A letter worth reading... Part I

helenloves

Hi everyone. This was forwarded to me and, thinking it to be something of worth, I am posting it. Have a read:


Dear Friends,
Some of you have written to me with concerns for my safety in Iraq,
but
this was easily one of the safest assignments I have taken. In all my
time
in Iraq, in spite of an intense awareness of the threat of an impending
attack by the United States, I never met a single Iraqi who had a harsh
word
for me. Iraqis are very good at distinguishing between the U.S.
government
and a U.S. citizen. Some friends and family are also already wondering
why I
would want to go back to Iraq, as I am committed and already anxious to
do.
It just seems to me that as a photojournalist, Iraq is where I might
best
play a role in making a small difference.

I did some work for Newsweek and Time magazines while in Iraq, but
that
kind of work has really become secondary for me. I do what I can to
influence (in admittedly small ways) what kinds of stories those big
magazines do, but ultimately their stories are nearly worthless at
confronting the inhumanity of American foreign policy in the Middle
East. I
will continue to work with Time and Newsweek (and with other corporate
media) on stories that I don't find offensive, but the bulk of my
efforts
are now going into reaching alternative media and in supporting
anti-war
groups in the states. I hope I can find some time soon to come to the
states
for a speaking tour of sorts.

There's a lot of talk about whether or not the U.S. will go to war
with
Iraq. What many people don't realize is that the U.S. is already at war
in
Iraq. I made two trips last month into the "no-fly zone" created by the
U.S.
with Britain and France in southern Iraq. Actually it would be better
named
the "only we fly" zone or the "we bomb" zone. "We" refers to the United
States who does almost all of the flying and bombing (France pulled out
years ago, and Britain is largely a nominal participant). There is
another
no-fly zone in the north, which the U.S. says it maintains to protect
the
Kurds, but while the U.S. prevents Iraqi aircraft from entering the
region,
it does nothing to prevent or even to criticize Turkey (a U.S. ally)
from
flying into northern Iraq on numerous occasions to bomb Kurdish
communities
there.

Turkey's bombing in Iraq is dwarfed by that of the U.S. The U.S. has
been
bombing Iraq on a weekly and sometimes daily basis for the past 12
years.
There were seven civilians killed in these bombings about two weeks
ago,
and I'm told of more civilians last week, but I'm sure that didn't get
much
or perhaps any press in the U.S. It is estimated that U.S. bombing has
killed 500 Iraqis just since 1999. Actually I believe that number to be
higher if you take into account the effects of the massive use of
depleted
uranium (DU) in the bombing. The U.S. has dropped well in excess of 300
tons
of this radioactive material in Iraq (30 times the amount dropped in
Kosovo)
since 1991. Some of the DU is further contaminated with other
radioactive
particles including Neptunium and Plutonium 239, perhaps the most
carcinogenic of all radioactive materials, and these particles are now
beginning to show up in ground water samples.

I spent a lot of time in overcrowded cancer wards in Iraqi hospitals.
Since
U.S. bombing began in Iraq, cancer rates have increased nearly six fold
in
the south, where U.S. bombing and consequent levels of DU are most
severe.
The most pronounced increases are in leukaemia and lung, kidney, and
thyroid cancers associated with poisoning by heavy metals (such as
DU).

But the most lethal weapon in Iraq is the intense sanctions regime.
The
toll of the sanctions is one of the most under-reported stories of the
past
decade in the U.S. press. I have seen a few references to the sanctions
recently in the U.S. press, but invariably they will subtly discredit
humanitarian concerns by relying on Iraqi government statements rather
than
on the statistics of international agencies. My careless colleague at
Time
magazine, for example, recently reported that "the Iraqi government
blames
the sanctions for the deaths of thousands of children under the age of
five." That's simply not true. The Iraqi government, in fact, blames
the
sanctions for the deaths of *more than a million* children under the
age of
five. But lets put that figure aside, for there's no need to rely
solely on
the Iraqi government, and let's refer instead to UNICEF and WHO reports
which blame the sanctions directly for
the excess deaths of approximately 500,000 children under the age of
five,
and nearly a million Iraqis of all ages. We all have an idea of the
grief
borne by the United States after the September 11 attacks. Employing
the
crude mathematics of casualty figures, multiply that grief by 300 and
place
it on the hearts of a country with one tenth the population of the
United
States and perhaps we can get a crude idea of what kind of suffering
has
already been inflicted on the Iraqi people in the past decade.

The greatest killer of young children in Iraq is dehydration from
diarrhoea
caused by water-borne illnesses which are amplified by the intentional
destruction of water treatment and sanitation facilities by the United
States. The U.S. plan for destroying water treatment facilities and
suppressing their rehabilitation was outlined just before the
American entry into the 1991 Gulf War. The January, 1991, Dept. of
Defense
document, "Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities," goes into great
detail
about how the destruction of water treatment facilities and their
subsequent
impairment by the sanctions regime will lead to "increased incidences,
if
not epidemics, of disease." I can report from my time in Iraq that all
is
going to plan. Cholera, hepatitis, and typhoid (previously almost
unheard of
in Iraq) are now quite common. Malaria and, of course, dysentery are
rampant, and immunities to all types of disease are extremely low. Even
those lucky children who manage to get a sufficient daily caloric
intake
risk losing it all to diarrhea. Around 4,000 children die every month
from
starvation and preventable disease in Iraq -- a six-fold increase since
pre-sanctions measurements.

Treatment of illnesses in Iraq is complicated by the inability of
hospitals
to get the drugs they need through the wall of sanctions. In a hospital
in
Baghdad I encountered a mother with a very sick one-year-old child.
After
the boy's circumcision ceremony, the child was found to have a
congenital
disease which inhibits his blood's ability to clot, which results in
excessive bleeding. The child encountered further complications when he
took
a fall and sustained a head injury which was slowly drowning his brain
in
his own blood. In any other country the boy would simply take regular
doses
of a drug called Factor 8, and he could then lead a relatively normal
life.
But an order for Factor 8 was put "on hold" by the United States
(prohibited
for import), so the doctor, the mother, and I could only watch the
child
die.

cont.../

helenloves

/...cont.

Much is made of Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass
destruction,
but it is the sanctions, the use of depleted uranium, and the
destruction of
Iraq's health and sanitation infrastructure that are the weapons of
greatest mass destruction in Iraq. The situation is so bad that Dennis
Halliday, the former Humanitarian Coordinator for the UN in Iraq, took
the
dramatic step of resigning his position in protest at the sanctions.
"We are
in the process of destroying an entire society," Halliday wrote. "It is
as
simple and terrifying as that. It is illegal and immoral." And Halliday
isn't alone. His successor, Hans Von Sponeck, also resigned in protest
and
went so far as to describe the sanctions as genocide. These are not
left-wing radicals. These are career bureaucrats who chose to throw
away
their careers at the UN rather than give tacit support to unethical
policies
driven by the United States.

Being in Iraq showed me the utter devastation U.S. policy (war and
sanctions) has wrought there and has given me a vision of what horror a
new
war would bring. And, of course, an attack on Iraq would be just the
beginning of a terrifying chain of reactions throughout the Middle East
and
the rest of the world. Having worked in Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Israel and Palestine in the past year, I am intensely aware
of how
the fragile politics and powers outside Iraq can be dramatically
unsettled
by a U.S. invasion within Iraq.

It's easy to imagine an impending tragedy of enormous proportion
before us,
and I ask myself who must step up and take responsibility for stopping
it.
Clearly the U.S. government is the most powerful actor, but it is
equally
clear that we cannot turn aside and realistically expect the U.S.
government
to suddenly reverse the momentum it has created for war. So I feel the
weight of responsibility on me, on U.S. citizens, to do whatever we can
with
our individually small but collectively powerful means to change the
course
of our government's policy. I try to picture myself 10 or 20 years in
the
future, and I don't want to be in the position where I reflect on the
enormous tragedies of the beginning of the 21st century and admit that
I did
nothing at all to recognize or prevent them.

I don't know how this letter will sound to my friends and family who
are
living in the U.S., in a media environment which does very little to
effectively question U.S. policy and almost nothing to encourage
ordinary
people to participate in making a change. I imagine this letter may
sound
like the political rant of some kind of extremist or
anti-American dissident. But that's not how it feels to me. This
doesn't
feel like a political issue to me so much as it feels like a personal
issue.
I am appalled on a very human level at the suffering which U.S. policy
is
already inflicting and I am terrified by the prospects for an even
more
chaotic and violent future.

And let's be honest about U.S. policy aims. Those in the U.S.
government
pushing for war say they are doing so to promote democracy, to protect
the
rights of minorities, and to rid the region of weapons of mass
destruction.
But is the U.S. threatening to attack Saudi Arabia or a host of other
U.S.
allies which have similarly un-democratic regimes? How many of us would
advocate going to war with Turkey over the brutal repression of its
Kurdish
minority and of the Kurds in Iraq? And do we expect the U.S. to bomb
Israel
or Pakistan which each have hundreds of nuclear weapons? Let's remember
that
leaders in the previous weapons inspection team in Iraq had declared
that
95% of Iraqs weapons of mass destruction capabilities were destroyed.
And
let's not forget that in the 1980s, when Iraq was actually using
chemical
weapons against the Kurds and the Iranian army, the U.S. had nothing
to say
about it. On the contrary, at that time President Reagan sent a U.S.
envoy
to Iraq to normalize diplomatic relations, to support its war with
Iran, and
to offer subsidies for preferential trade with Iraq. That envoy arrived
in
Baghdad on the very day that the UN confirmed Iraq's use of chemical
weapons, and he said absolutely nothing about it.
That envoy, by the way, was Donald Rumsfeld.

While Iraq probably has very little weaponry to actually threaten the
United States, they do have oil. According to a recent survey of the
West
Qurna and Majnoon oil fields in southern Iraq, they may even have the
world's largest oil reserves, surpassing those of Saudi Arabia. Let's
be
honest about U.S. policy aims and ask ourselves if we can, in good
conscience, support continued destruction of Iraq in order to control
its
oil.

I believe that most Americans -- Republicans, Democrats, Greens,
Purples or
whatever -- would be similarly horrified by the effects of sanctions on
the
civilian population of Iraq if they could simply see the place, as I
have,
up close in its human dimensions; if they could see Iraq as a nation of
22
million mothers, sons, daughters, teachers, doctors, mechanics, and
window
washers, and not simply as a single cartoonish villain. I genuinely
believe
that my view of Iraq is a view that would sit comfortably in mainstream
America if most Americans could see Iraq with their own eyes and not
simply
through the eyes of a media establishment which has simply gotten used
to
ignoring the death and destruction which perpetuates American foreign
policy
aims. While the American media fixates on the evils of the "repressive
regime of Saddam Hussein," both real and wildly exaggerated, how often
are
we reminded of the horrors of the last Gulf War, when more than 150,000
were
killed (former U.S. Navy Secretary, John Lehman, estimated 200,000). I
simply don't believe that most Americans could come face-to-face with
the
Iraqi people and say from their hearts that they deserve another war.

I believe in the fundamental values of democracy -- the protection of
the
most powerless among us from the whims of the most powerful. I believe
in
the ideals of the United Nations as a forum for solving international
conflicts non-violently. These are mainstream values, and they are
exactly
the values that are most imperilled by present U.S. policy. That's why,
as a
citizen of the United States and as a member of humanity, I can't rest
easily so long as I think there is something, anything, that I can do
to
make a difference.

Love,
Thorne

o sleep

certainly doesn't sound like an anti-american rant, he seems quite balanced in his views, or at least he's speaking from a position of actually being IN iraq (which none of us can say).

you'd wonder why the US would use depleted uranium in their bombing campaigns. i mean, i'm sure they have their reasons for bombing (which i won't give my personal opinion on) but why the **** use depleted uranium? is it more precise for their 'operations' or something?

i also think it's quite ironic that the US are worried about weapons of mass destruction and nuclear warheads, when they are the only country (as far as i know) to have used such weapons on foreign peoples. (because killing your own people is kind of ... accepted, as eddie izzard would say:

but there were other mass murderers that got away with it! Stalin, killed many millions, died in his bed, well done there. Pol Pot killed 1.7 million Cambodians, died under house arrest, age 72. Well done indeed. And the reason we let them get away with it is because they killed their own people. And we’re sort of fine with that. Ah, help yourself, you know. We’ve been trying to kill you for ages! So kill your own people, ohh, right on there. Seems to be, Hitler killed people next door – awwww…stupid man. After a couple of years, we won’t stand for that, will we?)

soma

The reason they use Depleted Uranium is cos it's about 1.7 times thicker than lead - hence it's quite useful as armour & tipping ammunition with it makes your bullets etc even more deadly.

The insanity of it all is that when either a D.U. tipped bullet hits something, or D.U. armour gets hit, it creates a cloud of radioactive dust - hence this stuff is lethal for both the victims and the aggressor (think gulf war syndrome).

Cancer in Iraq has sky rocketed thanks to the use of this stuff in the first Gulf War.

Manics

wHO gIVES A ****?

o sleep

um ... the iraqi's?

the66electric

o sleep don't bother. the joke has worn off along time ago. He's obviosly someone off this boards alter ego.

the happy hobo

Ok once again I'd like to say that there's a a worldwide day of protest on this saturday (15 feb.) starting at 2:00 in Parnell Square. Somehow I doubt Iraq will be better off as a puppet of the U.S.