanitation system--and, of course, the lack of electric power to drive that system, both crippled by war damage following the 1991 Gulf War." (See remarks, http://www.accuracy.org/halliday.htm ) - AUTOPSY OF A DISASTER: THE U.S. SANCTIONS POLICY ON IRAQ

Wednesday, 12 August 1999: The first surveys since 1991 of child and maternal mortality in Iraq reveal that in the heavily-populated southern and central parts of the country, children under five are dying at more than twice the rate they were ten years ago. UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said the findings reveal an ongoing humanitarian emergency.

The surveys reveal that in the south and center of Iraq -- home to 85 per cent of the country's population -- under-5 mortality more than doubled from 56 deaths per 1000 live births (1984-1989) to 131 deaths per 1000 live births (1994-1999). Likewise infant mortality -- defined as the death of children in their first year -- increased from 47 per 1000 live births to 108 per 1000 live births within the same time frame. The surveys indicate a maternal mortality ratio in the south and center of 294 deaths per 100,000 live births over the ten-year period 1989 to 1999.

Ms. Bellamy noted that if the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under-five in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998. As a partial explanation, she pointed to a March statement of the Security Council Panel on Humanitarian Issues which states: "Even if not all suffering in Iraq can be imputed to external factors, especially sanctions, the Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivations in the absence of the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of war."

"The large sample sizes -- nearly 24,000 households randomly selected from all governorates in the south and center of Iraq and 16,000 from the north -- helped to ensure that the margin of error for child mortality in both surveys was low," she noted. "Another important factor was the fact that, in the survey completed in the south and center of Iraq, all the interviewers were female and all were medical doctors. In the survey done in the northern autonomous region, fully 80 per cent of interviewers were female -- each team had at least one female interviewer - and all interviewers were trained health workers."

Among the report's additional findings in the south and central areas of Iraq:

Current levels of under-5 mortality -- as between girls and boys -- reveal that girls have a slightly lower rate, 125 deaths per 1000 live births as opposed to 136 deaths per 1000 live births among boys.
Children who live in rural areas have a higher mortality rate than children living in an urban area: 145 deaths per 1000 live births as opposed to 121 deaths per 1000 live births.
In the autonomous northern region, under-5 mortality rose from 80 deaths per 1000 live births in the period 1984-1989 to 90 deaths per 1000 live births during the years 1989-1994. The under-5 rate fell to 72 deaths per 1000 live births between 1994 and 1999. Infant mortality rates followed a similar pattern. Today's under-5 mortality rate of 131 per 1000 in south and central Iraq is comparable to current rates in Haiti (132) and Pakistan (136).
- UNICEF Iraq surveys show 'humanitarian emergency'
　

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"Thanks to the oil-for-food program, the people of Iraq, especially those in the north, are getting needed foods and medicines” (U.S. State Department, March 2000).

The "oil-for-food" programme, in many ways, is a failure because sanctions are an outgrowth of a strategy conceived by the United States to simply inflict the most economic hardship on Iraq as possible. The programme mandates that 25 per cent of oil sale revenues be handed over to the UN Compensation Committee which administers reparations payments related to war damages, while 5 per cent of revenues are shared equally between Turkey, for the transportation costs of oil, and the United Nations, for its administration and operational costs related to Iraq. A further 13 per cent of revenues pay for the administration of the Kurdish territories which act autonomously under cover of the US-UK imposed "no-fly zone." Thus, the Iraqi Government receives only 58 per cent of the revenues from the "oil-for-food" programme, which are to be distributed among 87 per cent of the Iraqi population.

Of the items which had been given the green light, less than 50 per cent have made it to Iraq. As Abbas Alnasrawi, an economy professor at the University of Vermont, has noted, of "the $20.8 billion appropriated to all of Iraq, only $8.4 billion-worth of goods for all sectors of the economy had arrived in Iraq by the end of July 2000." Compounding the misery is the fact that once items make their way to Iraq, it is not guaranteed that they will be distributed in a timely fashion. A 1999 UN Report noted that nearly half of medical supplies which had been imported to Iraq "remained in warehouses and had not been distributed to local clinics and hospitals," in part, because Iraq has not been able to rebuild the infrastructures required to distribute these items. - http://www.zmag.org/content/Iraq/allain_criminalenforcers.cfm

...In March 1999 an expert 'Humanitarian Panel' convened by the Security Council concluded the UN's 'oil-for-food' programme could +not+ meet the needs of the Iraqi people...

The Panel continued:

"Regardless of the improvements that might be brought about - in terms of approval procedures, better performance by the Iraqi Government, or funding levels - the magnitude of the humanitarian needs is such that they cannot be met within the context of [the oil-for-food programme] ... Nor was the programme intended to meet all the needs of the Iraqi people ... Given the present state of the infrastructure, the revenue required for its rehabilitation is far above the level available under the programme." - http://www.zmag.org/content/MainstreamMedia/cohen_reply.cfm

MYTH: “Thanks to the oil-for-food program, the people of Iraq, especially those in the north, are getting needed foods and medicines” (U.S. State Department, March 2000).

FACT: Former UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, Denis Halliday, oversaw the oil-for-food program and believes otherwise. “The OFF program as conceived is completely inadequate. It was designed in fact not to resolve the situation, but to prevent further deterioration of both mortality rates and malnutrition. It has failed to do that; at best it has just about sustained the situation. It’s grossly under-funded, and it has not even begun to address the needs, the dietary needs of the Iraqi people… And on top of that you have a medical sector which gobbles up the rest of the money to a great extent, so again we have not managed to provide the basic needs of the Iraqi people” (The Fire This Time, April 1999). Halliday resigned from his post in September 1998 in protest of the sanctions against Iraq. He had worked for the UN for 34 years. - http://zmag.org/ZMag/Articles/nov01lindemyer.htm

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“Iraqi obstruction of the oil-for-food program, not United Nations sanctions, is the primary reason the Iraqi people are suffering” (U.S. State Department, March 2000).

MYTH: “Iraqi obstruction of the oil-for-food program, not United Nations sanctions, is the primary reason the Iraqi people are suffering” (U.S. State Department, March 2000).

FACT: The UN sanctions were levied against Iraq in August 1990 and the oil-for-food program began in December 1996. It is therefore impossible to attribute the suffering of the Iraqi people to the obstruction of a program, which did not exist until six years after the fact. As Halliday explained, the oil-for-food program was set up by the UN Security Council as a response to the humanitarian crisis in Iraq created by the impact of the sanctions. The creation of the program demonstrates that the suffering of the Iraqi people preceded any possible interference. - http://zmag.org/ZMag/Articles/nov01lindemyer.htm

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“Iraq is mismanaging the oil-for-food program, either deliberately or through incompetence” (U.S. State Department, March 2000).

Their [former assistant secretary generals of the UN Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck] last appearance in the press was in the Guardian last November, when they wrote: "The most recent report ofthe UN secretary general, in October 2001, says that the US and UK governments' blocking of $4bn of humanitarian supplies is by far the greatest constraint on the implementation of the oil-for-food programme. The report says that, in contrast, the Iraqi government's distribution of humanitarian supplies is fully satisfactory...The death of some 5-6,000 children a month is mostly due to contaminated water, lack of medicines and malnutrition. The US and UK governments' delayed clearance of equipment and materials is responsible for this tragedy, not Baghdad."

They [Halliday and von Sponeck] are in no doubt that if Saddam Hussein saw advantage in deliberately denying his people humanitarian supplies, he would do so; but the UN, from the secretary general himself down, says that, while the regime could do more, it has not withheld supplies. Indeed, without Iraq's own rationing and distribution system, says the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, there would have been famine. Halliday and von Sponeck point out that the US and Britain are able to fend off criticism of sanctions with unsubstantiated stories that the regime is "punishing" its own people. If these stories are true, they say, why does America and Britain further punish them by deliberately withholding humanitarian supplies, such as vaccines, painkillers and cancer diagnostic equipment? This wanton blocking of UN-approved shipments is rarely reported in the British press. The figure is now almost $5bn in humanitarian-related supplies. Once again, the UN executive director of the oil-for-food programme has broken diplomatic silence to express "grave concern at the unprecedented surge in volume of holds placed on contracts [by the US]". - http://www.zmag.org/content/MainstreamMedia/pilger_compliantpress.cfm

In terms of the severe shortages of humanitarian supplies (food, medicine, etc) for the Iraqi people, how much can this be blamed on the economic sanctions, on the cumbersome UN process of approving imports, and on Saddam Hussein's misallocation of resources and perhaps intentional attempt to make his people suffer to win world sympathy.

All these factors play a part. Saddam Hussein, like all military dictators, is primarily concerned with protecting and privileging his military and political supporters. However, despite other economic cronyism, UN and other humanitarian agencies generally give high ratings to the Iraqi government food ration system; there is relatively egalitarian access to equally insufficient food. Iraq's government has used some money (obtained from smuggled oil sales as well as pre-war reserves) for new buildings and palaces, and for protecting Saddam Hussein's favored troops and political backers from the ravages of sanctions. However, the U.S.-led international sanctions have by far wrought a more devastating impact. Context must be recalled: Saddam Hussein's government was and has been a military dictatorship for 20 years; for 12 of those years, the U.S. supported that regime. It was still a dictatorship, and political human rights were still severely constrained. But prior to 1990 and the imposition of sanctions, the Iraqi population had among the highest standards of living in the Middle East: food access, education, health care and general quality of life approached that of developed countries. The most common problem faced by Iraqi pediatricians was childhood obesity. Today the Iraqi population still faces severe denial of human rights --political and civil rights-- by the Iraqi regime. But additionally, since 1990 it faces the lethal denial of other human rights --economic and social rights-- AS A DIRECT RESULT OF THE IMPOSITION OF SANCTIONS. The UNICEF figures indicate that 5,000-6,000 children under the age of five die each month as a direct result of sanctions. The deaths are not primarily from a lack of food, but lack of clean water, as well as medicine and equipment to treat easily curable (many water-borne) diseases. While the current ration-based "food basket" approaches the UN minimum caloric level, it does not include sufficient actual protein, vitamins, etc. for health or growth (A cup of oil and a cup of sugar would provide more than sufficient calories; it would not provide health.) UNICEF and other humanitarian agencies agree that conditions have continued to deteriorate even with the initiation of the Oil for Food program; Iraq's oil infrastructure (pumping and processing) is simply too "degraded" since the 1991 war to produce sufficient oil to bring in anything close to the top allowable amounts of money. Of the limited funds earned through Oil for Food, one-third off the top goes to pay for Kuwaiti reparations and the costs of UNSCOM. Although there have been some recent efforts at improvements, the Sanctions Committee (made up of the members of the Security Council) continues to impose near-crippling delays and denials of licensing for importing materials required for repairs and replacement of the oil and physical infrastructure, as well as for allowable consumer items. The committee's definitions of prohibited "dual use" goods includes such items as pencils for schoolchildren (because the graphite could be used in weapons production) and chlorine to purify untreated water (the water treatment system was destroyed in 1991 and not rebuilt). If there are international concerns that the suffering is designed to win sympathy, the answer should be ending of economic sanctions while tightening and expanding military restrictions[!]. - http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Iraq/bennisiraq.htm

　

Media Lens: "The British and US Governments claim that there are plenty of foodstuffs and medicines being delivered to Iraq, the problem is that they are being cynically withheld by the Iraqi regime. Is there any truth in that?"

[Denis] Halliday: "There's no basis for that assertion at all. The Secretary-General has reported repeatedly that there is no evidence that food is being diverted by the government in Baghdad. We have 150 observers on the ground in Iraq. Say a wheat shipment comes in from god knows where, in Basra, they follow the grain to some of the mills, they follow the flour to the 49,000 agents that the Iraqi government employs for this programme; then they follow the flour to the recipients and even interview some of the recipients - there is no evidence of diversion of foodstuffs whatever, +ever+, in the last two years. The Secretary-General would have reported that."

Media Lens: "The British government claims that Saddam is using the money from the 'oil-for-food' programme for anything other than food. Peter Hain, for example, recently stated, 'Over $8 billion a year should be available to Iraq for the humanitarian programme - not only for foods and medicines, but also clean water, electricity and educational material. No one should starve.'"

Halliday: "Of the $20 billion that has been provided through the 'oil-for-food' programme, about a third, or $7 billion, has been spent on UN 'expenses', reparations to Kuwait and assorted compensation claims. That leaves $13 billion available to the Iraqi government. If you divide that figure by the population of Iraq, which is 22 million, it leaves some $190 per head of population per year over 3 years - that is pitifully inadequate." - http://www.zmag.org/content/MainstreamMedia/cohen_reply.cfm

　

MYTH: Saddam Hussein is hoarding both food and medical supplies from his people to evoke Western sympathy (U.S. State Department, March 2000).

FACT: Allegations of the “warehousing” of food and medicine were put to rest by former UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, Hans Van Sponeck; “It is not, I repeat not, and you can check this with my colleagues, a pre-meditated act of withholding medicines from those who should have it. It is much, much, more complex than that.“ Sponeck explains that low worker pay, lack of transportation, poor facilities, and low funding are responsible for the breakdowns in inventory and distribution systems. The bureaucracy of the oil-for- food program, such as contract delays and holds, also plays a substantial role. Sponeck, like his predecessor, Denis Halliday, resigned from his post in February 2000 in protest of the sanctions. Also like Halliday, Sponeck had worked for the UN for over 30 years (The Fire This Time, April 1999).

Halliday concurs that contract delays, contract holds, and distribution problems account for the medical supplies problem. “[T]hose factors come together and you have a problem… I have no doubt in saying that there is no one person in the Ministry of Health or anywhere else in the Iraqi government who is deliberately trying to damage the health, or allowing children or others to die by deliberately not distributing medical supplies. That’s just nonsense” (The Fire This Time, April 1999). - http://zmag.org/ZMag/Articles/nov01lindemyer.htm

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“Sanctions are not intended to harm the people of Iraq” (U.S. State Department, March 2000).

MYTH: “Sanctions are not intended to harm the people of Iraq” (U.S. State Department, March 2000).

FACT: Several United States Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) documents clearly and thoroughly prove, in the words of one author, “beyond a doubt that, contrary to the Geneva Convention, the U.S. government intentionally used sanctions against Iraq to degrade the country’s water supply after the Gulf War. The United States knew the cost that civilian Iraqis, mostly children, would pay, and it went ahead anyway” (The Progressive, August 2001).

One document entitled “Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities,” [read the document here - http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/declassdocs/dia/19950901/950901_511rept_91.html] dated January 22, 1991, is quite straightforward in how sanctions will prevent Iraq from supplying clean water to its citizens. It explains Iraq’s heavy dependence on the importation of specialized equipment and some chemicals to purify its water. Failing to secure these items (which is nearly impossible to do under the sanctions), the documents adds, will result in a shortage of drinking water and could “lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease” (U.S. Department of Defense, January 1991).

Other DIA documents confirm that the U.S. government was not only aware of the devastation of the sanctions, but was, in fact, monitoring their progress. The first in a lengthy series of documents entitled “Disease Information” is a document whose heading reads “Subject: Effects of Bombing on Disease Occurrence in Baghdad.”[read the document here - http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/declassdocs/dia/19950901/950901_0504rept_91.html] The document states, “Increased incidence of diseases will be attributable to degradation of normal preventive medicine, waste disposal, water purification/distribution, electricity, and decreased ability to control disease outbreaks. Any urban area in Iraq that has received infrastructure damage will have similar problems.” The document then itemizes the likely disease outbreaks, noting which in particular will affect children (U.S. Department of Defense, January 1991).

A second DIA document, “Disease Outbreaks in Iraq” [read the document here - http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/declassdocs/dia/19950901/950901_0pgv072_90p.html] from February 21, 1991 writes, “Conditions are favorable for communicable disease outbreaks, particularly in major urban areas affected by coalition bombing.” It continues, “Infectious disease prevalence in major Iraqi urban areas targeted by coalition bombing (Baghdad, Basrah) undoubtedly has increased since the beginning of Desert Storm.” Similar to the preceding document, it explains the causes of the disease outbreaks and itemizes them, again paying close attention to which will affect children (U.S. Department of Defense, February 1991).

The third document, written March 15, 1991 and entitled “Medical Problems in Iraq,”[read the document here- http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/declassdocs/dia/19951016/951016_0me018_91.html] states that diseases are far more common due to “poor sanitary conditions (contaminated water supplied and improper sewage disposal) resulting from the war.” It then cites a UNICEF/WHO report that “the quantity of potable water is less than 5 percent of the original supply,” that “there are no operational water and sewage treatment plants,” and that diarrhea and respiratory infections are on the rise. Almost as a sidenote, it adds “Children particularly have been affected by these diseases” (U.S. Department of Defense, March 1991). - http://zmag.org/ZMag/Articles/nov01lindemyer.htm

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How different are "smart sanctions?"

On May 14 [2002], the Security Council adopted Resolution 1409, setting in place a new framework for the sanctions that will take effect on May 30 and last for six months. The resolution allegedly lifts restrictions on Iraq's ability to import civilian goods, focusing narrowly on preventing Iraq from importing or building weapons of mass destruction.

The resolution represents a symbolic, rather than a substantive change in the sanctions regime. It allows the US government, using the cover of the UN, to continue the sanctions, which are growing more unpopular internationally, and to lay the groundwork for a massive military assault on Iraq.

In the "propaganda war" with Iraq, the goal is to deny the simple fact that the sanctions -- which have now been in place for more than 11 years -- have had a devastating impact on the civilian population, while, in the words of the Wall Street Journal, "actually tightening [Saddam Hussein's] grip on power."

But under the proposed smart sanctions, the United States will still be able to use its power in the UN to block essential goods by citing "dual use" concerns. And the economy will continue to suffer.

After the US pressured Russia, the UN approved a 300-page list of items that fall into the dual-use category and must be reviewed for approval before Iraq can use its oil revenue (held in escrow by the UN) to purchase them. While the "Goods Review List" has not been made public, reporters have said that it includes computers and communication equipment, and it will certainly block items that are badly needed in Iraq but which any modern society could also use in a chemical or biological weapons program.

"In the past, the US government, using its veto power on the UN sanctions committee, has blocked contracts for ambulances, chlorinators, vaccines, and even pencils citing "dual use" concerns.

At the moment, $5 billion in contracts are "on hold" because of the United States, completely undermining the claim of John D. Negroponte, the US Permanent Representative to the UN, that "under the Oil for Food Program it has always been possible to get humanitarian and civilian goods into Iraq, and I think the principal obstacle has been the refusal of the Iraqi regime to spend its own resources for the importation of those items."

Negroponte's claim is further undermined by the views of UN officials working in Iraq today.

"The [oil-for-food] distribution network is second to none," Adnan Jarra, a UN spokesperson in Iraq, recently told the Wall Street Journal. "They [the Iraqis] are very efficient. We have not found anything that went anywhere it was not supposed to."

"I think the Iraqi food-distribution system is probably second to none that you'll find anywhere in the world," Tun Myat, the administrator of the UN oil-for-food program, said in an interview with the New York Times. "It gets to everybody whom it's supposed to get to in the country."

But Myat stressed, "People have become so poor in some cases that they can't even afford to eat the food that they are given free, because for many of them the food ration represents the major part of their income."
- http://www.zmag.org/content/Iraq/arnove_smartsanctions.cfm

Further, the UN Security Council established a Sanctions Committee in 1991 to ensure respect for Resolution 661. The United States, along with the United Kingdom and to some extent France, have imposed their will on the Committee and have sought to interpret the exceptions to the embargo in the narrowest of terms, thus holding up many items destined for Iraq on the basis of being dual (civilian/military) use, or rejecting other items such as ball-point pens or watches, as not being of an "essential" humanitarian need. - http://www.zmag.org/content/Iraq/allain_criminalenforcers.cfm

Under economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council almost 10 years ago, Iraq is denied equipment and expertise to clean up its contaminated battle-fields, as Kuwait was cleaned up. At the same time, the Sanctions Committee in New York, dominated by the Americans and British, has blocked or delayed a range of vital equipment, chemotherapy drugs and even pain-killers. "For us doctors," said Dr Al-Ali, "it is like torture. We see children die from the kind of cancers from which, given the right treatment, there is a good recovery rate." Three children died while I was there. - http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Iraq/pilger.htm

The key element in the new arrangements is the Goods Review List provided for in paragraph 2 of UNSC Resolution 1382, passed in November 2001. Items specified on this list, defined as for military or dual use, are to be separated from humanitarian goods. Russia's agreement to accept this list, after protracted negotiations, cleared the way for implementation of the new "smarter" sanctions. The US sweetened the pot for Russia by removing holds on over $200 million of Russian contracts with Iraq in late March. By the rules of the 661 Committee which presently scrutinizes orders for humanitarian goods, all Security Council members are allowed to query and hold up such orders. About 90 percent of the $5 billion worth of contracts currently on hold are being blocked by the US and Great Britain.

The new proposals are expected to end this system of 661 Committee scrutiny of humanitarian goods. Under the new system, contracts containing goods on the Goods Review List will be reviewed by the UN Office of the Iraq Program (OIP) -- which administers oil for food. This office would then send the contracts to the UN Monitoring and Verification Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which head up efforts to prevent Iraq from obtaining banned weapons. In turn, these offices can refer contracts considered obje

Demonstration after demonstration a sea of white faces marches down the cordoned-off streets of the downtown section of a major U.S. citiy.

People of color, the working class, gays and lesbians, and women collectively make up the vast majority of the residents in the cities where these mass convergences are held. But how effective can a social movement be without these people?

The left really needs to confront the personal racist and sexist attitudes and class privileges that keep driving people of color, women, and the working class away from middle class whites in social movements. What typically happens, sadly, is that this majority gets shut out because of the controlling behaviors of ignorant, arrogant, bigoted, insensitive, elitist, power-hungry privileged career activists, who then end up having to resort to a desparate scrambling for photos and footage of the few people of color and other oppressed groups they could find in the crowd as a last-ditch damage-control measure and clean up their image. At this point I feel it is necessary to add the disclaimer that not all career activists are this reactionary. At the same time I feel the behavior is prevalent and consistent enough to call attention to it.

How embarassing is it to call a massive strike and protest only to end up with hardly a handful of the people who collectively make up over 75 percent of the population of any given major city because of the destructive attitudes and behaviors of some white middle-class activists? That's a helluva lot of fodder for the predatory government/corporate media upon which the American public relies to explain what's happening.

This latest convergence, which will take place in the racially diverse city of Washington, DC in the coming months, will be the test --the final opportunity the left will have to show the American public that it has cleaned up it's act, that it's not just a bunch of overprivileged white kids dressed in black, that it really practices what it preaches, and that it should be taken seriously by all. If all we see, however, is the usual "sea of white" with a few token people of color, gays and lesbians, unions, and others in the mix, then those running the show had better be prepared to admit that this experiment has failed.

I admit the criticism is harsh but it may be to the advantage of those who care about inclusion and strengthening the movement to know how their comrades are being perceived by those who don't get involved. I expect negative comments in return but as far as I'm concerned, negative dialogue on this issue is better than no dialogue.

http://dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=25613

http://dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=25807&group=webcast

I completely agree with you, African American Activist from D.C. We HAVE to unite in a true and strong way. I'm white and priveleged and i would LOVE to unite with ALL people in America who give a fuck about our future. We all have so much more in common than we realize sometimes. I'm really happy that more African-American people are joining the movement up here to save the redwoods in California. I grew up as a "minority" in my middle school and that gave me a humble, compassionate and understanding way about me. I urge all organizers to go into all neighborhoods to reach out and invite people to the protests. Not everyone is on the internet and some people need to be invited in person. I'll do my best in California. You might just find me in Oakland.

Ah, the ideologically inspired communists from the Workers World Party are back at it again. Never failing to take the side of whatever two-bit dictator as the paragon of courage and bravery in the face of American imperialism. The WWP supports such models of virtue as Saddam Hussein, Robert Mugabe, Slobodan Milosevic, and Joseph Stalin. And these are the jokers running the anti-war movement. It's laughable when nobody pays any attention to these clowns and the WWP blames "corporate" media for ignoring their cause. No. People are ignoring you and your tired message. You folks with your fundamentalist communist ideology are as much of the problem as the religious fundamentalists out there blowing up everything. It's a shame that communists hide behind progressive values and usurp a movement vital to the growth of a saner world. Times have changed. The context in which Marxism was developed has evolved and we need a new message to fit the new environment. Even Marx would agree. GET OUT OF THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT CLOWNS FROM THE WORKERS WORLD PARTY!

You're out organizing minorities around these issues, right? If blacks, latinos, gay/lesbian people are not out in numbers that represent the population as a whole, then there are obviously some serious failures on the part of the hundreds of outreach groups. We have no reason to believe anything will suddenly change that. Don't wait for someone else to do it. Organize!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!