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... in Chernokozovo! The rape of the corpses, he says, is practiced in full view of the other prisoners, and the next victim is announced right there! He says he saw the murder of a 10 -year-old boy, whom his name he didn't know. Five guards with black masks raped the boy's corpse; cut it into pieces then put into a plastic sack. Do these people not qualify for human rights?
Article 6 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "no one shall be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. " Now is the time for the sp-called "World Policeman" (US Government) to prove itself! Just as is the case in Palestine and Chechnya, the situation is Iraq is ongoing as well as it has been for little over ten years. The situation is Iraq is the worst yet, since most of the damage is on the Iraqi children. As Kathy Kelly, a member of Voices in the Wilderness relates, "when you destroy a nation's infrastructure and then cripple further with punishing sanctions, the victims are always the society's most vulnerable people the poor, the elderly, the sick, and most of all, the children. " In just five years after the Gulf War, "as many as 576, 000 children have died as a result of sanctions imposed against Iraq by the United Nations Security Council, according to a report by the UN Food and agriculture organization (FAO) " (New York Times, 12 / 1 / 95).
One million, two hundred thousand people have died in Iraq as a direct result of the economic embargo. The average death toll reaches six thousand per month! The consequences of the economic embargo have been devastating on the health of the Iraqi people not the government. Malnutrition has been prevalent, especially among the children.
Sanitary water decreased by 300 %, while polluted water increased by 600 % since the economic sanctions were imposed. John Pilger tells us about the suspected dual use equipment that was kept on hold during his stay in Iraq heart and lung machines, water pumps and other agricultural supplies, safety and fire fighting equipment, wheel barrows, and detergent. In fact, hospital floors, and other building areas, are cleaned with gasoline because detergent is on hold. When Iraq asked for five hundred ambulances, which were approved by the WHO as a minimal requirement, they were at first completely blocked, but then released slowly in a period of six to nine months.
According to Foreign Affairs, by 1999, the war against the people of Iraq has resulted in "hundreds of thousands of deaths, " depriving it of over 140 billion in much needed oil revenue, saddling Iraq with hyperinflation, mass poverty, unemployment and epidemics of diseases including cancers (from the use of depleted Uranium shells during the Gulf War), cholera and typhoid (from the dumping of raw sewage in waterways). Dennis Halliday was in charge of the UN Oil-For-Food Program, until he resigned in September 1998 because he saw what the sanctions were doing to the Iraqi people. He was asked about using the term "genocide" to refer to the sanctions. In his reply, he said, "It is certainly a valid word in my view. You have a situation where we see thousands of deaths per month, a possible total of 1 million to 1. 5 million over the last nine years. If that is not genocide, then I don't quite know what it is. " What I mentioned is merely a fraction of what the Iraqi people are going through.
The UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs reports that "public health services are near total collapse basic medicines, lifesaving drugs and essential medical supplies are lacking throughout the country. Fifty percent of rural people have no access to potable water and wastewater treatment facilities have stopped functioning in most urban areas. " The sanctions are an insidious form of warfare that have claimed hundreds of thousands of civilian lives. Yet what you commonly hear as a cover up for the US barbarous acts is that the sanctions only produce a "temporary" hardship for the people, but are an effective, non-violent way to pressure the Iraqi Government the contrary is true. Another common myth regarding the sanctions is that the US government wants to enforce UN resolutions and uphold the rule of law. The US, however, has consistently employed a double standard when it comes to UN resolutions and international law. For decades, the US has vetoed UN resolutions condemning Israel's occupation of Arab territories.
It is also relevant to the current situation that the US is in technical violation of a global treaty to dismantle chemical weapons (AP, 2 / 27 / 98). UN sanctions against Iraq, which continue to be imposed at the insistence of the US (with the UK following suit), are a gross violation of the Geneva Protocol 1, Article 54; "Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited. " When the US and Allied forces decided to take on Saddam Hussein in the first place, it was under the pretext of saving Kuwait, and also to punish the Iraqi regime that was committing brutal humanitarian crimes against the Kurdish population in the North of Iraq (like the Halabja Massacre). But Washington's real "humanitarian" concern came out when the then Secretary of State James Baker said that it was over "jobs, " and Bush said that it was about "access to energy sources" and "our way of life. " Defense Secretary William Perry felt no shame in admitting that the issue had dimension beyond Kuwait and the Kurds: "The issue is not simply the Iraqi attack on the Kurds in Ibril [Aug. 31 ], it is the clear and present danger Saddam Hussein poses to Iraq's neighbors, to the security and stability of the region, and to the flow of oil in the world. " Yes, the flow of oil in the world. Leslie Stahl went to Iraq for the TV program 60 Minutes. On the program that was aired on May 12, 1996, she asked Madeline Albright, the then US ambassador to the UN, to explain the US policy in the context of the devastation she had seen among the children of Iraq and the five hundred thousand deaths of Iraqi children. Mrs.
Albright explained, "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it. " The death of over five hundred thousand children is worth it? Are they not human beings? Are they not children? Apparently, to them all of this is insignificant. When asked about the number of Iraqi's who died in the war, US general Colin Powell replied, "It's really not a number I'm terribly interested in. " Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist, advocates "bombing Iraq, over and over and over again. " In an article entitled "Craziness Pays, " he explains that "the US has to make clear to Iraq that America will use force without negotiation, hesitation, or UN approval. " He even offers ideas in his column "Rattling the Rattler" on how to get rid of Saddam Hussein, "Blow up a different power station in Iraq every week, so no-one knows when the light's will go off or whose in charge. " Every power station that is targeted means more food and medicine that will not be refrigerated, hospitals that will be without electricity, water that will remain contaminated, and people who will die as a result.
"From previous trips, we know exactly where to find overwhelming evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Inspectors have only to enter the wards of any hospital in Iraq to see that the sanctions themselves are a lethal weapon, destroying the lives of Iraq's most vulnerable people.Kathy Kelly, 9 / 3 / 1998.
In children's wards, tiny victims writhe in pain, on blood-stained mats, bereft of anesthetics and antibiotics. Thousands of children, poisoned by contaminated water, die from dysentery, cholera, and diarrhea. Others succumb to respiratory infections that become fatal full body infections. Five thousand children, under age five, perish each month"
Ramsey Clark, former Attorney General, said,
"There is one crime against humanity in this last decade of the millennium that exceeds all others in its magnitude, cruelty, and potent. It is the US-forced sanctions against the 20 million people of Iraq If the UN participates in such genocidal sanctions backed by the threat of military violence and if the people of the world fail to prevent such conduct the violence, terror, and human misery of the new millennium will exceed anything we have known. "Despite all the terror and torture they are causing the people of Iraq, the US has no plans for lifting the sanctions. Madeline Albright declared in 1997: "we do not agree with the nations who argue that if Iraq complies with its obligations concerning weapons of mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted. " Clinton himself went one step further when he said "sanctions will be there until the end if time, or as long as he [Hussein] lasts. " This is the so-called "World Policeman. " These are the so-called American "humanitarian" morals. This is the country known for its grudge against "terrorists. " Yet now we know who the real terrorists are, and who are the victims of this terror. But, as we so often hear Bill Clinton say, "Justice will prevail" and it will, sooner or later; with the aid of God, not with the aid of the US.
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Research essay sample on Weapons Of Mass Destruction Hundreds Of Thousands
