<<Ratio of Japanese killed in 1945's U.S. atomic-bomb attacks to Iraqi children killed due to U.N. sanctions : 1:3>>
It's a skewing of facts. Iraqi children died of starvation, that's a fact. OTOH while Iraq was under an oil for food program Saddam was diverting the food monies to his own use. One use was building a lake in the dessert with a palace and 256 guest houses. The palace was also stocked with more expensive booze than the top 100 country clubs in the US would go through in a year. Just guessing that money might have fed a lot of the kids before they died.
Edit: Here's an article that may be interesting. Note it's ABC news and not some fly by night site.
Oct. 4 — Saddam Hussein may be buying stockpiles of alcohol and cigarettes with the proceeds of food and medicine delivered under international aid programs.
A confidential British Foreign Office report, the details of which were released to the press, says the Iraqi president is importing large quantities of Scotch whisky and cigarettes in exchange for food and medicine destined for the Iraqi people.
The report, the details of which were confirmed by the Foreign Office to ABCNEWS.com, claims Saddam’s government has been buying an average of 10,000 bottles of alcohol — much of it Scotch — and 50 million cigarettes — mostly U.S. brands — each week for the dictator’s military and political elite circle.
The imports, the document said, were arriving as international humanitarian supplies delivered under the U.N. sponsored oil-for-food program, were being sold abroad.
The Kuwaiti coast guard, according to the report, had intercepted ships loaded with food leaving Iraq, while emergency drugs meant for Iraqis had been discovered in pharmacies in Lebanon.
A Foreign Office spokesman told ABCNEWS.com that the information, which came from sources in the region, had been common knowledge within the department for some time.
“This confirms our belief that the interests of the Iraqi regime lies in feathering its own nests and it casts doubts on its commitment to providing humanitarian relief to the people,” he said. “It undermines the efforts of governments such as Britain to provide relief for the Iraqi people under the oil-for-food program.”
The oil-for-food program was initiated by the United Nations in 1996 to help provide food and medicines for the Iraqi population, which has suffered under the sanctions imposed after the 1991 Gulf War.
Same Old Story?
Activists and human rights organizations have expressed outrage, but not astonishment.
“This story is as old as the sanctions, as old as the oil-for-food program,” said Rend Rahim Francke, executive director of the Iraq Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit, non-governmental organization working for human rights in Iraq. “We have documentary evidence of Saddam Hussein selling medicines to Lebanon. Glaxo Wellcome [a British pharmaceutical firm] recently stated that 15,000 units of asthma medicine, targeted mainly at children, had been re-exported to Lebanon.”
Saddam has also been accused of illegally smuggling some 150,000 barrels of oil through the northern border to Turkey. A further 50,000 to 100,000 barrels are smuggled daily through the Persian Gulf from its southern border, the document claims.
Yet another 100,000 barrels of Iraqi oil are sold to neighboring Jordan, although these sales are not viewed as illegal. The United Nations has not authorized this trade, but neither has it criticized it.
Iraqi smugglers have been known to take the oil from Iraqi ports, into the territorial waters of Iraq’s neighbor and former enemy Iran, and thus, beyond the reach of the international interdiction force.
Cigarettes for Rich, Hunger for Poor
The Foreign Office report also details incidents such as Saddam’s recent birthday celebrations. The descriptions of a nearly 10-foot-high cake, while tens of thousands of Iraqi children are starving, is a striking contrast between the luxury enjoyed by Saddam and his inner circle and the poverty elsewhere in the country.
Iraq’s child mortality rate, once comparable to the figures in the industrial world, has now reached alarming rates. According to UNICEF, 8,000 Iraqi children die monthly, joining more than a million that have died since the sanctions were first imposed.
“If Saddam Hussein feels free to sell precious medicine for Iraqi children to acquire luxuries for his inner circle, he is a hypocrite and a murderer,” said Francke. “He is not buying alcohol and cigarettes for the ordinary man on the streets. The ordinary Iraqi is starving. These goods are targeted for the elite, they have all the food they want.”
Francke also said that the fact that the government has been importing alcohol and cigarettes, gives the lie to the belief, in many parts of the Muslim world, that Saddam is a champion of Islam. “Unfortunately many Muslims, not just from the Arab world, believe Saddam is the one who can save Islam from the Western devil. I personally, am more concerned with the fact that he’s diverting money for the elite, but this view of Saddam as a saviour of Islam has gained a lot of currency in the world.”
Impatience With Sanctions
The disclosure comes as international impatience with the U.N.-imposed sanctions seems to be growing. As the price of oil soars internationally, Britain and the United States have found themselves isolated in the international community in trying to keep the sanctions in place.
This week, a rash of flights from France, Russia, Morocco, Yemen and Jordan have landed in Baghdad’s newly opened Saddam Hussein Airport in what is seen as a protest against the ban on flights imposed on Iraq. While most countries had their flights approved — albeit grudgingly — by the United Nations, Russia and France challenged the sanctions procedure by not waiting for authorization from the U.N. committee.
The Foreign Office admitted the information had been released to the press in an attempt to counteract the growing public opinion opposing the sanctions. “This information doesn’t change our picture of the regime, but it might change the picture for the media,” said a spokesman. “Over the last few months, Iraqi propaganda has been gaining currency in the media, so we have provided the information to the media to change this view.”
There have been reports, in the international media, that many Western countries, especially France and Russia, are eager to resume diplomatic relations with Iraq. In August, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz became the first Arab official to be received by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
The growing impatience with the sanctions have come even as the U.S. State Department recently announced it had concluded a cooperative agreement with the Iraqi National Congress providing $4 million to advance the Iraqi National Congress’ ongoing operations and establish new ones. The Iraqi National Congress is one of the Iraqi groups funded by the United States, that opposes Saddam.
However, U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen recently conceded that Iraq had been successful in its battle to win international public opinion for lifting its sanctions.
”It’s been very clear to me that he has been successful in waging a propaganda campaign certainly within — among the Arab population, to say, ‘Look at the harm that these sanctions have inflicted upon the Iraqi people,’” said Cohen at a news briefing in Washington on Monday. “And the answer is, there’s been one person who’s inflicted the harm upon the Iraqi people, that’s Saddam Hussein.”
abcnews.go.com |
