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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mark Konrad who wrote (13606)	2/27/2003 10:54:51 AM
From: Just_Observing	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25898

I don't believe we purposely bombed civilian targets. Gee, you insult our military. Did you not watch laser guided munitions go unerringly to their targets? Do you really think that Iraqis placed their military facilities close to water and waste treatment plants? "I love the smell of sewage in the morning. And all day and night too." To quote from the Iraqi apocalypse. What you believe or not is irrelevant. The facts are that one million Iraqis have died as a direct result of the Gulf war and the sanctions. Here are a few facts that you may not believe. But your disbelief is unlikely to bring 1 million Iraqis back to life. Nor bring hope or happiness to the surviving Iraqis "In the UN, Mr Halliday broke a long collective silence. On 13 February, 2000, Hans Von Sponeck, who had succeeded him as Humanitarian Co-ordinator in Baghdad, resigned. Like Halliday, he had been with the UN for more than 30 years. "How long," he asked, "should the civilian population of Iraq be exposed to such punishment for something they have never done?" Two days later, Jutta Burghardt, head of the World Food Programme in Iraq, another UN agency, resigned, saying that she, too, could no longer tolerate what was being done to the Iraqi people. The resignations were unprecedented. All three were saying the unsayable: that the West was responsible for mass deaths, estimated by Halliday to be more than a million. While food and medicines are technically exempt, the Sanctions Committee has frequently vetoed and delayed requests for baby food, agricultural equipment, heart and cancer drugs, oxygen tents, X-ray machines. Sixteen heart and lung machines were put "on hold" because they contained computer chips. A fleet of ambulances was held up because their equipment included vacuum flasks, which keep medical supplies cold; vacuum flasks are designated "dual use" by the Sanctions Committee, meaning they could possibly be used in weapons manufacture. Cleaning materials, such as chlorine, are "dual use", as is the graphite used in pencils; as are wheelbarrows, it seems, considering the frequency of their appearance on the list of "holds". As of October 2001, 1,010 contracts for humanitarian supplies, worth $3.85bn, were "on hold" by the Sanctions Committee. They included items related to food, health, water and sanitation, agriculture and education. This has now risen to goods worth more than $5bn. This is rarely reported in the West." zmag.org