Date: Tue, 17 Aug 1999 12:04:43 -0700
From: "Media@adc.org" 

ADC Action Alert:

Important Editorials on Iraq

Recent reports detailing the humanitarian crisis in Iraq have sparked a
variety of comments ranging across the moral spectrum.  On the extremes
are editorials in yesterday's Orange County Register and today's
Washington Post.  This is clearly an important time to make one's voice
heard on the sanctions issue.  Directions on how to send letters to both
papers follow, or send a letter or op/ed submission to your local or
favorite newspaper.


The following superb editorial on Iraq appeared in yesterday's edition
of the Orange County Register.  It can be viewed online at
.

ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER EDITORIAL:

The forgotten war

The "war that nobody notices" is finally getting long overdue coverage
as recent events have refocused attention on Iraq. Sparking the
interest: America and Britain have kept up air attacks on Iraq, and a
new United Nations report documents the suffering that U.S.-backed
economic sanctions have helped cause.

Given America's recent air war against Serbia, its military campaign in
Colombia on behalf of the Drug War, and talk of possible U.S. military
involvement to defend Taiwan or to target Osama bin Laden, it's easy to
forget about Iraq.

But attacks have been fierce and relentless. Since December, the
American-led effort has rained down 1,100 missiles on Iraq, with pilots
flying "two-thirds as many missions as NATO pilots flew over Yugoslavia
in 78 days of around-the-clock war there," according to a front-page New
York Times article on Friday.

This forgotten war shows no signs of abating. According to the Times,
some Clinton officials want to increase the attacks, and a bipartisan
group of senators and congressmen urged the administration to consider
an even more punishing policy if Saddam Hussein refuses to comply with
United Nations weapons inspections.

Pentagon officials say that Saddam is responsible for the attacks
because U.S. and British pilots only fire after Iraqi forces track or
fire upon Western aircraft. Still, the U.S. presence alone no-fly-zones
-- a policy that has never been approved by the United Nations --
certainly provides a tripwire for military escalation.

In a related matter, UNICEF last week released the results of a study of
infant mortality in Iraq following the 1991 Gulf War. The data seems to
support what opponents of U.S.-backed economic sanctions have long
argued: Sanctions have contributed to a two-fold hike in infant
mortality, and have contributed to the deaths of a half-million Iraqi
children in about a decade.

These U.N. Security Council sanctions, which shut down most Iraqi trade
and only allow the import of an inadequate "food basket" to feed the
population, have taken a greater toll on ordinary Iraqis than the
ongoing air war. It's simply war waged by other means.

U.S. officials downplay the effects of sanctions. The UNICEF survey,
they say, revealed that their effects have been muted in the sections of
Iraq where the United Nations directly distributes supplies under the
oil-for-food program.

"This doesn't succeed in transferring the responsibility for the effects
of sanctions from those who impose [them]," Hussein Ibish told us he is
media director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in
Washington, D.C. "It's a very grave report," he said. "There's plenty of
blame for the circumstances to go around. ... The only reasonable
reaction is [to ask] how to stop this."

Indeed, Americans need to ask why the United States supports a policy
that has not undermined the tyrannical Iraqi government, but has reduced
a country to pre-modern living standards. Americans also need to ask why
the administration wantonly bombs Iraqi targets without explaining its
long-term intentions or getting a declaration of war from Congress, as
required by the Constitution.

Both efforts seem intended to demoralize and weaken the Iraqi people, in
the hopes that will they rise up and overthrow the government. But the
policies haven't had much success, and even if they did, there's little
chance that a new leader will be more democratic than the old one.

"Admitting a failed policy is a very hard thing for bureaucrats to do,"
Mr. Ibish said. His idea for a new approach: Remove economic sanctions
but retain military sanctions that keep Saddam from buying weapons. And
put an end to the "siege conditions" that bolster Saddam's grip on power
by allowing him to depict the United States as the main source of Iraq's
misery.

Those are sound ideas that the administration and Congress seem intent
on ignoring. The only debate right now is between those who want the
same-old policy, and those who advocate a more belligerent one.

Because American leaders remain blind to the counterproductive nature of
their policies, it's up to the American people to remind them. Perhaps
the Times report and the UNICEF study will spark a thoroughgoing
national debate about whether Iraq really remains America's enemy.

It's never too soon to start one.


Send Letters to the Editor to the Orange County Register at
 or fax them to 714-565-3657. Letters should
be about 150 words and must include an address and telephone number for
verification. Letters may be edited for length, clarity and grammar.


By contrast, the following exercise in rhetorical and perhaps even
psychological denial appears in today's Washington Post.  It can be
viewed online at




WASHINTON POST EDITORIAL:

The Suffering of Children

SADDAM HUSSEIN is not the first to use the suffering of children as an
instrument of war, but he is surely distinctive in his manipulation of
the suffering of his country's own children. His evident purpose in
exploiting Iraq's most vulnerable citizens is to advance his campaign
against the embargo imposed by the United Nations for his invasion of
Kuwait nearly 10 years ago. In this way, he has sacrificed his nation's
future in this grisly effort.

A new UNICEF survey warns of a "humanitarian emergency" in Iraq.
Circumstances permitted a survey that spells out in hard numbers the
difference Saddam Hussein's policy has made. In central and southern
Iraq, where 85 percent of the country's 22 million people reside and
where Iraq controls the terrain and distributes the supplies, the
mortality rate for children under 5 increased through the 1990s from 56
deaths per 1,000 live births to 131. But in the Kurdish-inhabited
northern regions protected by the NATO-led allies, under-5 mortality in
the same period fell from 80 to 72 -- scarcely good numbers but better
than the others and proceeding in the right direction.

It is an old story that Iraq, intent on breaking the embargo, long
resisted the allies' offer of an oil-for-food arrangement that would
suspend the embargo under U.N.-controlled circumstances and ensure
adequate supplies of food, medicine and medical equipment. With what
funds became available, Saddam Hussein, rather than serve the health of
his people, instead built new palaces and new weapons of mass
destruction. But it is a new story -- the UNICEF survey was the first
such since 1991  -- that Iraq has also resisted friendly professional
humanitarian advice to give priority to child nutrition and maternal
health programs. The Iraqis have been slow to distribute supplies from
their warehouses and to improve the bureaucratic infrastructure that
enables aid to reach the needy population.

In the nine years since sanctions were first imposed, Iraq has presented
the bizarre spectacle of a country -- better, a personal fiefdom -- less
interested in protecting its children from the depredations of war than
are the NATO-led countries that Saddam Hussein blames for his nation's
pain. The allies are responsible for some part of Iraq's loss that arose
>from the wartime bombing of dual-purpose (civilian and military) water,
sewer and electricity-generating facilities. But even here, President
Hussein aggravated rather than eased popular distress by holding back
>from making the postwar improvements that the allies encouraged.

A new round of talks is underway at the United Nations to recalibrate
relations with Iraq and improve the lives of ordinary people. Saddam
Hussein is so far practicing his familiar policy that makes Iraq's
children pawns.

Letters to the Post can be sent online through an interactive form on
their website at
.
Similar guidelines on apply as to letters to the O.C. Register.

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