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The bombing constitutes the most grievous
violation of international law.
It is intended to destroy the civilian life and economy of Iraq.
It is not necessary, meaningful or permissible
as a means of driving Iraq from Kuwait.
Ramsey Clark, letter to Bush, February 12, 1991From several trips I have made to Iraq,
it is obvious where one should go to find
overwhelming evidence of a weapon of mass destruction.
Inspectors have only to enter the wards of any hospital
to see that the sanctions themselves are a lethal weapon,
destroying the lives of Iraq's most vulnerable people.
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.
Almost a million children who are severely malnourished
will bear lifelong consequences of
stunted growth, brain deficiencies, disabilities.
At the hands of UN/US policy makers,
childhood in Iraq has, for thousands, become a living hell.
Kathy Kelly, February 1998If people in the US had seen their images, day after day,
the economic sanctions would never have lasted long enough
to claim the lives of over a half million children.
Kathy Kelly, Other Lands Have Dreams 103George Bush will invade Iraq
unless restrained by the United Nations.
A UN or US policy of selecting enemies of the US for attack
is criminal and can only heighten hatred,
division, terrorism and lead to war.
Do not let this happen.
Ramsey Clark, letter to Kofi Annan, September 30, 2002We feel sure that preventing a "next" war requires
effectively countering the present war propaganda.
Kathy Kelly, Other Lands Have Dreams 78Yearn for peace.
Try very hard not to pay for war.
And, most of all, think of the children.
Kathy Kelly, Other Lands Have Dreams 150Let us, collectively, free our minds, soften our hearts,
comfort the wounded, put down our weapons,
and reassert ourselves as human beings by putting an end to war.
Camilo Mejia, 2005
Ramsey Clark has written an insightful account of the causes
and effects
of the 1991 war with Iraq in The Fire This Time:
U. S. War Crimes in the Gulf.
Clark was Assistant Attorney
General and then Attorney Genera
during the Kennedy and Johnson
administrations.
Clark recounted the pertinent history of Iraq,
Kuwait, and the United States.
After the First World War in 1921
Sir Percy Cox of the British Colonial Office
drew new borders
between Iraq and Saudi Arabia, establishing Kuwait
as a small
kingdom that took away most of Iraq's coastline.
The rich oil
deposits in the region were exploited and controlled by seven
oil companies
from England, France, and the United States until
Iran's Mossadegh government
nationalized their oil in 1951, taking
it from the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now British Petroleum).
Western nations imposed sanctions on Iran until 1953,
when the
CIA helped overthrow Mossadegh.
Then General Norman Schwarzkopf
Sr. helped Shah Reza Pahlevi
set up the oppressive SAVAK state
police.
The Hashemite monarchy in Iraq was overthrown in 1958
by a nationalist revolution
led by Abdel Karim Kassem, and two
years later the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries
(OPEC) was founded to counter the western oil monopolies.
In 1963
a CIA-backed coup killed Kassem and thousands of his supporters.
Five years later the secular Ba'ath Party gained power in Iraq,
and they nationalized Iraq's oil in 1972.
In May of that year
President Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and the Shah of Iran
began instigating
the Kurds in northern Iraq to rebel by giving them weapons.
When
Iraq agreed to share the disputed Shatt-al-Arab waterway with
Iran in 1975,
the Shah stopped supporting the Kurds.
The Shah
was overthrown by the Iranian revolution in February 1979.
Saddam
Hussein replaced al-Bakr as president of Iraq in June,
and the
next month he executed 21 government officials.
After the Americans
in the Tehran embassy were taken hostage by the Iranian radicals
in November, US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski
began urging Iraq
to attack Iran to take back the waterway.
A
year later Iraq's Saddam Hussein, guided by US intelligence, went
to war
against Iran, a war that would last eight years and kill
about a million people.
Weaker Iraq was supported in this war
effort at first by the Soviet empire,
Arab states including Kuwait
and Saudi Arabia, and then by the western powers
Britain, France,
West Germany, and the United States,
which provided satellite
and AWACS intelligence.
Egypt, which was receiving $2 billion
per year in US aid,
sent Iraq troops, tanks, and heavy artillery.
Another US aid recipient, Turkey, helped Iraq by fighting its
Kurdish rebels.
Saudi Arabia provided money, and Kuwait alone
loaned Iraq $30 billion.
The US sold arms worth $20 billion to Gulf states, and the
Reagan administration
illegally allowed Saudi Arabia to transfer
weapons to Iraq.
In 1972 the US had declared Iraq a nation that
supports terrorism,
but the Reagan regime took Iraq off that list.
How the White House illegally armed Iraq is explained in detail
by investigative reporter Alan Friedman in Spider's Web.
In December 1983 President Reagan sent special envoy Donald Rumsfeld
to Baghdad to restore diplomatic relations with Saddam Hussein's
government
and to offer US loan guarantees to Iraq.
The next spring
the Export-Import Bank sent Iraq $500 million.
The US also became
Iraq's major trading partner
by increasing its purchases of Iraqi
oil.
Vice President George H. W. Bush, the State Department, and the CIA
urged the Export-Import Bank to finance US exports to Iraq.
The Atlanta
branch of the Italian Banca Nazionale del Lavoro arranged for
$5.5 billion
in fraudulent loans that were guaranteed by the Commodity
Credit Corporation.
In 1986 a CIA team was sent to Baghdad as
military advisors.
Meanwhile Oliver North had been secretly shipping
arms to Iran
until this illegal trade was exposed in late 1986.
The next year the US helped Iraq by protecting Kuwaiti oil tankers.
In the late 1980s CIA fronts in Saudi Arabia and Chile sent 73
weapons transactions
to Baghdad that included weapons-grade anthrax
and equipment to repair rockets.
The Iraq-Iran War ended with a cease-fire on August 7, 1988,
and the next day
Kuwait drastically increased its oil production,
breaking OPEC agreements
and driving the price from $21 a barrel
down to $11.
The New York Times calculated that this would
cost Iraq $14 billion a year.
While Iraq had been preoccupied
fighting Iran,
Kuwait had moved the border to the north
and, using
slant-drilling technology supplied by the US,
was pumping oil
from Iraq's Rumaila oil field.
Iraq needed peace to rebuild and
pay its $80 billion war debt,
but it was being economically squeezed;
Iraq's inflation was at 40% as the dinar sank.
During an
Arab summit meeting at Amman in February 1990 Saddam Hussein
asked
the US to withdraw from the Gulf and alerted others that the US
wanted
to dominate the Gulf region and fix oil prices.
The next
month Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)
refused to follow
OPEC production limits.
Israel had bombed Iraq's nuclear power
complex in 1981,
and in April 1990 Saddam Hussein proposed that
the Middle East become a
nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons-free
zone.
In May, Saddam Hussein complained of economic warfare, and
on July 17
he publicly accused Kuwait and the US of conspiring
to destroy Iraq's economy.
He warned them, and the next day Iraqi
troops moved to the Kuwaiti border.
Since the 1979 Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan,
the United States had been developing the
Rapid Deployment
Joint Task Force (RDJTF)
to back up the Carter Doctrine's pledge
to protect
Middle Eastern oil as vital to US national security.
By 1985 the US Central Command (CENTCOM)
had gotten Saudi Arabia
to agree to provide access.
Only after the Iraq-Iran War ended
did the US complain that Saddam Hussein
had used chemical weapons
on the Kurds six months before.
Yet the US had helped supply such
weapons that also had been used against Iran.
The US Senate voted
to cancel technology and food sales to Iraq.
In 1989 CENTCOM's
war plan 1002 was revised to
make Iraq the enemy instead of the
Soviet Union.
The end of the Cold War meant that the US was no
longer
deterred from being aggressive in this region.
Early in
1990 the CENTCOM commander General Norman Schwarzkopf Jr.
told
Congress that Middle Eastern oil is the West's lifeblood,
and
he recommended a permanent military presence in the region.
He
also conducted four war games directed at Iraq;
some of these
were based on an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
On July 25 the US announced
more Gulf war exercises;
but US ambassador April Glaspie told
Saddam Hussein that
State Department policy was that the US had
no position on Arab-Arab conflicts.
On August 2, 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait.
President George H. W. Bush immediately
prohibited US trade with Iraq and
froze $30 billion in Iraqi assets,
making Iraq unable to pay its UN dues.
The US insisted that Iraq's
vote be taken away even though
the US owed the UN $1.6 billion
in unpaid dues at the time.
The same day a US battle group of
seven warships was dispatched,
and the next day the United Nations
Security Council condemned Iraq.
Saddam Hussein told Jordan's
King Hussein that he would withdraw
if the Arab League did not
condemn Iraq.
King Hussein tried to persuade Egypt's Hosni Mubarak;
but Egypt was pressured by the US and introduced the condemnation
resolution.
So instead of withdrawing, Saddam Hussein claimed
that Kuwait was part of Iraq.
On August 6 the UN Security Council
imposed international sanctions on Iraq,
and the next day the
US persuaded King Fahd
to let the US military use territory in
Saudi Arabia.
The US claimed that Iraqi troops were near the Saudi
border,
but satellite photos later refuted this.
On August 8 President
Bush ordered 40,000 troops to defend Saudi Arabia.
Four days later
Saddam Hussein offered to withdraw from Kuwait
if Israel would
pull out of the occupied territories.
Then he made another offer
without linking it to Israel, but the US rejected these.
Saddam
Hussein even offered to debate President George H. W. Bush
and Prime Minister
Thatcher on television.
In September embargoed Iraq began rationing
food supplies.
Chomsky considered
Iraq's invasion of Kuwait roughly comparable to
Israel's invasion
of Lebanon in 1978 or 1982
and the US invasion of Panama in 1989.
In the United States the media began demonizing Saddam Hussein,
and Secretary of State James Baker even argued that the war
was
necessary to provide jobs for the sagging economy.
When a poll
showed that Americans would support an invasion to prevent Iraq
from getting nuclear weapons, that argument was used even though
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimated that Iraq
was at least three years away from having even one atomic bomb.
A girl, who turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador,
testified before a Congressional committee that Iraqi soldiers
had taken
babies from incubators, but this was later exposed as
a hoax
devised by the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton.
By October, Bush had massed 400,000 US troops in the region,
and
this increased to 573,000 before the war began.
President Bush
refused to negotiate except to give Iraq an ultimatum
to withdraw
by January 15, 1991, the UN deadline.
The United States used bribery
and threats to get the
United Nations Security Council to give
it authorization for the war.
Ethiopia, Zaire, and Colombia got
new aid.
China got a loan from the World Bank and better diplomatic
relations.
After its vote, the Soviet Union was loaned $4 billion
by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE.
Egypt altogether had $14
billion of debt canceled.
Cuba and Yemen were punished for not
voting in favor.
The UN allowed the US and its allies to act without
any limitation,
and the US never even reported what it did.
Essentially
the UN had relinquished its authority to the US.
On January 16 George H. W. Bush ordered
General Schwarzkopf to begin the
attack.
Iraq was immediately hit with thousands of missiles and
bombs that
destroyed 85% of its power and vital services within
two days.
This attack on the civilian infrastructure that destroyed
Iraq's energy, sewage,
and water systems has been considered a
form of biological warfare
because of the diseases caused.
This
was probably the most one-sided war in history,
and it is more
accurate to call it a massacre or genocide.
Iraq had between 125,000
and 150,000 soldiers killed,
while the US lost only 148 killed
in combat, 37 of them by "friendly fire."
In six weeks
the US flew 109,000 sorties over Kuwait and Iraq.
Although the
purpose was supposed to be to drive the Iraqi soldiers
out of
Kuwait, 88,500 tons of explosives were dropped on Iraq;
only 6,520
tons were the precision-guided "smart bombs,"
which
were so well publicized.
On February 13 a US bomb killed 1,500 civilians in a Baghdad
bomb shelter,
and two days later President Bush urged the Iraqi
people to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
On February 21 Soviet diplomats
announced that
Iraq had agreed to withdraw unconditionally from
Kuwait.
The US gave them two days to do so before starting the
ground attack.
On February 26 as Iraqi troops tried to retreat
or surrender along the Basra road,
thousands were slaughtered
during the "turkey shoot" on the "highway of death."
Two days later Iraq and the US agreed on a cease-fire; but two
days after that,
thousands of Iraqi soldiers were killed
in another
battle that did not kill a single American.
Ramsey Clark estimated that the bombing killed at least
25,000
Iraqi civilians directly and another 25,000 indirectly.
American
bombing hit 28 hospitals, 52 community clinics,
and 676 schools,
completely destroying 38 schools.
Civilian vehicles on highways
were strafed.
The Pentagon admitted that civilian targets were
attacked to
demoralize the people and make the sanctions more
effective.
Modern Iraq was reduced to a pre-industrial condition
as sewage and sanitation systems were destroyed;
power was scarce,
and most communications systems could not operate.
The Iraqi people
were held hostage as the US and its allies hoped that
Saddam Hussein
would be overthrown,
causing tens of thousands to die of starvation
and disease.
After President Bush had repeatedly urged the southern
Shi'is and
northern Kurds to rise up against Saddam Hussein, he
let them be slaughtered
by the ruthless dictator, further weakening
the country.
The embargo imposed to get Iraq to leave Kuwait was not lifted,
and continuing sanctions prevented recovery.
Oil-exporting Iraq
had been importing 70% of its food.
With its assets frozen it
had little revenue to purchase food.
In June 1992 the US even
bombed grain and wheat fields near Mosul in northern Iraq.
The
United States dominated the UN committee that
severely restricted
Iraq's importation of food and medicine.
These conditions caused
several thousand Iraqis, many of them children,
to die each month
and would continue for at least a dozen years.
The sanctions were
not lifted because Iraq was expected to pay
at least $70 billion
in reparations despite its previous debt and ruined country.
The
cost of rebuilding Iraq was estimated at $200 billion.
The United
Nations offered to let Iraq sell $1.6 billion worth of oil each
six months;
but 30% of this was to go for reparations and 5% for
weapons destruction
and border decisions, leaving Iraq with $1.04
billion over six months
for food and medicine even though that
would only cover food alone for four months.
Iraq considered the
offer so unfair that they declined.
The UN committee gave most
of the disputed Ramaila oil field to Kuwait.
The US Congress estimated that the first Gulf War cost the
US $61.1 billion;
but the superpower had become a mercenary and
was reimbursed
for $54 billion of this in cash and services.
Kuwait
contributed $16 billion, Saudi Arabia $16 billion, Japan $10 billion,
Germany more than $6 billion, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)
$4 billion.
Japan and Germany did not participate militarily in
the coalition because of
their treaties made at the end of World
War II.
The United Kingdom spent $4.1 billion.
The intensive bombing also caused an environmental disaster.
In August 1990 the Bush administration had signed a waiver to
exempt
the military operations from the National Environmental
Protection Act.
In December 1990 the United Nations passed a
resolution
to prohibit attacks on nuclear facilities;
but General Schwarzkopf
announced that these were primary targets,
and on January 23 General
Colin Powell confirmed that
Iraq's two nuclear reactors had been
destroyed.
A week later Schwarzkopf said that eighteen chemical,
ten biological,
and three nuclear plants had been attacked.
The
US and British aircraft launched some 50,000 rockets and missiles
containing depleted uranium (DU), and the US forces fired a total
of
944,000 rounds of the DU armor-piercing shells.
The uranium-238
causes cancer and birth defects
and will remain in those areas
indefinitely.
Iraq did spill and burn oil, but Saudi scientists
estimated
that 30% of the oil spilled was caused by the bombing.
The oil spilled into the Gulf was estimated to be twenty times
that of the
Exxon Valdez spill, by far the worst in history.
University of Toronto Peace Institute researchers have estimated
that 30% of all
environmental degradation in the world is caused
by military activities.
Clark also summarized the human rights
abuses of foreign nationals that
were reported by Middle East
Watch in Kuwait after the Iraqis departed.
Women in Kuwait had
no civil rights.
Ramsey Clark noted that the media self-censorship and manipulation
by the Pentagon
that he had found in the Grenada and Panama invasions
became even worse in this tightly controlled war.
Clark had legally
defended the 340 civilian victims of the US bombing in April 1986
of Qaddafi's private residence in Libya;
but the press had refused
to cover the story, and the judge threw out the case,
fining Clark's
law office $20,000 to deter others from filing such suits.
Clark
also wrote how the US media had neglected to report that the Thai
military
slaughtered hundreds of students in 1976,
that Indonesia
murdered thousands in East Timor,
and that Turks were killing
thousands of Kurds.
The Pentagon pools that took some reporters
to battle scenes
were so closely controlled that many reporters
preferred not to go.
Walter Cronkite said military briefings in
Saudi Arabia were "ridiculously inadequate,"
and he
called the US military arrogant.
The Nation, the Village
Voice, and Harper's Magazine tried to test
the constitutionality
of the press rules, but the courts were too slow to help.
News
stories and film footage were censored by the military.
So Ramsey Clark and award-winning documentary film-maker Jon
Alpert
went to Iraq themselves, and in the first week of February
during the war
Alpert took six hours of video in Baghdad and Basra.
Of the major news networks only the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour
would show a short segment of it.
On February 12, 1991 Clark wrote
a long letter to President H. W. Bush
describing what he witnessed in
Iraq and asking him to stop the war crimes.
Some journalists were
fired for reporting something besides the US side of the war.
An incident, in which Americans dressed as Iraqis went in Soviet-built
helicopters
to place homing devices for the bombing, was covered
up.
One of these helicopters was shot down by Americans, and Clark
noted
that this CIA operation violated the Geneva Convention.
Most of all, Clark complained that the media did not report the
effects
by the US bombing on the Grenadians, the Libyans, the
Panamanians, and the Iraqis.
On January 16, 1991, the day the attack began, Congressman
Henry Gonzalez
submitted a resolution for the impeachment of President
Bush on five charges.
Clark expressed concern that the United
States was seeking military supremacy
and committing crimes with
impunity.
When the USS Stark was torpedoed during the Iraq-Iran
War,
Iraq paid $36 million in damages; but when the US shot down
a
commercial Iranian airliner in 1987, killing 270 people, the
US paid nothing.
A peace coalition had been organized to try to stop US military
intervention
in the Middle East, and Clark's op-ed piece "Peril
from an Imperial Presidency"
was printed in the Los Angeles
Times on August 24, 1990.
That fall rallies in New York and
San Francisco drew 20,000 people.
Two days after the war started,
a hundred thousand people gathered
across from the White House,
and an even larger crowd demonstrated
in San Francisco; yet a
few pro-war supporters were given equal coverage by the media.
The Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal
held its first hearings in New York City on May 11, 1991.
These
war crimes tribunals were held in thirty US cities and more than
twenty countries
but were ignored by the American media; one New
York Times reporter
said he would be fired if he wrote about
it.
Yet these tribunals were given substantial coverage in other
countries.
Clark and others carefully documented the violations of international
law,
citing the US Constitution, the UN Charter,
the Nuremberg
Principles, and the Geneva Conventions.
Protocol I of the 1977
Additional Geneva Convention states in Article 48,
In order to ensure respect for and protection of
the civilian population and civilian objects,
the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish
between the civilian population and combatants
and between civilian objects and military objectives
and accordingly shall direct their operations
only against military objectives.1
Article 54 states,
1. Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited.
2. It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless
objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population,
such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas
for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock,
drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works,
for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value
to the civilian population or to the adverse Party,
whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians,
to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.2
Article 55 states that care should be taken to protect
the
natural environment against damage.
Clark charged that the one-sided
casualty figures proved that the force used
was not proportional
to a legitimate military objective,
thus violating the Hague Convention.
The nineteen charges against Bush and others included provoking
the war;
destroying Iraq economically and militarily; bombing
civilian targets;
bombing indiscriminately; slaughtering unresisting
soldiers; using prohibited weapons;
attacking dangerous installations;
invading Panama and killing Panamanians;
corrupting the UN; usurping
authority of the US Congress;
waging war on the environment; urging
Shi'is and Kurds to rebel and then
occupying parts of Iraq; depriving
Iraqi people of medicine, potable water, food,
and other necessities;
continuing to assault Iraq after the cease-fire;
violating human
rights; destroying Iraq's economy by threatening famine and epidemic;
controlling and manipulating media coverage; and controlling Gulf
oil resources.
One year after the war ended, the 22 judges from
18 nations
found the absent defendants guilty of all the charges.
Clark noted that this was the first time a victorious government
had been charged with war crimes on its own soil.
The Commission also made more than fifty proposals to remedy
the situation,
such as ending the sanctions, sending emergency
food and supplies,
removing unexploded bombs, assessing legitimate
reparations,
ceasing military threats, and withdrawing foreign
troops.
Long-term proposals include prohibiting weapons of mass
destruction, disarmament,
prohibiting military in foreign countries,
creating effective institutions to resolve disputes
and prevent
war, reforming the United Nations, promoting health, agriculture,
clean water, fair labor, education, birth control, housing, environmental
protection
and proper use of resources, preventing economic exploitation,
and restricting the use of embargoes and sanctions.
The United
States needs to be liberated from militarism,
unconstitutional
government, plutocratic control, concentration of wealth,
punitive
social control, and the consequences of foreign intervention.
The media also needs to be freed from the corporate monopolies.
Peace and justice organizations need to grow and spread their
influence
so that people can monitor and reform governmental institutions.
In response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, on August 6, 1990
UN Security Council Resolution 661 passed 13-0 with Yemen and
Cuba abstaining;
it called for all states to boycott Iraq and
Kuwait.
Three days later President George H. W. Bush strengthened US sanctions
against Iraq.
On August 13 Secretary of State Jim Baker announced
that the US would "interdict"
Iraqi oil shipments, and
the White House announced
that foodstuffs would be included in
the ban.
UNSCR 665 called upon all states to halt all shipping
to and from Iraq.
Bulgaria wanted to ship baby food to Iraq,
but
in September the US and western nations blocked this.
On November
29 UNSCR 678 passed 12-2 and authorized member states
to "restore
international peace and security in the area."
China abstained.
In response to Yemen's vote against, two days later the
US canceled
all its $24 million in annual aid to Yemen.
The United Nations
Children's Fund (UNICEF) reported that 32,464 Iraqi children
had
died because of the sanctions by the end of 1990.
On January 16, 1991 the US began the bombing that destroyed
Iraq's power stations,
electrical grids, sewage and sanitation
systems, food production and storage facilities,
water purification
and desalination plants, and other infrastructure.
After two days
the incubators in Iraq no longer functioned.
By February the Iraqi
civilians' daily intake of calories had fallen from 3,340 to 1,000.
In March the World Health Organization (WHO) calculated that Iraq's
water supply
had dropped to 5% of the pre-war level.
On April
3 UNSCR 687 called upon all states to continue the sanctions against
Iraq
until it dismantled and destroyed its chemical, biological,
and nuclear weapons programs and its ballistic missiles.
The Security
Council was to review compliance with its resolutions every sixty
days.
The US without UN authorization imposed
"no-fly zones"
over northern and southern Iraq.
Prime Minister John Major announced
in May that England would veto any attempt
to weaken the sanctions
as long as Saddam Hussein was still in power.
UNSCR 692 established
a war damage fund
to collect revenues from future Iraqi oil exports.
A Harvard medical team predicted that 170,000 Iraqi children would
die
by the end of 1991 because of the war and sanctions.
Basra
had two doctors to cope with 80,000 people suffering from a cholera
epidemic.
A UN official announced that $6.85 billion would be
needed in the next year
to avert massive starvation in Iraq, but
only $216 million was raised.
UNSCR 705 required Iraq to pay 30%
of future oil revenues for reparations,
and UNSCR 706 limited
future oil revenues used for humanitarian needs to $1.6 billion.
By the end of 1991 the UNICEF cumulative death toll
of children
under 12 reached 118,406.
In April 1992 a shipment from Pakistan that included clothes,
pencils, and schoolbooks
was stopped, and the US blocked water
purification chemicals.
Pencils were banned because of the graphite,
and the prohibited chlorine was
desperately needed not only to
purify water but also to control mosquitoes and flies.
The UNICEF
death toll was 241,869 children by the end of the year.
Ramsey
Clark wrote again to the new UN secretary general Boutros-Ghali
requesting that the sanctions be lifted.
He cited how the sanctions
were violating the Geneva Conventions,
the FAO/WHO World Declaration
on Nutrition,
UN General Assembly Resolution 44/215, the Constitution
of the
World Health Organization, and the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights.
For five years Clark sent letters every two months
to each member
of the UN Security Council pleading for an end
to the genocidal sanctions.
On June 27, 1993 President Clinton
ordered 23 cruise missiles to attack Baghdad
in retaliation for
an assassination attempt against former president George H. W. Bush
which was
alleged to have been plotted by Iraq;
eight civilians were killed
including the respected painter Leyla Attar.
In July the British
blocked a shipment of cotton for medical swabs and gauze,
and
Japan's attempt to send hospital and ambulance
communications
equipment was stopped in August.
In October IAEA director general
Hans Blix reported that Iraq's nuclear weapons
program was neutralized
by the war and no longer existed.
The Security Council maintained
the sanctions despite Iraq's compliance
and acceptance of monitoring
programs.
The death toll for children reached 369,892 at the end
of 1993.
In 1994 the Iraqi minister of health announced that the infant
mortality rate
that was 40 per 1000 in 1989 had risen to 126,
and the average number
of monthly deaths, which was 2,545 before
the sanctions, had passed 11,000.
In August 1994 Jordan's
King Hussein and Turkey's President Suleyman
called for easing
of the sanctions against Iraq.
At the end of the year UNICEF reported
that
503,573 children had died because of the sanctions.
In April 1995 UNSCR 986 established the Oil for Food Program
allowing Iraq
to sell up to $2 billion in oil every six months;
30% of revenues were to be deducted
for compensation payments
and 2.2% to administer the program,
and the first shipment of
food did not reach Iraq until March 1997.
In May 1995 the UN Special
Commission (UNSCOM) alleged that
17 tons of bioweapons material,
which had been obtained from western countries
in the 1980s, was
still missing, and so the embargo was continued.
Iraq claimed
they had destroyed these in October 1990
but agreed to destroy
the suspected facilities in July.
The Food & Agriculture Organization
(FAO) Mission visited Iraq
for five weeks and reported that $2.7
billion would be needed
in the next year to meet the food shortages.
Already that summer the World Food Program (WFP) had no more food
to provide in south and central Iraq, and they ran out in the
north in August.
Sewage disposal in Basra had deteriorated even
more since 1993.
Typhoid cases had risen to 24,436 in 1994.
They
concluded that the UN Security Council must agree to let Iraq
sell oil
so that food and farm equipment could be imported.
Sanitation
and access to potable water needed essential equipment,
and medical
supplies and drugs were urgently required.
The UN World Food Program's regional manager Mona Hamman
reported that four million Iraqis
were at severe nutritional risk,
as only 34% of nutritional needs
were being met.
At the end of 1995 the UNICEF death toll reached
642,357.
In July 1996 two thousand Iranian troops invaded northern Iraq,
but the UN Security Council took no action.
Yet the Oil for Food
Program was suspended
because of the security concerns in northern
Iraq.
In early September the US used 44 cruise missiles to bomb
targets
south of Baghdad and extended the No-fly zone in southern
Iraq.
France's President Jacques Chirac urged implementation of
the
UNSCR 986 food program in October, as WFP food stores ran
out in Iraq.
France withdrew completely from the No-fly zone aerial
patrols.
After more than six years' hiatus, Iraqi oil exports
resumed in December.
The UNICEF death toll of children was now
782,638.
In April 1997 the US blocked forty contracts for medical equipment
supplies
intended for Iraq and seven food contracts for rice,
beans, and cooking oil.
UNICEF published a report that 750,000
Iraqi children
under the age of five were suffering from malnutrition.
In May more than 50,000 Turkish troops invaded Kurdish separatists
in northern Iraq, and again the UN Security Council failed to
act.
Clinton and Russia's President Boris Yeltsin
considered tougher
sanctions to pressure Iraq.
In August the UNICEF total for the
Iraqi children who had died
because of the economic sanctions
reached 878,856.
After visiting Iraq's hospitals again, Ramsey
Clark sent another
detailed report to the members of the Security
Council in November.
The sanctions had increased the child mortality
rate eight times
for those under five and more than four-fold
for those over five.
Diseases from malnutrition had increased
exponentially with kwashiorkor
reaching 21,000 cases a year and
marasmus 192,000 cases the previous year.
In 1996 about 1,354,000
suffered from illnesses related to malnutrition.
He estimated
that the sanctions had cost a total of one and a half million
lives.
He considered this genocide, and he also charged that these
sanctions
and the US punitive bombing were crimes against peace
and humanity.
The Security Council ban against Iraqi leaders traveling
outside their country
violated their human rights and prevented
them
from telling others their side of the story.
In January 1998 Egyptian organizations presented to the United
Nations the
Cairo Declaration with eighteen million signatures
calling for an end to the
economic blockade of Iraq in order to
save the children.
Eighty-four people, including Ramsey Clark,
Bishop Thomas Gumbleton,
and Kathy Kelly, traveled to Iraq in
May as the Iraq Sanctions Challenge,
taking $4 million worth of
medicine without having secured
a license from the United States
Government.
In August UNSCOM team leader Scott Ritter resigned
"in protest over the inaction of the Security Council in
Iraq and interference
by the Britain and the US in UNSCOM's work."
UNSCR 1194 ended the periodic reviews of the sanctions,
requiring
a new resolution to end them that could be vetoed by the US.
On
September 30 Denis Haliday, UN Humanitarian Aid Coordinator,
resigned in protest of the sanctions and inadequate food program,
calling
the situation "illegal and immoral."
He was replaced
by Hans von Sponeck.
The US appropriated $97 million for military
equipment and training for those
attempting to overthrow Saddam
Hussein, who in reaction
stopped cooperating with UNSCOM inspections.
President Clinton ordered preparations for a massive air attack.
Iraq sent letters to Washington offering to resume cooperation,
and UNSCOM inspectors returned to Iraq in November.
UNSCOM reported
lack of cooperation and withdrew on December 16.
The next day
US and UK forces began four days of bombing.
Later it was learned
that the US had placed spying devices
inside equipment used by
UN inspectors.
Ritter revealed that inspectors had attempted to
coordinate a coup
by the Special Republican Guard against Saddam
Hussein.
In January 1999 Noam Chomsky
published an article denouncing
the US bombing as contemptuous
of the UN Security Council
and a call for a lawless world ruled
by the powerful.
Chomsky, Zinn, Edward Said, and others praised
the
sanction-busting efforts by Voices in the Wilderness.
In response
to France's call for lifting sanctions, the US agreed to remove
the
$5.2 billion cap on the Oil for Food Program; but this was
considered propaganda
because the low price of crude oil prevented
Iraq from earning much more.
In February journalist Robert Fisk
reported that the US and UK
had staged more than 70 air strikes
in five weeks.
The Washington Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR)
and
Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) delegation took
medicine to Baghdad
and met in April with Hans von Sponeck, who
complained that the
UNSCR 986 food program was not meeting the
needs of Iraqis.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan cited a WHO report
in May that
refuted the claims made by the US and Britain that
Saddam Hussein was to blame for not distributing supplies.
In
the first eight months of 1999 the US and UK fired 1,100 missiles
at 359 targets,
and Robert Fisk reported that more than a hundred
civilians had been killed.
Scientists found that the use of depleted
uranium (DU) had caused radiation
five thousand times the permissible
level and had increased
cancers seven-fold and deformities fourfold
in southern Iraq.
In September the New Internationalist
magazine published an issue charging that
US planes had caused
an infestation of screw worm flies resulting in 70,000 cases
of
the disease in Iraq; they compared it to a similar epidemic that
struck Libya in 1989
when US relations were strained.
In October
1999 Kofi Annan accused the US of disrupting the Oil for Food
program.
In February 2000 UN Humanitarian Aid Coordinator Hans von Sponeck
again
criticized the Oil for Food Program as inadequate to the
needs of the Iraqi people,
and two days later he resigned.
Iraqi
officials indicated their unwillingness to cooperate with the
UN Monitoring,
Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC),
which was directed
by Hans Blix and replaced UNSCOM.
In September
the UN Compensation Commission approved
a $15.9 billion claim
by Kuwait against Iraq for lost oil production.
Iraq objected;
but the percentage of oil sales paid for compensation
was reduced
from 30% to 25%, and Iraq continued to export oil.
Kathy Kelly grew up in Chicago and graduated from Loyola University
in 1974.
Three years later she moved uptown to work with
the Francis
of Assisi Catholic Worker House.
After the Maryknoll priest Roy
Bourgeois was sentenced to six months
for flinging blood on a
political poster, she was inspired to act and was
arrested with
Karl Meyer for protesting draft registration.
Karl became her
mentor and husband for twelve years.
Kelly began resisting war
taxes by keeping her income below the taxable level.
She has continued
to do so for 25 years and has said
that not paying federal income
tax is a spiritual discipline.
She taught at Saint Ignatius College
Prep for six years.
In the summer of 1985 Jesuits gave her a development
grant to visit Nicaragua,
and she fasted with Foreign Minister
Miguel D'Escoto,
who urged people to protest Contra terror nonviolently.
The next year she quit her job in order to devote herself
to opposing
military aid to the Contras.
Kelly has been arrested about fifty
times for protesting draft registration,
wars in Central America,
nuclear missile silos, Project ELF
(Extreme Low Frequency used
for military communications), and the sanctions
against Iraq as
well as for protests in Israel, Croatia, Haiti, and Italy.
In
1988 she was sentenced to one year for planting corn on nuclear
missile silos
in Missouri and served nine months.
She learned
from the elderly activists Maurice McCracken and Ernest Bromley
that courage is the ability to control your fear, and from their
examples
she found that courage can be contagious.
Kathy Kelly joined a Gulf Peace Team that occupied the border
between
Iraq and Kuwait during the first two weeks of the air
war in January 1991.
Then concerned Iraqi officials evacuated
them to Baghdad, and after the
explosions of bombs near their
hotel they were moved to Amman in Jordan.
Six months later Kelly
returned to the United States.
She visited Bosnia in December
1992 and August 1993.
She was part of a Christian Peacemaker team
in Haiti that discouraged militias
from threatening their neighbors
in 1994.
She learned how the United Nations economic sanctions
imposed against Iraq
by the United States were causing great suffering
and death.
Kelly helped found Voices in the Wilderness (VitW),
and in January 1996 they sent
a letter to Attorney General Janet
Reno declaring that
they would break the sanctions to take medical
supplies to Iraq.
The US Treasury Department warned them they
could face
twelve years in prison and a fine of one million dollars.
In March 1996 Kelly led the first of many VitW delegations (seventy
as of 2005)
to bring relief to the families and children of Iraq;
Kelly herself has been there 26 times.
Instead of the sanctions that were wrecking Iraqi society,
Kelly suggested that
strengthening their educational institutions
and social services
would improve communication and their society.
She observed that the sanctions made it more difficult for the
Iraqi people to challenge the tyranny of Saddam Hussein.
The bombing
of Desert Storm had destroyed Iraq's electrical grid, refrigeration,
sanitation facilities, and much medical equipment, and the sanctions
prevented Iraqis from importing or repairing their damaged incubators.
Their VitW delegations tried to treat the Iraqi people with warm
respect,
and they were amazed at the hospitality they received
despite the
pain of the sanctions inflicted by the US and UK.
Instead of Bush's question, "Why do they hate us so much?"
Kelly wondered, "Why do they love us so much?"3
In January 1997 during the confirmation hearings for Madeleine
Albright
five members of VitW held up pictures of Iraqi children
and were detained.
A year later when Kelly returned to the United
States, customs agents
gave her passport to the State Department
as evidence she had been to Iraq.
In 1998 their delegation took
$110,000 worth of medicines to Iraq.
Kelly described how five
thousand children were dying each month mostly
from contaminated
water that caused dysentery, cholera, and diarrhea.
Nearly a million
children were suffering from malnutrition
that would stunt their
growth and cause disabilities.
Camera crews visited hospitals,
but the reports that were
seen in Europe rarely appeared on American
television.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had said on
the 60 Minutes television program
in 1996 that she thought
the death of five hundred thousand Iraqi children was "worth
it."
In June 1999 six people on a Commence with Compassion
fast were arrested
for protesting at her commencement address
at Northwestern University.
In November 1999 Albright spoke to
the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations;
after she refused to
answer whether the sanctions were worth the children's' deaths,
fifteen activists were removed; Kathy Kelly and four others were
arrested.
In February 2000 the second UN Humanitarian Coordinator
for Iraq,
Hans von Sponeck, resigned to protest the sanctions.
Four days later during a VitW and FOR demonstration at the US
Mission
to the United Nations 86 people were arrested.
In April 2002 Kelly went with a team to the Jenin Camp in Palestine
during
the Israeli Defense Force's Operation Defensive Shield.
Because the United States has given Israel over $100 billion of
mostly military aid
during their 37 years of occupying Palestine,
she felt responsible for the
devastation but could only say that
she refused to pay taxes.
In June 2002 Bert Sacks announced that he would not pay the
$10,000 fine
for having taken medicine and food to Iraq,
but instead
he raised another $10,000 to buy more medicine for Iraq.
Voices
in the Wilderness wanted the United Nations Charter to be upheld,
and they opposed the impending US invasion of Iraq.
In October
2002 their demonstrations in Iraq were erroneously described
by New York Times reporter John Burns as "in support
of Saddam Hussein."
They believed the reports of the chief
UN weapons inspector Hans Blix and
former inspector Scott Ritter
that the task of disarming Iraq was nearly complete.
Kelly learned
that she was going to be fined $20,000, but she refused to pay.
She was in Baghdad trying to comfort Iraqi families
when the invasion
began on March 20, 2003.
During the shock-and-awe attacks they
learned that more than
a thousand cruise missiles had been used
in one night.
They were angry at the devastation and killing,
but they hoped
that activists around the world would be demonstrating
against the war.
Kathy Kelly has described many heart-rending experiences in
Iraq.
The musicians Majid al-Ghazali and Hisham al-Sharaf had
their
Baghdad School of Folk Music and Ballet ransacked by looters.
Kelly was driven to Amman by her friend Sattar, a civil engineer
who had helped
three physicians perform emergency medical care
for several days with little rest.
He observed that the US tanks
were only protecting the Oil Ministry.
He saw another American
tank break into a facility that stored two years' worth
of grain
and rice; the US officer told the looters
to take what they wanted
and burn the rest.
Sattar had the courage to tell US soldiers
that they could not manage
the situation themselves or protect
the civilians.
Sattar commented that nothing had changed except
that Saddam was gone,
and he told the Americans that it was their
country now.
Kelly agreed with Tom Paine, who said that his country
is the world and his religion is to do good.
She wanted "to
convince people that our over-consumption and wasteful lifestyles
aren't worth the price paid by people we conquer."4
In the summer of 2003 Kelly found that Iraq was very insecure
as
armed robbers attacked pedestrians on the streets in the daytime.
The occupying soldiers and the people in Baghdad were living in
fear and dread.
Saddam City was renamed Sadr City,
and families
tried to survive in appalling conditions.
Kelly saw first-hand
how relying on threats and force to solve problems
provokes other
leaders and societies to do the same.
Some of her friends, who
were students from Palestine,
were detained by US troops as terrorists.
Fadi Elayyan and Jihad Tahboub were released after two months;
but they had to sign a paper saying the US had no responsibility
for their treatment.
They had been held for seven days without
being given food or water.
They suffered in the cold outside for
a month, and those who complained were beaten.
They observed children
being abused by criminals, but the US guards only laughed.
Early in 2005 The Lancet, a British medical journal,
estimated that
about a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians had already
been killed in the latest war.
The Tigris and Euphrates rivers
were polluted, and the continuing lack of electricity
made it
difficult to preserve food and medicine or treat water and sewage.
The US occupation brought chaos and corruption
with a security
situation that was worse than before.
Kelly has recommended that
the US find the courage to admit a horrible mistake.
The US could
rectify the situation by closing their military bases,
scheduling
troop withdrawal, and cleaning up the depleted uranium,
cluster
bombs, landmines, and other unexploded bombs in Iraq.
Restitution
should be paid to Iraqis
for fourteen years of economic and military
warfare.
The US and its allies should fund the reconstruction
of Iraq;
it should be directed by Iraqis, who should be employed
and paid a living wage for the rebuilding.
Finally, Kelly advised
that the US should renounce its effort to create
a puppet government
in Iraq for its own national interests.
In October 2003 Kelly spoke to Judge Crocker at her sentencing
for protesting
the Navy's ELF system that is designed to facilitate
the fighting of a nuclear war.
She compared the war she witnessed
in Iraq to the immensely worse effects
that Trident nuclear missiles
could cause.
She and her team had knelt and prayed at the Iraq-Kuwait
border that US soldiers
would not cross the line to invade Iraq
because of missiles they might have.
She crossed the line at the
Wisconsin ELF facility to call attention to the real weapons
of
mass destruction in the US arsenal that can destroy any country
in the world.
She was sentenced to a month but has not yet served
that sentence.
In November 2003 Kathy Kelly was arrested with 27 activists
at Fort Benning in Georgia during the School of the Americas protests
when 14,000 people demonstrated.
She was so badly abused during
the booking that she stopped
cooperating and was hog-tied and
got a black eye.
For that peaceful protest she served three more
months in 2004.
She has criticized the futility of the US prison-industrial
complex which fails
mainly because it intends to punish people
instead of help them.
She noted that the US prison population
had quadrupled in the last 25 years.
She regrets that so much
money and resources are wasted on the military and
prison systems
when they could be used for health, education, and welfare systems.
More than half of prison inmates were convicted of nonviolent
crimes,
and 78% of those were drug-related.
Half of the prisoners
who are serving mandatory
minimum sentences are first-time offenders.
She prophetically wrote, "Our society desperately needs the
social imagining that could envision alternatives."5
She
summarized how the US has been constantly at war in the nuclear
age
since World War II in Korea, Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador,
Grenada,
Panama, Iraq, Kosovo, Colombia, Afghanistan, and Iraq
again.
Kelly has written that we need to practice the old adage
to live simply so that others may simply live.
In February 2001 US and UK planes attacked air defense targets
in Baghdad.
In August after Iraq claimed they shot down a US spy
plane,
the US conducted retaliatory strikes.
Iraq in November
said it would not allow inspectors back into the country unless
the sanctions were lifted, and the no-fly zones were abolished.
In his 2002 state of the union address US President George W.
Bush called Iraq,
Iran, and North Korea the "axis of evil"
and said he would not let them
threaten the US with the "world's
most destructive weapons."
He illegally diverted $700 million
that was appropriated for the Afghanistan War
and used it to prepare
for the invasion of Iraq.
Bush spoke at West Point in June and
threatened that
the US may need to take preemptive action.
On
September 12 Bush called upon the United Nations to act against
Iraq
because he considered it a "grave and gathering danger."
Four days later Iraq agreed to unconditional weapons inspections.
The next day Bush announced his National Security Strategy (NSS),
which
asserted that the United States would maintain its military
supremacy and act alone
if necessary against states harboring
terrorists or weapons of mass destruction.
Also in September the
US and UK stepped up their air attacks that bombed
Iraq's western
air defense installations, probably hoping to provoke
a reaction
by Saddam Hussein that could be used to justify invading Iraq.
In October 2002 the US Congress passed a resolution
authorizing
the use of force against Iraq.
On November 8 UNSCR 1441 required
Iraq to accept UN inspectors with
unconditional rights and to
make full declaration of its nuclear, chemical,
biological, and
ballistic weapons and related materials.
Other members of the
UN Security Council blocked the US attempt to include
an explicit
authorization to use force; most members believed
that another
resolution would be necessary for that.
Iraq denied having any
weapons of mass destruction and agreed
to the UN inspections,
which resumed on November 27.
On December 7 Iraq submitted a 11,800-page
report on its previous programs
related to weapons of mass destruction,
but US officials edited out 8,000 pages
before turning the redacted
copies over to the
ten non-permanent members of the UN Security
Council.
Hans von Sponeck called the US tampering "outrageous."
On December 19 US Secretary of State Colin Powell declared Iraq
in "material breach" of UN resolutions, and two days
later
President Bush approved the deployment of 200,000 troops.
Publication of a secret memo in January 2003 exposed US attempts
to spy
on the private communications of the delegations of UN
Security Council members.
During his state of the union address
President Bush accused Saddam Hussein
of deception, but Bush's
assertion that Iraq had obtained uranium from Africa was false.
Powell presented the US case against Iraq
at the UN Security Council
on February 5, 2003.
US claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction
and connections
to al-Qaida terrorists were doubted by many and
believed by others,
but neither of these charges have been proven
despite extensive efforts to find evidence.
Nine days later the
chief UN inspector Hans Blix presented
a report that found progress
in Iraq's cooperation.
On February 22 Blix ordered Iraq to destroy
Al Samoud 2 missiles
that were a little beyond the 150-kilometer
range allowed.
Two days later the US, UK, and Spain submitted
a resolution to the
UN Security Council to authorize the use of
military force against Iraq.
On March 7 after Iraq destroyed seventy
of the questionable missiles,
Blix commended their improved cooperation
as a "substantial measure of disarmament"
and asked
for more time to complete the UN inspections.
Because the US,
Britain, and Spain could only persuade Bulgaria
to favor their
resolution, they did not present it for a vote in the UN Security
Council.
On March 17, 2003 as UN inspectors were evacuating Iraq, President
Bush publicly
gave Saddam Hussein and his sons 48 hours to leave
Iraq or face war.
Two days later the US launched an air attack
on Baghdad
in an attempt to kill Saddam Hussein.
This was soon
followed by "shock and awe" bombing and an armed invasion
from Kuwait by the US, the British, and a few other allies.
In
the north invading US forces were joined by
Kurdish allies and
captured Kirkuk and Mosul.
The British occupied Basra, and the
US captured Baghdad on April 9.
Looting was widespread and included
the museums with ancient artifacts
while the US troops guarded
only the Oil Ministry.
The official name of the war was originally
Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL),
but this had been quickly changed
to Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF).
When US soldiers took over a
school to use it as a military base in Falluja,
many unarmed Iraqis
asked them to leave on April 29;
but US forces
shot dead twenty
people and wounded about 75 of the civilian demonstrators.
On
May 1 Bush declared victory and the end of the combat phase.
Thousands
of Iraqis protested the US occupation.
After General Jay Garner resisted US plans to sell off Iraq's
oil and national assets,
President George W. Bush put Paul Bremer
in charge of the occupation of Iraq on May 12.
Ten days later
the UN Security Council recognized the US and UK as
occupying
powers and gave the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)
a mandate
to administer Iraq; the sanctions against Iraq were terminated.
The next day Bremer dissolved the Ba'ath government,
and US forces
began disbanding the Iraqi military.
This policy removed Iraq's
security forces and many of its administrative personnel,
greatly
exacerbating an already huge unemployment problem
and causing
chaos in much of Iraq.
All the reconstruction contracts in Iraq
were awarded by the
US Agency for International Development (USAID),
the US Army Corps of Engineers,
and the US State Department to
private US companies.
Halliburton, which was formerly run by Vice
President Cheney,
and its subsidiary Brown and Root received contracts
worth more than $1.7 billion,
and Bechtel also gained contracts
totaling more than one billion dollars.
On June 28, 2003 the US military began canceling local elections
and self-rule
in Iraq's provinces and started appointing mayors
and administrators.
In July the US Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld
testified that the occupation
would require 140,000 US troops
and was costing the US $3.9 billion per month.
That month US and
UK officials appointed a governing council
of 25 Iraqis, but Bremer
remained in control.
Leaders of the former regime had their pictures
printed
on packs of cards, and they were hunted down.
American
forces killed Saddam Hussein's sons
Uday and Qusay during a raid
on Mosul in July.
A growing insurgency was developing.
Twenty
UN employees were killed by a suicide bombing at Baghdad in August,
and another bombing killed 19 Italians at Nasiriya in November.
US forces captured Saddam Hussein in December.
In 2003 the US
Army had 370,000 troops deployed in 120 countries.
In 2004 attacks by insurgents and the coalition killed hundreds
each month.
In March the Shi'a majority wanted early elections,
but the UN officials advised delay.
After the dead bodies of four
American civilians were abused in April,
the US military retaliated
with a major assault on Falluja that killed six hundred civilians.
Bremer declared Muqtada al-Sadr an outlaw and shut down his weekly
newspaper.
US forces killed seven more journalists,
bringing the
number of media workers killed to 28.
Also in April charges were
brought against US soldiers
for abusing Iraqis held at the Abu
Ghraib prison.
In June the CPA conducted a poll of Iraqis and
found that 92% viewed the US
as occupiers, 3% saw them as peacekeepers,
and 2% thought they were liberators.
On June 28, 2004 the US transferred governmental authority
to the Iraqi council, and Bremer departed.
A week later interim
prime minister Iyad Allawi, a former employee of the CIA,
declared
a state of emergency and martial law.
In August after three weeks
of fighting in Najaf, the Shi'a leader Ali al-Sistani
returned
from London, where he had medical treatment for his heart,
and
he mediated a truce that allowed the withdrawal
of al-Sadr's forces
from the Imam Ali mosque.
In September the number of US military
killed in Iraq passed one thousand.
UN Secretary General Kofi
Annan declared that the
US invasion of Iraq violated the UN Charter
and was illegal.
The Lancet estimated that 100,000 Iraqis
had been killed
since March 2003, and most of them were civilians.
President Bush asked for $87 billion for
the military occupations
of Iraq and Afghanistan,
and Congress approved this funding in
November
in addition to the $403 billion for the annual defense
budget.
After its November elections the US launched a heavy assault
with 10,000 soldiers on the resistance in Falluja.
The UN and
aid agencies reported that the number of children
suffering from
malnutrition in Iraq had doubled since the invasion.
In January 2005 Lynn Woolsey and 25 members of Congress introduced
the first resolution calling for the immediate withdrawal of US
troops from Iraq.
An estimated 8.5 million Iraqis voted on January
30.
The Shi'a coalition called the United Iraq Alliance got 48%
and Kurdish parties 26%,
but Sunnis only got 2% because of their
boycott.
A report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction
could not account
for $8.8 billion in reconstruction funds that
came from the former
UN Oil for Food Program, oil revenues, and
other seized Iraqi assets.
By spring the US was holding more than
12,000 Iraqis in four major prisons.
In May 2005 the US Congress
passed another supplemental appropriation
of $82 billion for the
war, but the same month the number of members
voting for withdrawal
from Iraq had increased to 128.
By 2005 the US-led coalition had
established more than a hundred
military bases in Iraq, each with
more than five hundred troops.
Pentagon plans included maintaining
four major bases
away from population centers indefinitely.
In
June 2005 UN Secretary General Kofi Annan criticized the US military
for violating
the Fourth Geneva Convention by continuing to hold
6,000 Iraqi prisoners one year
after the occupation had been formally
ended.
On June 16, 2005 US Representative Maxine Waters announced
the forming
of an Out of Iraq Congressional Caucus with 41 members.
News leaked out that the CIA has been secretly abducting people
and flying them to countries in the Middle East and Europe
where
abusive interrogation methods were used without public scrutiny.
In December 2005 both houses of Congress passed John McCain's
amendment
to ban the use of torture, specifically prohibiting
"cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment
or punishment of
persons under custody or control of the United States Government."
After holding back the story for more than a year at the request
of President Bush,
in December 2005 the New York Times
made public the secret spying
by the National Security Agency
(NSA) on thousands of people and citizens
inside the United States
without using the lawful method of reporting these wiretaps
to
the secret court established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act (FISA).
Yet that court has secretly approved all but four
of 18,748 such requests since 1978.
Bush's argument that they
did not have time to gain approval is invalid,
because the government
was allowed to begin each wiretap at will
and must only report
it within 72 hours.
This blatant disregard for Congress, the courts,
and the privacy of the American people
drew immediate charges
that these are felonies and impeachable offenses.
Representative
John Conyers moved to organize hearings with committees similar
to those used during the Watergate investigations and charged
President Bush
and Vice President Cheney with defrauding the United
States,
making false statements to Congress, violating the War
Powers Resolution,
misusing Government funds, violating federal
laws and treaties against torture,
using federal laws to retaliate
against witnesses,
and violating federal laws in leaking and misusing
intelligence.
In response to the bellicose reaction of President George W.
Bush to the attacks of
September 11, 2001, the International Action
Center organized a march in Washington
on September 29, forming
Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER).
In 2002 a group calling
itself Not In Our Name formed around a statement of conscience
that began "Let it not be said that people in the United
States did nothing
when their government declared a war without
limit
and instituted stark new measures of repression."
In
April about a hundred thousand people in Washington
protested
the war in Afghanistan and at home.
In September those pledging
resistance to a US invasion of Iraq were organized
into a nation-wide
network of activists called the Iraq Pledge of Resistance.
On
September 30 Ramsey Clark sent a strong letter to UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan,
asking the United Nations to oppose George
W. Bush's intended invasion of Iraq.
In October 2002 many peace
groups came together to form
United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ),
which was soon joined by hundreds of local groups.
Active civil disobedience attempting to prevent the US invasion
of Iraq began in October
when the Dominican nuns Ardeth Platte,
Carol Gilbert, and Jackie Hudson, wearing suits
with the words
"Disarmament Specialists and Citizens Inspections Teams,"
broke into an N-8 missile silo in northern Colorado to try to
help with the effort
to dismantle all weapons of mass destruction;
after a trial they were sentenced to 41, 33, and 30 months.
In
November 2002 Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) was organized,
and fifteen parents of soldiers and marines began a lawsuit
against
President Bush and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.
That month protests
included 6 people being arrested in Louisville, 5 in Atlanta,
12 in Dallas, 16 in New York, and 30 in San Francisco.
In December
eight people were arrested at Senator Allard's office in Englewood,
Colorado,
123 in New York City, 9 in San Francisco, 7 in Austin,
19 in Chicago, 14 in Hartford,
9 in Sacramento, 36 in Washington,
13 in Ithaca, and 7 in Richmond.
Arrests in January 2003 included 19 in Los Angeles, 8 in Oswego,
9 in Chicopee, 8 in Milwaukee, 16 in Syracuse, 38 in New York
City,
11 in Tucson, 16 in Washington, 5 in Bangor, 19 in Valley
Forge,
12 in Vieques, 22 in Chicago, 20 in Denver, and 13 in Grand
Rapids.
In February arrests to stop the war included 8 in Raleigh,
355 in New York City, 13 in Tucson, 8 in Washington, 6 in Ann
Arbor,
34 in Colorado Springs, 5 in Eugene, 6 in Phoenix, 59 in
San Francisco,
8 in Seattle, 6 in Los Angeles, 10 in Somerville,
and 11 in Boston.
Protests continued in March and increased
as the invasion of
Iraq became more imminent.
Arrests on March 5 included 18 in Los
Angeles, 20 in San Francisco,
12 in Santa Rosa, and 13 in Rochester.
Code Pink had 26 people arrested in front of the White House on
International Women's Day (March 8), and 23 from the
Iraq Pledge
of Resistance were detained the next day at the Capitol.
On March
12 New York City passed a resolution opposing a preemptive
or
unilateral war against Iraq; about 150 other cities had already
expressed
such an opinion, including Philadelphia, Chicago, and
Los Angeles.
On March 14 there were 22 arrested in Sacramento
and 80 in San Francisco.
The next day 175 more were arrested in
San Francisco,
plus 19 in Aurora, Colorado at Buckley AFB.
Arrests
on March 17 included 55 in Washington, 44 in New York City,
40
in San Francisco, 26 in Toledo, and 10 in Salt Lake City.
The
next day 27 were detained in Detroit and 38 in Los Angeles.
On
March 19 Boston had 77 arrests, Madison 23, Portland in Maine
20,
New Haven 16, Olympia 11, Seattle 11, Los Angeles 42, and
Washington 29.
As the war began, many thousands demonstrated in the streets
across the country,
and those arrested for protesting on March
20 included 1,500 in San Francisco,
900 in Chicago, 135 in Portland,
Oregon, 122 in Pittsburgh, 120 in Berkeley,
104 in Philadelphia,
50 in Santa Rosa, 47 in Austin, 40 in Nevada City,
36 in New York
City, 26 in Asheville, 22 in New Orleans, 22 in Chico,
21 in Flagstaff, 21 in Albany, 19 in Ann Arbor, 17 in Albuquerque
15 in Bangor,
15 in Lewiston, and 14 in Indianapolis.
The next day 800 more
were arrested in San Francisco, 69 in Chicago, 40 in Baltimore,
37 in Sacramento, 27 in Los Angeles, 26 in Washington, and 14
in Lansing.
On March 22 in Hollywood 78 people were taken into
custody;
91 more were arrested in New York City, 55 in Chicopee,
35 in Ithaca,
40 more in San Francisco, 14 in Seattle, and 16
in Johnston, Iowa.
Protests continued in various places.
On Monday March 24 fifty
people were arrested in Austin and 24 in St. Paul.
The next day
67 were arrested in Minneapolis, 68 in Washington,
18 in Madison,
and 10 in Olympia.
On March 27 in New York City 214 more people,
including some spectators, were arrested during a die-in.
The
next day another 83 were arrested in San Francisco.
March 29 saw
23 arrested in Northampton and 22 in Seattle.
In the next three
days 32 people were arrested in Madison,
and on April 2 a rally
at Alliant Tech in Edina, Minnesota resulted in 28 arrests.
On
April 7 one hundred more people were arrested in New York City.
That day in Oakland police shot rubber bullets and beanbags at
demonstrators,
many in the back as they were trying to flee; only
31 of the demonstrators were arrested.
On April 14 in Richmond,
California forty people
were arrested for blockading Chevron-Texaco.
On April 22 in Sunnyvale 52 people were detained
for blocking
entrances to Lockheed Martin.
On May 4 in Kent, Ohio 14 were arrested,
and that week
in New York City 83 people were arrested during
Operation Homeland Resistance.
According to the Nuclear Resistor
for the year beginning from the fall of 2002
more than 9,500 arrests
were related to anti-war protests.
On March 20, 2004 in San Francisco
80 people were arrested.
During the Republican national convention
in New York City more than 1,800 people
were arrested on August
31 and the following days.
Many more people were involved in peace vigils and marches,
often on a weekly basis.
These reached a peak on February 15 when
more than six hundred cities
around the world had major peace
marches or demonstrations.
Never before had so many people mobilized
to prevent a war
or even to protest one in progress.
More than
twelve million people demonstrated their desire for peace on the
same weekend.
About 2,000,000 people marched in Rome, 1,750,000
in London,
1,300,000 in Barcelona, 700,000 in Madrid, 500,000
in Berlin, 375,000 in New York City,
250,000 in Paris and in Sydney,
200,000 in Damascus and in the Athens area,
100,000 in Montreal, in Melbourne, in Dublin, in Oviedo, and in Cadiz,
80,000 in Lisbon
and in Toronto, 75,000 in Los Angeles,
70,000 in Amsterdam and
in Seattle, 60,000 in Oslo, in Buenos Aires and in Seville,
and
50,000 in Brussels, in Montevideo and in Stuttgart.
A detailed
study of 287 demonstrations for peace on February 15 in all fifty
states
of the US based on the conservative estimates printed in
the media calculated
that they were attended by between 862,282
and 1,033,839 people.
Numerous voices in the media began calling
the peace movement the second superpower.
On March 20, 2004 two
million people in Rome
demonstrated against the military occupation
of Iraq.
In June 2003 the first conference of United for Peace and Justice
was held in Chicago
and was attended by representatives from 325
organizations.
By the end of 2004 UFPJ had more than 900 groups,
and MFSO included nearly two thousand military families.
In January
2005 nine parents of killed veterans, including Cindy Sheehan,
founded Gold Star Families for Peace.
In 2005 Pentagon figures
indicated that more than five thousand
US military personnel were
away without leave (AWOL).
Marine Stephen Funk was the first conscientious
objector to be imprisoned for refusing
to fight in the Iraq War,
and he completed his six months
in a North Carolina military prison
in March 2004.
Camilo Mejia also publicly refused to commit war
crimes in Iraq after a two-week leave.
During his trial in May
2004 international law expert Francis Boyle testified that
the
US invasion and occupation of Iraq not only violated international
law
but also the US Army Field Manual 27-10 which incorporates
the Geneva Conventions.
Law professor Marjorie Cohn was also an
expert witness that the Iraq War
violated the United Nations Charter,
which only authorizes force for self defense.
Mejia came to believe
that his cowardice was going along with the war at first.
Then
he courageously fulfilled his duty according to the Nuremberg
Principles
by refusing to obey illegal orders, but he was convicted
by the court martial
and served nine months in prison.
He learned
that being in prison was not as bad as participating in an illegal
war.
Cohn also testified in the trial of Pablo Paredes, who had
also denounced the war
as illegal and refused to ship out; he
was given hard labor
and was confined to his base but was not
imprisoned.
Many in the US military who have been refused
Conscientious
Objector (CO) status have fled to Canada.
Conscientious Objector
Chris Harrison co-founded Peace-Out
to help people get out of
the military.
On March 1, 2005 in Vermont 52 towns approved resolutions
opposing
the use of Vermont national guard troops in Iraq.
Iraq
Veterans Against the War (IVAW) demonstrated in Fayetteville,
North Carolina
near Fort Bragg on the second anniversary of the
Iraq invasion
along with others in 765 cities and towns in all
fifty states.
As military recruiting goals fell seriously short
in 2005,
the Coalition Against Militarism in Our Schools (CAMS),
other peace groups, and students organized counter-recruitment
campaigns.
On March 19 in New York City 24 people were arrested
for demonstrating
at recruiting centers, and on April 5 at UC
Santa Cruz 300 students
persuaded the Army, Navy, and Marine recruiters
to leave the campus.
Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark has drawn up Articles
of Impeachment
of President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard
B. Cheney, and
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld for waging
wars of aggression in defiance
of the US Constitution, the UN
Charter and the rule of law; for carrying out a massive
assault
on and occupation of Iraq, a country that was not threatening
the United States,
resulting in the death and maiming of tens
of thousands of Iraqis, and hundreds of US GIs;
for lying to the
people of the US, to Congress, and to the UN, giving false and
deceptive
rationales for war; for attacking civilians; for ordering
assassinations, kidnappings,
secret and other illegal detentions
of individuals, torture and physical and psychological
coercion
of prisoners; for aggression against Afghanistan, Iraq and others
and usurping
powers of the United Nations and the peoples of its
nations by bribery, coercion and
other corrupt acts; for rejecting
treaties, committing treaty violations, and frustrating
compliance
with treaties in order to destroy any means by which international
law
and institutions can prevent, affect, or adjudicate the exercise
of US military and
economic power against the international community;
for ordering indefinite detention
of citizens without access to
counsel, without charge, and without opportunity to
appear before
a civil judicial officer to challenge the detention; for ordering
indefinite
detention of non-citizens in the United States and
elsewhere without charge at the
discretionary designation of the
Attorney General or the Secretary of Defense;
for authorizing
the Attorney General to override judicial orders of release of
detainees
under INS jurisdiction; for authorizing secret military
tribunals and summary execution
of persons who are not citizens;
for refusing to provide public disclosure of the identities
and
locations of persons who have been arrested, detained and imprisoned
by the
US Government in the United States; for using secret arrests
and denying the right
to public trials; for authorizing the monitoring
of confidential attorney-client privileged
communications by the
government; for authorizing the seizure of assets of persons
in
the United States; for using racial and religious profiling and
authorization of
domestic spying by federal law enforcement on
persons based on their engagement
in noncriminal religious and
political activity; for refusing to provide information and
records
necessary and appropriate for the constitutional right of legislative
oversight
of executive functions; for rejecting treaties protective
of peace and human rights
and for abrogating and withdrawing from
international treaties and obligations
without consent of the
legislative branch, including termination of the ABM treaty
between
the United States and Russia and rescission of the authorizing
signature from
the Treaty of Rome which served as the basis for
the International Criminal Court (ICC).
In addition to these serious charges the Bush administration
has violated numerous laws.
The website http://zzpat.tripod.com/cvb/
has cited more than 150 news articles
with
evidence of impeachable
offenses during the first term of the George W. Bush presidency.
In June hearings were held by Democrats on the Judiciary Committee
led by
Representative John Conyers to investigate deceptions
the
Bush administration used to justify the Iraq invasion.
In May 2005 legal summons were delivered to US and UK embassies
in Istanbul, Tokyo,
Lisbon, Brussels, and other capitals for President
G. W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair
to face charges before
the World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) in Istanbul for war crimes.
Preliminary
tribunals were already held in Paris, Tokyo, New York, Barcelona,
Brussels,
Seoul, London, Mumbai, and other cities, though Bush
and Blair did not appear.
The culminating session of the WTI was
held in Istanbul June 24-27, 2005.
This was a major news story
in Turkey, the Middle East, Europe, and on the
world wide web,
but the tribunals findings were ignored by US media.
Arundhati
Roy was the chairperson of the 15-member Jury of Conscience,
and
the panel of advocates was organized by Richard Falk
and Turgut
Tarhanli, dean of the Bilgi Law School in Istanbul.
The advocates
included Denis Halliday, Hans von Sponeck, Tim Goodrich,
Samir
Amin, Johan Galtung, and Walden Bello.
The unanimous verdict condemned
George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Donald Rumsfeld,
Dick Cheney, Colin
Powell and Paul Wolfowitz for planning and waging a war
of aggression
in violation of the United Nations Charter and international law.
The governments of the United States and United Kingdom were found
guilty
of 16 charges, and the Security Council of the United Nations
was convicted
on six counts for not protecting its member states
against aggression.
Other governments, private corporations, and
the major media were also
found to be complicit in contributing
to the illegal war.
The Tribunal recommended boycotting US corporations
doing business in Iraq
such as Halliburton, Coca-Cola, Bechtel
and Boeing.
On August 6, 2005 Cindy Sheehan and members of Gold Star Families
for Peace
requested to meet with President George W. Bush and
began a continuous vigil
outside his ranch in Crawford, Texas
while he was there on vacation.
Cindy Sheehan and 383 other people
were arrested
for protesting at the White House on September 26,
2005.
In Cuba 25 Christians from the United States walked seventy miles
from Santiago
to visit the fasting detainees at the US Naval Base
at Guantanamo Bay,
but on December 11, 2005 they were not allowed
to do so.
1. Quoted in The Fire This Time by Ramsey Clark, p.
174.
2. Ibid., p. 175-176.
3. Other Lands Have Dreams by Kathy Kelly, p. 27.
4. Ibid., p. 75.
5. Ibid., p. 106.
This is a chapter in World Peace Efforts Since Gandhi,
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