A brave Congresswoman speaks out (McKinney, who else)
Tue, 14 Sep 1999
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from www.commondreams.org:
Sanctions Kill
By Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney
Fourth Congressional District, Georgia
Tuesday September 14, 1999
During a five-day-long independent fact-finding mission in Iraq, a staff
member of mine, Peter Hickey, and four other congressional staff members
visited with United Nations officials, Iraqi government officials and
non-government relief organizations to assess the humanitarian crisis
engulfing the Iraqi population. Mr. Hickey and the others traveled through
Baghdad as well as to cities of the battered south of Iraq, which has borne
the brunt of several wars spanning over two decades, including the Persian
Gulf War. This was the first official congressional trip to Iraq since 1991.
Mr. Hickey has painted a vivid picture for me: desperately malnourished
babies, dying of treatable diseases formerly eradicated from Iraq as their
under-nourished mothers fan them in hot, dim hospital wards. Barefoot
children, walking in the raw sewage surrounding their barracks-like housing
complexes without railings on upper-floor balconies. Families living on
meager government rations, and clean water almost non-existent. Medicine in
short supply. Mr. Hickey met parents who were watching helplessly as their
cancer-stricken children lay dying for lack of sufficient chemotherapy
drugs.
Nine years of UN sanctions are doing nothing to topple the regime of Saddam
Hussein, but are succeeding fully at denying the Iraqi people the basic
necessities of life: clean water, adequate food, decent health care, and
education. A society that once boasted a 90 percent literacy rate and the
most sophisticated medical industry in the Arab world is today on the verge
of collapse.
My opposition to the sanctions policy in no way means support for Saddam
Hussein, whom I believe to be a murderous dictator. Newly defined military
sanctions should continue. However, I believe the economic sanctions that
have so devastated Iraq's once-vibrant middle class, are useless weapons in
the fight against re-armament and militarism in Iraq, as they damage only
the weakest and most vulnerable of Iraq's civilian population.
The oil-for-food deal established by the UN in 1996 has slowed the looming
economic collapse, but it is not enough. The head of the UN's World Food
Program in Iraq told the delegation that Iraqi families spend approximately
70 percent of total income for food; by world and UN standards, she said,
that is an indicator of 'imminent famine.'
Since the end of Operation Desert Storm, more than a million Iraqi's have
died as a direct result of economic sanctions. According to UNICEF, 4,500
Iraqi children under the age of five continue to die each month and the have
died and the number of Iraqi children with cancer has increased seven-fold.
Doctors told Mr. Hickey that they blame the surge on the effects of the
depleted uranium used in U.S. and British tank-piercing shells during the
Gulf War. The same effects are being felt here at home, where according to
the Department of Veterans Affairs, more than 110,000 U.S. Gulf War veterans
have reported illnesses related to service in Iraq.
Doctors in hospitals in Southern Iraq provided Mr. Hickey and his colleagues
with new documentation regarding the effects of depleted uranium. We look
forward to providing this information to scientific researchers here in the
US, with the hope of providing new solutions for this seemingly devastating
aftermath of the Gulf War. US Veterans, their families, and desperate Iraqi
parents share that hope.
When asked about Iraqi children starving and dying as a result of the US
embargo of food and medicine, US Secretary of State Madelaine Albright said,
"It's a hard decision, but we think the price ... is worth it." Since the
Secretary of State made that statement, about half a million Iraqi's, mostly
children, have died. What has been accomplished that makes the sanctions
'worth it?' Whatever the merits of the accusations about Iraq, there is no
way to justify the wholesale killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent
human beings.
Economic sanctions are thought to be less expensive and less controversial
than military intervention, but the devastating impact of those sanctions
remain largely unknown to the U.S. public. It is time for U.S. policy makers
to recognize that. It is time to delink economic from military sanctions by
ending the economic sanctions, while simultaneously tightening the military
sanctions by going after suppliers and establishing a new, serious
commitment to real disarmament in Iraq. As the congressional staff
delegation recently learned, sanctions can and do kill.
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