HIDDEN WARS OF DESERT STORM (Part II of II)

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Michel Hai:
The Americans would cease-fire, which was a very unexpected early cease-fire in order to give a chance to the Iraqis, to allow the Iraqis to be able to eliminate the rebellion in the South. For the next two years, there was no real attempt to topple the Iraqi regime in Baghdad. And there were no American attack although there were so many reasons, and President Bush threatened so many times to go back to war because Iraq is not supervising their promise in the 687 UN resolution. But real fighting did not happen, real war didn't happen.

Go back to [Part I]

Part II

"A decade later, the victory is much less clear cut. The Iraqi forces are long gone from Kuwait but the UN-sanctioned embargo is still in place over Iraq. The toll on its ordinary citizens is staggering. "

International relations/UN expert Phyllis Bennis (voice only):
There has never been an international sanction regime even close to as rigorous and as tightly imposed as the sanctions that have been imposed on Iraq.

Jordan Human Right Association President Labib Kamhawi (voice only):
Saddam Hussein is one thing and what is happening with the Iraqi people is a different thing. The Iraqi people is starving, people are dying.

Baghdad Gulf War Remembrance Museum Dir. Nassira Sadoun:
Every one of us has lost children or members of their families. No one Iraqi can say that he lost no one. Every one of us loses our beloved.

Dennis Halliday:
Back in 1990, economic sanctions were seen I believe as a good alternative to military activity and forces. Since then however, they have been sustained over nine years. They have had an impact on the people of Iraq which in the view of many of us is genocidal in the sense that economic sanctions on top of the damages done by the Americans and others in the Gulf War has led to the death of one or possibly one and a half million Iraqi people and particularly children. So the maintenance of these economic sanctions breach the Geneva Convention on warfare because as we all know, civilians are not to be targeted in war nor in economic sanction programs.

Dr. Monaf Shaker, Saddam Hospital for Children. Baghdad (Voice only):
The general conditions in our country deteriorated since 1990. Also the deficiency of the vaccinations, including the absence of basic things like toilet paper, led to the outbreak of many infectious diseases

Basra Children Hospital Pediatric Dr. Feras Abdul Abass (voice only):
Before the war, I never saw any child suffering from malnutrition is our country. Aldra Saleh, six year-old baby. Her weight corresponds to the age of one year or less because of the deficiency of protein. This is another type of malnutrition. Six month-old infant who suffers from chronic diarrhea and he needs special formula of milk to stop the diarrhea. This medical milk is not available.

"In 1991, the United Nations voted a resolution meant to ease the impact of sanctions on the Iraqi population."

State Rep. David Welch :
The idea behind the "oil-for-food" program was simple that is Iraq could use a certain amount of its oil-revenues for the purpose of taking care of the needs of the Iraqi people.

Jordan Human Right Association President Dr. Lafaib Kamhawi:
When the things started, there were some incidents that were like black comedy. There was one company that had a contract to supply eggs and the contract was sent for approval and it seems that the American delegate, even without looking, put it on hold and asked for explanation about the end use for this product. And the answer came back: you boil it, or you fry and you eat it, these are eggs !" This should give you an idea about how things are done.

Dennis Halliday:
So oil-for-food in my view, even if it has maintained a level of intake in terms of food, inadequate although as it certainly is, has failed to address the needs of the Iraqi and thus we have seen the maintenance of malnutrition, the death of infants in particular.

Basra Children Hospital Pediatric Dr. Feras Abdul Abass:
Since yesterday, we lost two babies because of the shortage of oxygen due to no electrical power necessary to make oxygen. This baby is going to die at any time because of lack of oxygen. So we chose this baby because his weight is higher than this one. Chances of survival of this baby are higher than this baby. I feel sad because I can't do anything, I can't save these patients.

State Rep. David Welch:
We have no grudge or animosity against the people of Iraq. Our problem is with its government.

Basra Children Hospital Pediatric Dr. Feras Abdul Abass:
This baby's named Amel Salem, one-year-old infant, and we diagnosed pneumonia. And she could not receive the proper treatment of antibiotics, and therefore the baby died. Especially we have shortage of claforum antibiotics. This patient needed it.

Jordan Human Rights Assoc. President Dr. Kamhawi
What is it With the UN and the Americans to impose sanctions on medicine ? Only crazy people would do this, I mean, this is medicine. What is multi-use ? Are they going to make atomic bombs out of a few tablets of medicine here or there ?

State Rep. David Welch:
Let me make clear that the purpose of the Security Council resolution with sanctions as their tool was so that Iraq should not be a threat to peace and security again.

Former UNSCOM team leader Scott Ritter:
We uncovered the bulk of what the Iraqi were able to produce in terms of chemical weapons, biological weapons, ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. The infrastructures in which Iraq used to produce these weapons have largely been dismantled, destroyed or under monitoring by the arms inspectors. So we have a good idea of what's left, it's not very much.

Phyllis Bennis:
Despite that, the US has constantly moved the goalpost. It's not enough if they comply by the requirements regarding weapons of mass destruction. Instead of saying: "if you abide by the requirements of the UN resolutions, sanctions will be lifted", the US message is : "it doesn't matter whether you comply or not, we are not going to lift the sanctions anyway".

Former UN Iraq Program director Dennis Halliday:
When UNSCOM began, I believe it was a legitimate effort to track down and destroy dangerous weaponry. And in fact, the Atomic Energy Agency and others were just about ready to clear UNSCOM, their work and agreed that Iraq was clean. Then Richard Butler was appointed and he re-opened many of the issues that in fact had been closed and seemed to bring a new element in the investigation, perhaps very much supported by Washington.

UNSCOM Scott Ritter:
The action of its executive chairman Richard Butler and in concert with the United States government allowed UNSCOM to be manipulated in a way that was outside the guideline set forth by its true boss, the Security Council. The United States and the United Kingdom used UNSCOM as a trigger for the initiation of military actions, the United States and Great Britain used information gathered by weapon-inspectors to provide targets for their bombings. This is an accepted fact. So UNSCOM, as an organization, has been discredited.

Dennis Halliday:
It is true that an inspection entity of that sort can be manipulated politically and give an excuse to the more aggressive member-states for further military action. And in a sense, we have that every day, almost every day of the week when United Kingdom and American planes are bombing Iraq.

Baghdad Gulf War Remembrance Museum Dir. Nassira Sadoun:
The Americans say they are bombing what they call Iraqi radars, which is not true, they are bombing infrastructures, they are bombing houses of people, they have even bombed a tent of Bedouins with their animals and their whole family who are dead. Every single day, there has been a bombing over Iraq, but not one media has spoken about that.

AFP Amman Bureau Chief Randa Habib:
If you don't see it in the media abroad, it is because I think it's becoming too small stories, it's not as interesting as before.

Michel Hai:
On the 17th of January 1993, Bush sent 42 missiles on that day, one of them hitting the Al Rashid Hotel when I was there.

Bleeding man at Al-nn 12, Rashid Hotel:
I am a journalist, a German journalist from BildZeitung. I think I'm the only one who was injured.

State Rep. David Welch:
The air-attacks that you refer to are defensive in nature. Since 1991, there has been a no-fly zone in the North of Iraq. This no-fly zone was imposed, I will recall for your audience, after the Iraqi regime forced the exodus of over half-a-million Kurdish inhabitants of Northern Iraq. The UN passed resolution 688 that say that this should not happen and then a no-fly zone was imposed.

Phyllis Beonisi:
There is no reference in any UN resolution to the establishment of a no-fly zone in Northern and Southern Iraq. The US has imposed and with the British kept them in place, and the results is that civilians in the North and in the South whose lives are ostensibly to be protected by the establishment of those no-fly zones are being killed not by Iraqi soldiers or by Iraqi planes but by American bombings that go off-course. That is who is killing the Iraqi civilians in the southern and Northern no-fly zones. One of the very bitter lessons of these years of war, both military war and economic war against Iraq is that for the United States and for most governments in the Security Council, humanitarian considerations are simply not enough to influence policy. We have of course the famous statement by Madeleine Albright in 1996 when she was asked about the death at that time of half-a-million Iraqi children that had died as a result of sanctions and of course she did not dispute the figure, she simply thought about it for a moment and then said : "on balance, we think it's worth it".

"The "60 Minutes " show entitled "Punishing Saddam " where State Secretary Madeleine Albright made this insensitive remark aired on May 12, 1996. It has since been censored by CBS under political pressure. If indeed the price is worth it as Ms. Albright declared, again who is paying that price ? And what does it buy ? Is it really an attempt to force Saddam out of power as is being claimed by the United States administration ?"

State Rep. Pavid Welch:
The Iraqi Liberation Act is an additional expression of our concern about the regime that is in charge in Baghdad. The United States believe that this situation involving Iraq would be immeasurably better were Saddam no longer the leader of Iraq. The act passed by Congress is designed to provide support and resources.

Iraqi opposition figure and writer in London Ahmed Al Jabar:
Well, according to the Iraqi Liberation Act, they say that they are ready to give the Iraqi opposition non-lethal equipment, they are thinking about computers, and mobiles, desks and so-on. And I don't think that by mobiles and computers, we will be able to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

"In other parts of the world, Washington has never proved to come short of ideas and solid means to get rid of governments deemed hostile or worth removing."

Ahmed Al Jabar:
In 1992 when we first established the INC, we were planning to have an uprising, a national resistance against the regime. In April 1995, we started this uprising, the military operations of it but again the Americans refused to support that uprising and at the end, Saddam was able to crush it.

"To this day, Saddam Hussein remains Washington's most convenient bogeyman justifying the continuing pressure on Iraq and in the Gulf region in general."

Dennis Halliday:
There was a belief, I think, for many years that somehow sanctions would lead to the removal of Saddam Hussein. Very na!ve because in fact, economic sanctions and their impact have made Saddam Hussein stronger.

Former Iragqi Oil Minister Fadel Chalabi:
Why did the embargo strengthen the regime of Saddam Hussein ? First, because the mere livelihood of people became dependent on the government, so he controls people by starving them. But more important, the embargo has created a new class living very comfortably attached to him, you see a nobody getting some hundreds times as much as a doctor. Why ? Because he is part of the security system, and therefore he should be fed well, he should be given good accommodations. He created a power-base of people whose daily interests are tied to him, so that when he goes, they lose all these privileges.

Dennis Halliday:
Sanctions have sustained Saddam Hussein in power and that many of us worldwide believe that it is also a policy of the United States. They need Saddam Hussein in Iraq because of the Saddam Hussein threat quote-and-quote, the Americans have sold arms on a massive scale to the Arab states, the Gulf, Israel of course, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

International arms-trade specialist William Hartung:
After the Gulf War, US arms manufacturers and the Pentagon took advantage of making new arms sales to the Middle-East at the rate of about a billion dollars a month.

Former Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Al-Kasemn:
The oil-producing country in 1990 had hundreds of millions of dollars in reserves, now they have maybe hundreds of billions in debt

"But Saddam also serves a more direct goal for the Pentagon. "

Former Attorney-General Ramsey Clark:
The United States had to have a justification to remain in the area. It intended to retain major military forces that could protect and control all the natural resources of the region. It was not particularly welcome by the people of Saudi Arabia who didn't really want US troops on their soil. So Saddam was chosen to remain the devil that would justify the presence of the American angels in that region.

Bill Hartung:
After the Gulf War, the build-up in places tike King Khaled Military City, which was supposed to be temporary, has become sort of a bridge for possible long-term US military base in Saudi Arabia and the Middle-East. There are now thousands of US troops regularly in Saudi Arabia. So at least, on a de-facto basis, Saudi Arabia has become a military base for US forces in the Middle-East. Unless there is a change of regime, the base could well end up being permanent in Saudi Arabia.

"Proclaimed as a sweeping victory by almost all Western media, the Gulf War and the subsequent crisis with Iraq have indeed amounted to a super victory for Washington : paramount arms-sales at a level never seen before, at last huge, permanent military bases in Saudi Arabia resulting in a better control of the oil-flow and a better leverage on its pricing. The great losers on the other hand are the Iraqi population still under a Stalin-like dictatorship and slowly dying from starvation. But the losers however are not just distant populations of the Middle-East. Some of the victims of the Gulf War have also turned out to be right amongst the presumable victors of the war."

Gulf War Vets President Paul Sullivan: In 1991, most Americans were very happy that the Gulf War apparently had ended. It was a quick, decisive victory and hundreds of thousands of US troops were returning home for parades. What happened a few months later was that thousands of American veterans started reporting medical problems, such achy joints, memory problems, they kept falling ill, they were getting rashes and there was no explanation.

AFP Amman Bureau Chief Randa Habib:
Concerning the type of weapons used by the Allies during the Gulf War, the first warning came from soldiers themselves whether in Britain or in the US when they started complaining about symptoms that were related to the Gulf War and to the use of the weapons. So it is obvious that it took so long before people took it seriously because there was this conspiracy of silence.

Paul Sullivan:
The first response of the US military, the US government was to ignore it, to deny that there was any problem with the health status of American Gulf War veterans.

Randa Habib:
You had to keep the image of the good guys, namely the allies, and the bad guy who is Saddam. It's Saddam Hussein who would use chemical weapons and who would harm his own population and the world with this type of weapons and it didn't look very nice to show that the allies had used themselves weapons that were harmful.

PIX: 696,628 US troops served in the Gulf War -- 183,629 filed for service-related disabilities -- 9,592 US Gulf War Vets have died as of 1/1/2000.

"In the 1970s through the 1980s, the Pentagon in complete secrecy started experimenting with a new type of high perforation shell made of the heaviest, hardest, most plentiful metal around, readily available without mining costs or efforts, a metal that just happened to be sitting there in the hands of the US Department of Energy: uranium waste."

Nuclear physics professor/former POP contractor Doug Rokke:
The US Department of Energy and other nations said, that are involved in the enrichment, therefore have tremendous amount of that waste leftover and they need to find a use for it

"Depleted uranium rounds reached combat for the first time during the Gulf War. These rounds pierce anything known to this day, penetrating the thickest armor-plates like butter. The downside ? They are radioactive, contain traces ofplutonium, the most toxic metal on Earth and their debris remain radioactive for about 4.5 billion years. "

Paul Sullivan:
Depleted uranium is a very hazardous toxic waste. For example, depleted uranium settles in the bones, it settles in the lungs, it settles in the liver, in the kidneys and also in the muscles and the testicles. This is not an experiment upon rats. Depleted uranium also crosses from a mother through the placenta to her fetus. All this information is widely available. However, the Pentagon in their overwhelming desire, their passion to use depleted uranium weapons, is trying to suppress the medical researches about its high toxicity.

Gulf War veteran & anti-depleted uranium activist Dan Fahey:
I could go through their earliest reports on this issue, you know, this is one from 1990 where they say : "the most exposed individuals are the soldiers who go to the battlefield after DU rounds are shot", saying that civilians and soldiers can suffer health effects from the ingestion and inhalation of DU dust, and even saying that once people realize the health and environmental effects on this weapon, there might be a move to ban it. And this July 1990, this is just six months or so before the war. You have to wonder why no warning was ever disseminated to any ground forces prior to the war, even just to say : "say away from the vehicles that have been hit, don't go climbing onto the equipment afterwards".

Paul Sullivan:
What the military didn't do is that they didn't tell the soldiers that the ammunition used in our airplanes and our tanks during the Gulf War was made out of this highly toxic radioactive substance.

USMC Morocco Omari:
Because we didn't know about the radioactive waste being used as ammunitions, people were just picking up things in the Desert, people were picking up whatever they could find as a war trophy. I think, if they would have known, they would have never touched it.

Paul Sullivan:
More than 436,000 US troops are confirmed to have entered into those areas of radioactive toxic waste. And sadly, some soldiers camped in areas contaminated by depleted uranium radioactive toxic waste for up to two months without any idea, without any warning at all.

Anti-PU activist Dan Fahey:
And I just want to say something about the Iraqis too. I have talked to people who went to Iraq. And I have also seen photos of bedouins who go out in the desert and they go to the destroyed tanks. And I've seen photos of them literally digging in the sand next to the tanks for scrap-metal, and they have been doing this for years. And they take the scrap-metal that they can find and they go and they sell it so that they can buy food. This is the situation in Iraq.

Basra Cancer Professor Dr. Anuar Abdul Mehsen:
If we compare the mortality rate, that is the number of patients who die because of cancers, in 1988, we had only 34 patients who died because of cancer. But in 1998, we recorded 428 patients who died because of cancer. Cancers that normally affect elderly people, now they are seen in younger age groups. I have a patient who has cancer of the ovaries who is 11 years old.

"In Basra, cancer and death strike the children even before they are born. At the Children's Hospital, malformed babies happen at the frightening rate of I or 2 a day. "

Doug Rokke:
Who's responsible today ? At the highest level, the United States made the decision to produce and use uranium 238 otherwise known as depleted uranium in combat.

Dan Fahey:
The Department of Energy is in charge of maintaining the stockpile of depleted uranium in this country, which we have about one-and-a-half billion Lbs. What they want to do is recycling into commercial use their stockpile so they don't have to hold it anymore. And a lot of this is just going to go to defense industries to be used as ammunitions.

"The Pentagon has good reasons to deny the toxicity of uranium waste and the contamination of both the local populations and the allied forces. "

Doug Rokke:
They cannot admit that today many of us are sick, many Iraqis are sick and it's all about two things: liability and dollars to clean up the mess that was created around the world.

"Medical tests and treatments have also been delayed or denied to most Gulf War veterans in an effort to evade both moral responsibility and healthcare costs. "

Gulf War veteran Hector Class:
The Army spent three years trying to discharge me without pension. They just kicked me out and didn't want to take responsibility for my medical condition.

"As shocking and disturbing as it is, this attitude from the Pentagon is nothing new."

Paul Sullivan:
The use of radioactive toxic waste called depleted uranium by the military is another sad chapter in the long and tortured history of the United States military. During WW2 and shortly afterwards, hundreds of US soldiers were told to stand outside and witness atomic bomb blasts. It was not until the 1990s that many of these veterans stepped forward and demanded healthcare and benefits as a result of being human guinea pigs. During the 1960s and 70s, the United States military used a defoliant called "agent-orange" that contains the deadly cancer-causing agent dioxin. This agent-orange was spread on trees and shrubs in Vietnam in order to destroy all the foliage.

Dan Fahey:
The debate went on for agent-orange for years when the Pentagon was saying : "no-one has been exposed to enough to cause any health problem". And we are in the same boat today with depleted uranium.

Paul Sullivan:
The amount of lies told by the US Government on these issues is so spectacular as to be mind-boggling.

"Depleted uranium rounds have not only been spread all over Kuwait and Southern Iraq, they have also been sprinkled all across Kosovo and Serbia and are shot on a daily basis in such places as Vieques, Puerto-Rico, and Okinawa, Japan, for training purposes and without any warning to the local populations. Today, fifteen countries altogether possess and shoot ammunitions made of radioactive nuclear waste and are ready to sell them to whoever wants to buy them. "

Doug Rokke:
We don't have to litter the battlefield with something which is hazardous for 4.5 billion years, as a consequence, the world needs to ban the use of uranium ammunition, period !

"Many more laws and international safeguard regulations need to be enacted to prevent the recurrence of any such ordeal, from the part of any government and against any population or country in the world."

Former Iraqi OilMinister Fadel Chalabi:
The embargo amounts to as much a crime to the Iraqi people as the invasion of Kuwait is said. Both are criminal, both are responsible for the misery of this people which I believe is a country with resources, with very good history, with good civilization, with a very advanced, professional middle-class which is now all destroyed.

Phyllis Beonis:
One of the things that we need within the United Nations is an oversight panel to make sure that UN Security Council resolutions do not themselves violate international laws. What we have with the sanction resolution in Iraq is a decision, a resolution by the Council that violates the fundamental international laws as codified in the Geneva Conventions that say that civilians cannot be targeted. And sanctions if nothing else target civilians. They are themselves a violation of international law. There needs to be an oversight method within the United Nations to make sure that this can never happen again.

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