5. U. S. Weapons mass Destruction Linked to the Deaths
of a Half-Million Children
Sources: SAN FRANCISCO BAY
GUARDIAN, Title: "Made in America," Date: February 25, 1998, Author:
Dennis Bernstein; I.F. MAGAZINE, Title: "Punishing Saddam or the Iraqis,"
Date: March/April 1998, Author: Bill Blum; SPACE AND SECURITY NEWS, Title: "Our
Continuing War Against Iraq," Date: May 1998, Author: Most Rev. Dr. Robert
M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF (Ret.)
SSU Censored Researcher: Diana Nouveaux
SSU Faculty Evaluator: John Steiner
For the past seven years, the United States has supported sanctions
against Iraq that have taken the lives of more Iraqi citizens than did
the war itself. The Iraqi people are being punished for their leader's
reticence to comply fully with U.S.-supported U.N. demands "to
search every structure in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction."
Ironically, 1994 U.S. Senate findings uncovered evidence that U.S. firms
supplied at least some of the very biological material that the U.N.
inspection teams are now seeking. Although the United States defames
the Iraqi government for damaging the environment and ignoring U.N.
Security Council resolutions, it has itself engaged in covert wars in
defiance of the World Court, and left behind a swath of ecological disasters
in its continuing geopolitical crusade. Blum considers the U.S. demands
both excessive and hypocritical.
A 1994 U.S. Senate panel report indicated that between
1985 and 1989, U.S. firms supplied microorganisms needed for the production of
Iraq's chemical and biological warfare. The Senate panel wrote: "It was later
learned that these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical
to those the United Nations inspectors found and removed from the Iraqi biological
warfare program." Blum writes that shipments included biological agents for
anthrax, botulism, and e-coli. The shipments were cleared even though it was known
at the time that Iraq had already been using chemical and possibly biological
warfare since the early 1980s. The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles reported
in 1990 that more than 207 companies from 21 western countries, including at least
18 from the United States, were contributing to the buildup of Saddam Hussein's
arsenal.
In one stunning incident in September 1989, according to Bernstein,
U.S. military officials invited several Iraqi tech-nicians, along with
some 400 other participants from 20 countries, to attend a crash course
on how to detonate a nuclear weapon. The course was held at the Red
Lion Inn in Portland, Oregon. Sponsors included several military agencies,
Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, and Sperry/Unisys,
among others.
The sanctions imposed on Iraq are causing shortages of food, medical
supplies, and medicines. Since the war ended, more than half a million
children under the age of five have died. UNICEF reports that 150 children
are dying every day. Moreover, countless Iraqi deaths have been caused
by exposure to depleted uranium (DU) weapons left behind at the end
of Desert Storm. According to Space and Security News, DU can
be linked to birth defects known to be caused by radiation exposure.
In the last seven years the rate of cancer among Iraqi children has
increased dramati-cally. DU has a half-life of millions of years. Attempts
at cleanup will be largely futile and are a low priority for a people
faced with finding the basic necessities of food and medicine. Iraqi
children wade daily through this poisoned "playground."
The
United States holds the position that sanctions against Iraq must continue until
it can be proven that the country is unable to build biological and chemical weapons.
Noam Chomsky observed in a 1990 PBS appearance that, since the 1940s, U.S. foreign
policy has been one of maintaining control over the abundant energy resources
in the Gulf region. Blum contends that the true purpose of the sanctions is to
ultimately oust Hussein from power and lessen any threat to U.S. control of the
region's oil resources.
UPDATE BY AUTHOR DENNIS BERNSTEIN: "As
of this writing, the United States and Great Britain have just concluded Operation
Desert Fox, a massive four-day bombing of Iraq, unleashing more explosives on
the country in 96 hours than during the entirety of the 1991 Gulf War. The timing
of the high-tech missile attack was curious, to say the least. It began the day
before impeachment hearings were due to commence in Washington, DC and ended on
Ramadan, the Muslim high holy day.
"U.S. officials denied the assault was timed to distract attention
from Clinton's impending impeachment or to push the process into a new
congress with a slimmer republican majority. Instead, they claimed the
bombings were a result of a brand-new UNSCOM report compiled by chief
inspector Richard Butler, which stated that Iraq failed to fully cooperate
with U.N. inspectors. But the bottom line of the Butler Report was that
the overwhelming majority of inspections were going forward with Iraqi
cooperation and that officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency
received 'sufficient cooperation to carry out all the inspections they
want.'
"So then, beyond the obvious impeachment distractions and the
longstanding U.S. policy of dominating and controlling Middle Eastern
oil resources, why the desperate need to bomb now? Critics and supporters
of the bombing seem to agree that it was an attempt to destabilize Iraq,
so America's former good friend and ally, Saddam Hussein, could be overthrown
by CIA-supported opposition forces. Defense Secretary William Cohen
denied that was the U.S. objective, but stated it would certainly be
a welcome outcome. The real significance of 'Made in America' is not
only that the U.S. and its allies played a significant role in arming
Iraq with weapons of mass destruction, but that those companies and
politicians that were responsible for this lucrative but deadly policy
were never held accountable. And there has been no attempt to take them
to task.
"' We know that, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, companies in
the U.S., France, Germany, Russia, Britain, and elsewhere were providing
technology and advice to the Iraqis,' said Middle East expert, Phyliss
Bennis. 'We don't know if that's still going on. We don't know the sources
because UNSCOM has been forbidden from making that public. That has
to change. If they were serious about disarmament, rather than serious
about providing justifications for bombing, they would take up the disarmament
issue in a regional context and go after the suppliers,' said Dennis."
UPDATE BY AUTHOR MOST REV. DR. ROBERT M. BOWMAN, LT. COL., USAF,
RET.: "Few Americans are aware of the enormous human toll of
our continuing war against Iraq. Five months after the publication of
our article, the mainstream press reported Iraq's 'claims' of dying
children and soaring cancer rates. But one TV 'expert' after another
denied that depleted uranium could have caused these effects. One said,
'After all, it's just what the name says -- depleted.' Another described
it as just 'the scrap metal left when you take out radioactive uranium.'
"The truth is, depleted uranium is just as radioactive as 'natural'
uranium. All that's gone is the U-235 isotope which gives off excess
neutrons required for a fission chain reaction. The U-238 left gives
off alpha particles, creating Thorium-234. This, in turn, gives off
beta and gamma radiation, creating Protactinium. The chain continues
through a dozen radioactive isotopes, finally producing the stable element
lead. Every hunk of depleted uranium contains all these other radiation
byproducts, with half-lives ranging from a few millionths of a second
to a quarter of a million years. The stuff gives off every type of natural
radiation, both the beta and gamma rays -- which attack the body from
without, even through clothing -- and the alpha, which is deadly if
ingested and becomes trapped inside the body. What's more, it's water-soluble
and (unlike the plutonium in RTGs) capable of getting into the food
chain. And this Chernobyl was no accident!"
To learn more, see http://www.ramausa.org,
http://www.ccnr.org, or http://www.
rmbowman.com.