by James Glaser
November 11, 2003

In a 1995 United Nations report it is stated, "More than a million Iraqis have died—567,000 of them children—as a direct consequence of economic sanctions... As many as 12% of the children of Baghdad are wasted, 28% stunted, and 29% underweight."

On top of these numbers are the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and military personal that died in the first Gulf War, Desert Storm. Now we have a new war and it is reported that some where between 10 and 15 thousand civilians have been killed and nobody knows how many in the Iraqi army have died. There were reports of whole units being turned into a "Pink Mist" after getting hit with an American air strike.

Most Americans don't realize that in our first Gulf War we dropped 88,500 tons of bombs on Iraq, which is more bombs than we dropped on all of Europe during World War 2. Our targets included electrical generating plants, water treatment plants, and sewage treatment plants. Our sanctions after that first war continued right up to the time we started this new war and stopped Iraq from repairing or replacing these facilities which are vital to public health. As a result, disease has been rampant.

Destroying all of this infrastructure and stopping its repair, is the reason for all the deaths of those children and remember that UN report was dated 1995, so the children of Iraq had eight more years of dying before we attacked this time.

This is what the United States Council of Catholic Bishops had to say about our sanctions. "Whatever the intent of these sanctions, the means violates the most basic tenets of Catholic Moral Theology more over, they violate international law by targeting civilians and the infrastructure necessary for their existence."

So what did we bomb this time? The cobbled up electrical and water treatment plants of Iraq again. That is why we are sending billions to Iraq now to rebuild everything. Report after report talks about how most of Iraq was without reliable electricity or water. That is because we bombed those facilities in 1991 and Iraqi engineers were jury rigging everything just to keep it running as best they could since then, because our sanctions stopped the import of repair parts or new facilities.

Now the Iraqi people know all of this first hand, in fact the whole Middle East and the rest of the world knows all of this. For sure every terrorist recruiter the world over knows every statistic on what our sanctions have done to the people of Iraq and you can bet they quote those Catholic Bishops every chance they can

However, other than sporadic reports, the American people have been kept mostly in the dark about the American inflicted genocide on the Iraqi people.

Now, today, the United States is occupying Iraq with our military and we are telling the world we are only there to bring the Iraqi people freedom. Well, the Iraqi people are not buying that line. Iraq, is a small country with an estimated population of twenty five million people. If it is true and I am sure the Iraqi people think it is, the United States has killed over 4% of their population. That would be like some foreign power killing 12 million Americans. Think about that and ask yourself if some country killed 4% of our population, would you trust them enough to rule our country for "our own good"?

Washington keeps telling us that all we have to do is kill all the foreign terrorists that are pouring into Iraq to take us on after President Bush taunted them in his "Bring Em On" speech, kill all of those still loyal to Saddam, and them Iraq will be free.

I have to ask, what about all the loved ones of the Million plus we have killed already? Why would Iraq's need for revenge be any less than our need to revenge the three thousand of our own citizens killed on September 11th, 2001.

Just how many Iraqi people do you think were touched by our killing of one million of their fellow citizens? It might be easier to ask how many were not touched. We also have to think about the millions we have wounded or have inflicted with psychological damage, because of our wars with them.

There is no doubt that Iraq needs help now, but are we really the ones to give it? I think we have killed too many Iraqis to ever get them to stop fighting us unless we kill tens of thousands more and even then their children will be attacking us in the years to come.

If America truly wants to help those in Iraq, we must give the whole operation over to someone else that is not tainted with Iraqi blood like we are. Yes, we can foot the bill and we should, but let some other country take charge. Those sanctions that we enforced were United Nation sanctions, so they are just as tainted as we are. People ask why the UN Headquarters in Baghdad were attacked. They were attacked for the same reasons that our troops are coming under fire every day, the deaths of those Iraqi children!

Most Americans want to help all people around this world and the tens of millions we donate to world causes are a testimony to that fact. Most Americans believe that their government is doing the same—but it isn't.