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US Tsunamis In Iraq
By Edward W Miller, MD
"They made a wasteland and called it "peace" -
Tacitus (Roman historian 55-117 AD)
In contrast to the tsunami which recently struck at the coastal borders of
the Indian Ocean, wiping out fishing villages, beach resorts, holiday hotels,
and killing over 220,000 people, the US -led military tsunamis, starting with
Desert Storm, which are still devastating Iraq, have laid waste to the entire
infrastructure of this modern Country and to date killed at least 2 million of
its people. The recent US destruction of Fallujah may well
be remembered by future generations as a replay of the Nazi bombing of the
Basque city of Guernica. during the Spanish Civil War.
In sharp contrast to the worldwide outpouring of sympathy followed by
millions of dollars in aid , both government and private, Iraq's tsunami
victims are struggling to survive their repeated devastations with little
outside charity and a minimum of support from either the UN or the occupying forces,
which, while facing a growing insurgency are wasting money in efforts to both
cover-up their savagery while forcing on Saddam's people a spurious and largely
unwanted "democratic election"
Reports today ( 19 January) direct from Iraq via KPFA note that 5 almost
simultaneous car bombs in Iraq's capital killed some 29 persons, while several
mortar attacks targeted the Green Zone as well as the highway between Baghdad
and its airport. Iraqis in Fallujah reported the Occupation forces, rather than
attending to the needs of a desperate population. were engaged in covering
their tracks; trucking away bombed-out homes, carting away topsoil contaminated
by chemical weapons and anti-personnel phosphorous bombs, to hide evidence of
these illegal weapons from both the Red Cross and Red Crescent as well as
foreign reporters, all of whom are being kept out of those areas of the City
where heavy fighting has taken place and Napalm and phosphorus reportedly
burned people in the streets. (w ww.antiwar.com /journal 1/19/2005 ).
"Desert Storm." was the first act in a genocidal campaign
initiated by the first Bush administration, and followed throughout the Clinton
years, to first destroy the infrastructure of Iraq and then continue killing
its people, using a combination of starvation and biological (call it
bacteriological) warfare. Since the Gulf War I , almost two million Iraqis,
mostly the elderly, children, and babies, have been slaughtered by this
US-British-UN program.
There were actually two Gulf Wars. One, to recall Saddam's troops from Kuwait, the second, to destroy the
infrastructure of Iraq, "bombing it back into the
pre-industrial age," as General Schwarzkopf put it. The destruction of
telecommunications, water supplies, sewage treatment plants, and oil facilities
had nothing to do with moving Saddam's forces from Kuwait, but with the unspoken US-UN intent
to destroy Iraq with those Apocalyptic weapons of
mass destruction: war, famine, pestilence, and death. Noam Chomsky correctly
called this "biological warfare."
During the Desert Storm the Pentagon conducted 110,000 aerial sorties in 42
days, one every 30 seconds. unleashing 85,000 tons of bombs. Iraq was essentially defenseless. Civilian casualties
from the bombing were in the tens of thousands. Thousands died from direct bomb
hits, but far more died from destruction of the facilities essential to human
life. Within hours of the first bomb there was no electricity anywhere in Iraq. In the first two days, pipes distributing water ran
dry throughout the country. By February 1991 Iraq's Minister of Health estimated 3000 civilians dead and
another 25,000 were in hospitals and clinics. A quarter of a million more were
sickened without medicines or medical care. from drinking polluted water.
On Sept. 17, 2000, Professor Thomas J. Nagy of George Washington University made public a seven page document
prepared by the US Defense Intelligence Agency. This report, hidden by the
government for ten years, outlined the Gulf Allies' plan to set the stage for a
water-born genocide in that country. The report reads: "Iraq had gone to considerable trouble to provide pure
water for its population... importing specialized equipment and purification
chemicals... a shortage of pure drinking water... could lead to increased
incidents, if not epidemics of disease... Full degradation of the water
treatment system will probably take at least six months." The Agency's
report "was circulated to all major Allied commands."
This intelligence report identified not only bombing targets, but those
specific chemicals and specialized water purification equipment which the US
and British then added to their list of embargoed items, to be certain the
genocide would succeed. As author and UN specialist Phyllis Bennis reported, by
the 1993 the UN committee 616 which was required to pass on items ordered under
the "Oil for Food" program by Saddam's government, items to both
maintain public services and repair war damage, had denied over $6 Billion
requests from Saddam's engineers, targeting those specific materials needed to
return potable water to their people and even medical supplies necessary to
treat water-born diseases. The US-British genocide was thus supported at the
UN level.
As intended, Allied bombing had destroyed dams, reservoirs, wrecking flood
control, irrigation, and hydroelectric power. Pumping stations were crippled as
were 31 municipal water and sewage facilities. As raw sewage poured into the Tigris River, the Iraqis only remaining source of water, they died by the
thousands. The allies dropped 88,500 tons of bombs, equivalent to seven Hiroshimas,
rendering 1.8 million Iraqis homeless and killing over 150,000 Iraqi troops.
The Fourth Geneva Convention which the US
signed clearly states: "It is prohibited to attack or render useless
objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population... including
drinking water supplies and irrigation works."
Added to the carnage of Dessert Storm, the US and British fired
"anti-tank" shells containing depleted uranium, which on contact
burns with intense heat, leaving free uranium 238 particles to blow about
freely in the desert winds. Inhalation of this dust has already created both an
increase in childhood lymphomas, plus birth deformities. With a half-life of depleted
uranium at 4.5 billion years, lethal radiation from our shells will continue
killing the civilian population for generations. In addition, cluster bomblets,
dropped over civilian centers are still killing children who pick them up.
Americans may have forgotten that on Dec. 16, 1998, while sexual McCarthyism played
out on the floor of Congress, President Clinton ordered Patriot and Tomahawk
missiles to again hail down on Baghdad.
Operation "Desert Fox" (called "OPERATION MONICA" in the Mideast) created extensive damage, killing
civilians, and targeting one of the few oil refineries still able to function.
By 1998, Rick McDowell, whose "Voices in the Wilderness" group had
visited Iraq many times since 1991, reported,
"As of 1995, over a million Iraqis have died, 576,000 of them children,
and three million risk acute starvation... More children have died... than the
total of the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan." McDowell noted the Oil for Food program was a failure since
reparations to Kuwait, paying for UNSCOM and support for
the Kurds ate up over 40 percent, leaving less than 25 cents/person/day for the
Iraqis. McDowell said UN Security Council sanction which embargo pipes, pumps,
filters, chlorine, ambulance tires, and everything necessary to produce potable
water represent a "war of collective punishment."
Americans may recall that in October 1998, Denis J. Halliday, Assistant
Secretary-General of the UN and Chief of UNSCOM's "Oil for Food"
resigned in disgust over the US-British interference with his program in an
"all-out effort to starve to death as many Iraqis as possible." He
added: "We see the member states... of the Security Council manipulating
the organization for their own national interests." Halliday reported UN
sanctions had reduced a once-proud civilization to third world status,
resulting in crime, prostitution, beggary, family breakdown and corruption. He
said Iraqis "were selling their belongings for food." Under Saddam
Hussein, Halliday noted: "Iraq experienced the best civilization in the Mideast
with universal medical care, the finest hospitals, free university education
and overseas grants for graduate students....I went to Iraq to administer the
largest humanitarian challenge in history I didn't realize the level of complicity
in the suffering. It is to the point of madness. One day we will be called into
account."
Halliday, Ex-Attorney Ramsey Clark and others have reported mass starvation,
waterborne diseases previously unknown in Iraq:
diarrhea, cholera, strep, hepatitis, typhoid and polio (which had been
eradicated).
Right up to Bush Jr's. "Shock and Awe" invasion US and Britain
"overflights" pursued this devastation, though with rising world
criticism the French backed out the overflights, (never authorized by the UN),
and bombing missions had killed over 2000 civilians since 1998 wrecking
attempts by Iraqi to rebuild its infrastructure. To pursue this mayhem, the US ignored fellow members in the Security Council where
Russia, China and France, amongst others, had asked the US to quit the sanctions and normalize trade.
The UN's HansVon Spondek who like Halliday had resigned from the "Oil
for Food Program" in a Boston Globe interview reported the death rate for
children had tripled since 1991, and much-needed electricity was often lacking
in Baghdad. The UN had allowed only $112
million for repairs whereas the system rehabilitation minimum was over $7.1
billion. Saddam's people, once the best-educated in the Mideast on a 1989 $2.1 billion school
budget, with sanctions struggled with $229 million. The literacy rate fell from
over 90 percent to barely 60 percent. Computers can't be imported, as the UN
fears "military use.".
The Bush II invasion with its capture of Saddam has only added to the
carnage and physical destruction of this once proud people. The resulting
insurgency which US forces face today is understandable in terms of the past 14
years of genocide. The added havoc of a second invasion, plus the abject
failure of the Bush II administration to offer the occupied Iraqis either
security or viable evidence of intent to rebuild their shattered lives has
added fire to an increasingly organized effort to drive out the US forces. US administrator L. Paul Breman III's
thoughtless isolation of Saddam's Bathist party, which constituency, numbering
almost 900,000 government workers and police, might well have maintained law
and order and kept public works functioning during the Occupation, was another
major failure. Jordan's Prince Abdullah on the Charlie
Rose Show just two nights ago explained that he had personally advised Breman
to employ the Bathists, but his suggestion had been rejected. Breman seemed
more interested in privatising Saddam's government-owned industries, and
providing lucrative business opportunities for his friends.
As for Bush Jr.s' proposed January 31 election as writer Edward S. Herman
noted in an extended article ( Z- Magazine Dec. 2004 pages 322-5) the US
experience with such elections managed by Washington in our military-ravaged
countries, such as Vietnam, El Salvador, Afghanistan and Nicaragua have all
been abject failures despite attempts by our government and a compliant media
to present an optimistic picture. Iraqis may risk their lives to vote for fear
their religious group may be overrun, but most will vote in the hope that
whatever political consortium manages Iraq
after our ex- CIA agent Alawi steps down, will kick the US occupiers out.