For Shame, America

Revelations contained in last months final report on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction should make every American shudder in shame.

According to this report, written by Charles Duelfer, Saddam Hussein's regime destroyed their entire stockpile of WMD and their prohibited missiles over a decade ago.

While Hussein once valued these arms as a deterrent to Iran, Duelfer maintains he eliminated them by 1992 so that the United Nations Security Council would lift economic sanctions on his country, as explicitly called for in Resolution 687, section 22.

From the beginning, however, that effort was strenuously blocked by American officials who insisted that Iraq still possessed banned arms. Even with UN inspectors repeatedly announcing they could find no hard proof of existing WMD, the first Bush and Clinton administrations continually thwarted Security Council action on the issue, saying, Saddam was "not disarming."

Was Saddam to blame for the deadlock? On this point Duelfer, who never actually interviewed Iraq's former President, speculates that Hussein was being purposefully ambiguous about his capabilities to keep regional enemies off balance.

Yet several of Saddam's top Deputies, including Tariq Aziz and Hussein Kamal (who defected in 1995) repeatedly declared that all banned weapons had been eliminated. Saddam himself was said to have issued written directives that any remaining WMD were to be destroyed on pain of death.

Some observers note that Saddam blocked UN inspection teams from peering into his Presidential sites. In their view, Hussein was guilty of either hiding weapons at those locations or pretending as much.

Such claims ignore the fact that U.S. intelligence was actively listening in on the inspection teams internal communications. Rightfully fearing an attempt on his life if his whereabouts ever became known, can anyone blame Saddam for keeping the inspectors at arms length?

Throughout the nineties, while Iraq's leadership was falsely accused of concealing weapons, Iraq's people were suffering from one of the most rigid economic embargoes in history. A ban on chlorine resulted in less than half
the population having access to drinkable water. Agricultural imports such as seeds and fertilizer were also prohibited, causing steep drops in food output. Chronic malnutrition occurred in poorer sections of the country while thousands of nursing mothers struggled to bring forth adequate milk for their children.

Most painful were the sanction's effects on Iraq's health care system. With vehicles and spare parts also on the embargo list, the regime found it difficult to distribute medical supplies on a timely basis. The result: severe outbreaks of typhoid, cholera and dysentery in outlying regions.

By 1998, some 100,000 to 227,000 Iraqis had lost their lives due to sanctions, according to an exhaustive study by Dr. Richard Garfield of Columbia University. (Morbidity and Mortality Among Iraqi Children from 1990 Through 1998: Assessing the Impact of the Gulf War and Economic Sanctions).

Intensely frustrated, the Iraqis reached out to French and Russian officials at the UN, offering them lucrative financial incentives to help terminate the embargo. The Clinton administration obstructed all efforts, however, leading UN humanitarian figures involved with Iraq to resign in disgust, denouncing the sanctions as "genocidal."

By the time the second Bush administration came on the scene in 2000, international support for sanctions had all but vanished. Several nations and human rights groups openly flouted the embargo, sending food and supplies directly to Baghdad. Washington was finding it increasingly difficult to maintain its hard-line position.

Then came 911. Even though devastation from the sanctions was cited by Osama bin Laden as a key motivator for the attack, the Bush administration not only refused to reexamine its policy on Iraq, but used post-911 outrage, along with more false statements on Iraqi WMD, to justify a full-fledged invasion. Only after Hussein's government was illegally deposed did American officials at the UN finally vote to lift the embargo.

How many Iraqi's died from the sanctions? Somewhere between 300,000 and 550,000, according to Dr. Garfield's latest estimates.

Though many in Washington will protest to the end, the assertions contained in Charles Duelfer's report add up to this: since 1992, our leaders, Republican and Democrat alike, maintained a completely unjustified policy on Iraq that led directly to the deaths of well over a quarter of a million innocent people.

Mark Gery is an Iraqi Analyst and Researcher affiliated with EPIC -The Education for Peace in Iraq Center in Washington D.C. Email him at

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