meddling in iraq:
During that first war, Secretary of State James Baker told the Iraqi foreign minister that "we will return you to the pre-industrial age." Baker's words were prophetic. The American-led coalition delivered 88,000 tons of bombs, equivalent, Lando notes, to seven Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs. The bombing unquestionably set out to destroy the civilian infrastructure, leveling oil refineries, electrical plants and transportation networks. And all this, Lando emphasizes, resulted in further civilian suffering. Seventeen of twenty electrical generating plants were seriously bombed, and eleven totally destroyed.
(...) After one plant near Basra had been demolished early on, American bombers returned another dozen times. "We're not going to tolerate Saddam Hussein," one Air Force planner said, and the bombing sent a message: "Fix that [Saddam], and we'll fix your electricity." Three-fourths of Iraq's population lived in cities, dependent on electricity for their factories, homes, water treatment plants and sewage treatment facilities. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney vigorously defended the "perfectly legitimate" bombing action. "If I had to do it over again, I would do exactly the same thing," he said. Clearly, Cheney means what he says.
(...) Sanctions devastated the country's medical system, once one of the best in the region. Sanctions insured that malnutrition would morph into virtual death sentences, as Lando notes. Babies died in incubators because of power failures; others were crippled with cerebral palsy because of insufficient oxygen supplies. As early as May 1991, a visiting Harvard medical team concluded that Iraq had a public health catastrophe.
(...) Meanwhile, Bush's strategy of playing for a coup miserably failed. Conditions dramatically deteriorated. Streetcorners became barter bazaars, with people selling their possessions for food and medicine. Crime, prostitution, smuggling and kickbacks flourished. People merely wanted survival; political paralysis, not a coup, was the result. And Americans knew it. Lando quotes the ubiquitous "senior US official" who privately admitted that any popular uprising "is the least likely alternative."
(...) Iraqis hoped for a better day with the new President, Bill Clinton. Alas! Clinton's background and his political calculus determined that he had to establish his macho credentials and his credibility with the right. He authorized a Tomahawk missile attack against Baghdad, supposedly in retaliation for Saddam's alleged plot to assassinate former President Bush. (The Kuwaiti-provided evidence, many believe, is quite tenuous.) In any event, Clinton's attack went off track and killed eight civilians, including a gifted artist. His UN Ambassador, Madeleine Albright, carefully monitored the ever-tightening sanctions. In late 1994 the New York Times reported on children in filthy hospitals, dying with diarrhea and pneumonia, people desperately seeking food, and Iraq's inability to sell its oil--the country faced "famine and economic collapse." Without doubt, the sanctions consolidated Saddam's power. UN Administrator Denis Halliday wrote that the people blamed the United States and the UN for their travails, not Saddam Hussein. Halliday resigned, refusing to administer a program that he called "genocide."
(...) Iraq sold $64.2 billion of oil and received $34.5 billion worth of humanitarian goods. Iraq gained something, but the old habit of clandestine support for Iraq's regime continued as oil companies provided kickbacks of at least $1.8 billion to the Iraqi dictator. At the moment, Chevron is negotiating a "settlement" that would cost it $25-30 million in fines--and, of course, admit to no wrongdoing. What a bargain.
(...) And then Tony Blair, in March 2003, with outrageous chutzpah cited the dramatic increase in infant mortality as a justification for the new invasion of Iraq. Sanctions apparently no longer existed in his mind; the children had "died because of the nature of the regime under which they are living. Now, that is why we're acting." George Orwell would not have said it better.
(...) He blamed the sorry plight of Iraqis on Saddam's search for WMDs. "The world has tried economic sanctions," he said, "and watched Iraq use billions of dollars in illegal oil revenues to fund more weapons purchases, rather than providing for the needs of the Iraqi people." Did he mean sanctions were a failure? When in March 2003, the Bush Administration launched its inevitable invasion, American forces confronted an empty shell of defenses and a dispirited, devastated and despairing populace. The invasion was a cakewalk. But our not-so wise policy-makers wanted more, and Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz promised our troops garlands of flowers as Iraqis would welcome their liberators. Some welcome. The American and British sanctions' policy had done its work quite well--painfully, devastatingly well. Remember: Much of this was pursued by the Clinton Administration, anxious to show that its statesmanship credentials could match any Bush. So the last word properly belongs to Secretary Albright. Although she belatedly disavowed her comments after the Iraq disaster was obvious to all except George W. Bush, nevertheless, she said of sanctions and bombings: "It was worth it."