From 2000. Squeezed to Death. Iraq after years of sanctions. John Pilger paints sad image.

[madfloridian]

I am so thankful that Rachel Maddow is going have the special, Hubris, next week.

Those of us here at DU in 2002 were in shock what our country was doing. I posted this article years ago. I have wondered how in the world they could have been any kind of threat to us after all those years of sanctions and daily bombings.

From the Guardian UK March 2004:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2000/mar/04/weekend7.weekend9/print">Squeezed to Death

Wherever you go in Iraq's southern city of Basra, there is dust. It gets in your eyes and nose and throat. It swirls in school playgrounds and consumes children kicking a plastic ball. "It carries death," said Dr Jawad Al-Ali, a cancer specialist and member of Britain's Royal College of Physicians. "Our own studies indicate that more than 40 per cent of the population in this area will get cancer: in five years' time to begin with, then long afterwards. Most of my own family now have cancer, and we have no history of the disease. It has spread to the medical staff of this hospital. We don't know the precise source of the contamination, because we are not allowed to get the equipment to conduct a proper scientific survey, or even to test the excess level of radiation in our bodies. We suspect depleted uranium, which was used by the Americans and British in the Gulf War right across the southern battlefields."

Under economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council almost 10 years ago, Iraq is denied equipment and expertise to clean up its contaminated battle-fields, as Kuwait was cleaned up. At the same time, the Sanctions Committee in New York, dominated by the Americans and British, has blocked or delayed a range of vital equipment, chemotherapy drugs and even pain-killers. "For us doctors," said Dr Al-Ali, "it is like torture. We see children die from the kind of cancers from which, given the right treatment, there is a good recovery rate." Three children died while I was there.

A 95% literacy rate before the 1st Gulf war.

"The change in 10 years is unparalleled, in my experience," Anupama Rao Singh, Unicef's senior representative in Iraq, told me. "In 1989, the literacy rate was 95%; and 93% of the population had free access to modern health facilities. Parents were fined for failing to send their children to school. The phenomenon of street children or children begging was unheard of. Iraq had reached a stage where the basic indicators we use to measure the overall well-being of human beings, including children, were some of the best in the world. Now it is among the bottom 20%. In 10 years, child mortality has gone from one of the lowest in the world, to the highest."

More about the care being withheld:

Just before Christmas, the department of trade and industry in London blocked a shipment of vaccines meant to protect Iraqi children against diphtheria and yellow fever. Dr Kim Howells told parliament why. His title of under secretary of state for competition and consumer affairs, eminently suited his Orwellian reply. The children's vaccines were banned, he said, "because they are capable of being used in weapons of mass destruction". That his finger was on the trigger of a proven weapon of mass destruction - sanctions - seemed not to occur to him. A courtly, eloquent Irishman, Denis Halliday resigned as co-ordinator of humanitarian relief to Iraq in 1998, after 34 years with the UN; he was then Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, one of the elite of senior officials. He had made his career in development, "attempting to help people, not harm them". His was the first public expression of an unprecedented rebellion within the UN bureaucracy. "I am resigning," he wrote, "because the policy of economic sanctions is totally bankrupt. We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that . . . Five thousand children are dying every month . . . I don't want to administer a programme that results in figures like these."

Just including this as a background on the voices of both parties. In These Times has a paragraph called The B Team.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2563/">Strangers to the Truth

The B team

On the other side of the aisle are the shining lights of the Democratic Party, James Carville, Stanley Greenberg and Bob Shrum (the consultant who ran Kerry’s campaign and shied away from confronting the Swift Boat Veterans). These three men founded the Democracy Corps, a nonprofit “dedicated to making the government of the United States more responsive to the American people.” Recall that on Oct. 3, 2002, prior to the Iraq war resolution votes, Democracy Corps advised Capitol Hill Democrats: “This decision to support or oppose an Iraq war resolution will take place in a setting where voters, by 10 points, prefer to vote for a member who supports a resolution to authorize force (50 to 40 percent).” In other words, Carville and friends advised Democrats to cater to public opinion and let Bush have his war.

This invasion will define us forever. Perhaps Rachel's special Monday will bring it to the forefront again so our younger Americans won't forget.

Crossposted at DU3

[Divine Discontent]

1. Nation... er... um... building!

:(

[Enthusiast]

2. I applaud Rachel for her efforts. But I fear she will find herself

cast as a media pariah for doing this. I mean, we can say it and believe it, but the failure and criminality that was the Iraq War is not spoken of in the MSM. It just isn't done. There is a collective gentleman's agreement not to mention the treasonous failings of the Neo-Con Bush crime syndicate.

[No Elephants]

3. Because the media co-operated so much with Bushco. Otherwise, Bushco

never could have sold that war as it did.


And it was so obvious.

My recollection is that tv folk did a few seconds of something approaching a mea culpa at some point. The implication was that they had been too trusting, been played or whatever. Nothing said straight out, though.

But, if you asked any Arab over age 9 if there was any possiblity that Saddam had partnered with Bin Ladin, they would have been adamant that the two hated each other. As for Saddam's having acted alone, he knew he was a big frog in a small pond and he was not suicidal. He would never have taken on the U.S., let alone the U.S. and its allies. And, had he attacked the U.S., he would definitely have been at war with the U.S. and irs allies.

So, the two possiblilities are that media knew what every Arab knew and was complicit with Bushco anyway, or that our media didn't know and didn't bother to try to find out, what every Arab over the age of 9 knew and therefore has no business being our media.

Either way, they don't come out looking good.,

[No Elephants]

5. The show is based on a book by Corn, from Mother Jones.

So, if MSNBC gave her the go ahead on this, they knew what they were getting into?

I was sorry to see Corn become an MSBC contributor. I used to see him and Kevin Drum from Mother Jones with Bill Moyers when Moyers show was the Bill Moyers Journal.

Corn and Drum He discussed some hard hitting articles from Mother Jones then.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/01082010/watch.html

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/01082010/watch2.html


(The above should link to Parts 1 and 2, respectively. If not, please let me know which part is missing and I will try to find it.)

When I saw Corn become a regular contributor on MSNBC, I feared his other work about Democrats would go more pro-establishment.

[Enthusiast]

6. Those are very "hard hitting".

Actually, it shouldn't be considered hard hitting. Every single news outlet should have been saying something similar.

In other words, Moyers and Corn shouldn't have been the exceptions. Nothing better illustrated that the government and the nation was under the thumb of Wall Street than the failure of the media to report the truth of the matter.

I love the Roman proverb. I have seen this exact thing in my own life.

[No Elephants]

4. It's too much for the heart to bear, Madfloridian, but thank you.