On Fri, 12 Oct 2001, Seth Ackerman wrote:
> Moreover, the Pentagon's Gulf War target planners explained quite
> clearly what their goal was. They said that most civilian destruction
> in Iraq was deliberate - not accidental - and that it was done in the
> hope that they could use the UN sanctions as leverage after the war.
> They could prevent Iraq from rebuilding its civilian infrastructure
> until it capitulated to all U.S. political demands. The most important
> element was the destruction of Iraq's water treatment systems, which
> was also deliberate and documented in chilling detail in
> now-declassified January 1991 Defense Intelligence Agency documents.
> Accordingly, today a big part of Iraq's surging mortality rates come
> from water-bore illnesses like cholera.
Seth, I don't doubt this could be true, but it seems to go beyond Thomas Nagy's article in the September Progressive. He doesn't say the unclassifed Pentagon documents prove that the US bombed the water treatment systems on purpose, but rather that the US withheld chlorine and treatment equipment on purpose, with full knowledge that these were indispensible parts of Iraq's the water treatment system, and that therefore these sanctions, in themselves, purposely "destroyed removed or rendered useless" Iraq's "drinking water installations and supplies" in contravention of the Geneva convention. In other words, the sanctions in themselves were the only "purposeful attack" he was addressing -- one that was certainly hugely multiplied in effectiveness by infrastructure damage owing to the war, but which would have caused considerable death and suffering even if there hadn't been any bombing, simply by themselves, like an embargo on food.
Nagy doesn't indicate in that article that there were any Pentagon documents proving that water treatment and supply facilities were bombed on purpose during the war, or that it was undertaken in accord with a plan already in place during the war to use sanctions afterwards. But it certainly could be true, and I'd love to read anything that makes the case. Am I wrong in thinking that you were alluding to the Nagy article? Do you have any other cites that develop this point farther? Certainly we bombed lots of civilian infrastructure on purpose by calling it dual-use, as in Serbia. But that's an admission of a slightly fuzzier nature.
I am not of course disputing for a moment that this could have been our intention even if the Pentagon and the State Department said the opposite. I was just wondering at this point how much could be proven.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com