Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (65037)	12/4/1999 8:03:00 AM
From: Ish	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Brees, you should find a copy of the December Playboy magazine. On page 178 there is an article by Scott Ritter called Gulf War II. He says it's coming and won't be the walk in the park like last time. The US is losing world support on the Iraq issue.

To: one_less who wrote (65037)	12/4/1999 10:22:00 AM
From: MSB	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

So what should the U.S. do with regard to Iraq?

To: one_less who wrote (65037)	12/4/1999 12:01:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Brees, I totally agree with you about the horrific consequences of the sanctions imposed on Iraq. However, I don't think I would lay responsibility for all the consequences at the door of the Clinton Administration. After all, the sanctions were imposed in 1990, in Bush's day, and they have been administered by the UN from the outset. Here is what I think is an excellent analysis of the "ethics of sanctions", as applied to Iraq, which appeared in The Nation this March. (You may not agree, and if so, I defer to your greater knowledge of the subject.) thenation.com Here is the author's final conclusion: No amount of tinkering will make sanctions anything other than a violent and inhumane form of international governance. It is hard to articulate any greater good that can justify the deliberate, systematic imposition of measures that are known to increase chronic malnutrition, infant mortality and the many varieties of human damage that impoverishment inflicts. The tragic irony, of course, is that it was not supposed to be that way: In 1990, sanctions appeared to be a nearly ideal device for international governance. They seemed to entail inconvenience and some political disruption but not casualties. Unlike the situation in Somalia, sanctions in Iraq did not involve troops. Because sanctions seemed to incur less human damage than bombing campaigns, peace and human rights movements found them attractive as well. Indeed, many of those opposing the Gulf War in 1990 urged the use of sanctions instead. It has long been obvious that sanctions, contrary to expectations, incur at least as much damage as bombing campaigns. My own feeling is that the Bush Administration should never have declared war on Iraq in the first place, if it was not prepared to nail Saddam Hussein once and for all; and so I personally would blame Bush as much as Clinton (and the UN) for the ongoing suffering of Iraq's civilian population. Incidentally, I'm not quite sure what you mean by the following: "..the statistics that are published everywhere except in the US seem to focus on the young children." Do you mean that no statistics are published here at all, or that statistics published here are more complete (don't just focus on young children)? On the off chance you mean the former, let me cite another passage from the above article: Although there is controversy over the precise extent of human damage, all sources agree that it is severe. Voices in the Wilderness an antisanctions activist group based in Chicago, has used the figure of 1 million children dead from the sanctions; the Iraqi government claims 4,000-5,000 deaths per month of children under 5. Even US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright does not contest how great the human damage has been, but has said, "It's worth the price." Richard Garfield, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who analyzes the health consequences of economic embargoes, calculates that 225,000 Iraqi children under 5 have died since 1990 because of these policies--a figure based on the best data available from UN agencies and other international sources. The Red Cross World Disasters Report says underweight births have gone from 4 percent in 1990 to 25 percent in 1998. While it is harder to calculate the impact of the economic devastation on adults, it is quite acute, particularly for women. In 1997 the Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that chronic malnutrition in the general Iraqi population was as high as 27 percent, with 16 percent of adult women under 26 undernourished and 70 percent of women anemic.

To: one_less who wrote (65037)	12/4/1999 9:59:00 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

Here's a heart-warming story you'll get a lot of laughs about ~ it seems that people in Africa and Asia are dying from AIDS because the miracle drugs that are saving American AIDS sufferers are too expensive for people in the Third World. Drug companies can manufacture generics, but it violates US drug patents, and the US threatens trade sanctions against any country that tries. So the people just die. Thought that would interest you. You could add them to your list. My thought is that if they violate US patent law, let the companies sue them or get whatever recourse they can via the legal system. I don't think it's our government's job to be doing this for them. Go after the guilty parties, don't punish innocent people with sanctions. It's immoral, IMO. washingtonpost.com