RUMSFELD'S 'EVIDENCE' DISAPPEARS
Think back to early October, when the House and Senate were debating the resolution granting President Bush the authority to attack Iraq. Do you remember when top administration officials were claiming that Iraq not only possessed weapons of mass destruction but identified some specific sites where biological weapons and other prohibited military goods were allegedly being produced and where long-range missiles were being tested? Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld even produced satellite photographs as evidence.
Well, according to former UN chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter, now a whistle-blower par excellence, such "evidence" does not seem to exist. One of the first tasks the new weapons inspectors accomplished upon returning to Iraq recently was to scrutinize those particular sites. "They inspected every one of those sites and did not find a thing," Ritter told an audience at Michigan's Oakland University Dec. 2. "It's not as though the Iraqis cleaned them up. The inspectors say nothing has been going on in these facilities for four years" -- since the U.S. withdrew the inspectors as a prelude to a major bombing campaign. If Rumsfeld truly has information about where Iraq is hiding weapons, Ritter continued, "why wasn't he sharing this information with the inspectors on the ground?" --------------------------------
DON'T WORRY, SON, WE'LL GET YOU THERE
George Bush may launch his war against Iraq within months, but the great majority of Americans 18-24 years old -- the age of those who will do the fighting -- cannot locate this Middle Eastern country on a map. According to the National Geographic 2002 Global Geographic Literacy Survey, released in late November, only 15% of this age group successfully identified Iraq on a map. Only 17% located Afghanistan, a country invaded and occupied by the U.S. for over a year. We suspect the great majority of GIs deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan have even less comprehension of the real reasons they were sent to war than they have of geography, but this was not one of the survey questions. Out of nine countries polled, Sweden scored the highest in geographic literacy, Mexico lowest, and the U.S. was next to lowest. Why should America's youth be taught to find Iraq on the map when all they have to do is follow the generals to get there? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW WAR WILL DEVASTATE IRAQI CHILDREN
White House propagandists seek to convey the impression that the population of Iraq consists of but one person, Saddam Hussein, and that only he will be harmed by a new war. Iraq, however, consists of 23 million people -- and a great many of them who have survived the sanctions are extremely young.
These are the Iraqis who will suffer the most from George Bush's planned invasion. Indeed, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has just reported, a war will devastate the children of Iraq.
The agency noted that important improvements in child nutrition have become evident in recent years, due to a change in sanctions regulations that allow Baghdad to sell oil to purchase food, medicine and humanitarian supplies.
Even so, according to a Nov. 22 statement by Carel de Rooy, director of UNICEF's Iraq branch, "there are close to one million children under the age of five suffering from chronic malnutrition." A new war, he said, "could seriously affect the distribution of food, leaving children at risk of severe malnutrition." In addition, he continued, a new war would harm Iraqi families (and thus children) more than the 1991 conflict because they are much poorer now and have fewer resources after intense U.S. bombings destroyed much of the country's civil infrastructure.
De Rooy said the nutritional improvements, for which he credited the Iraqi government, are reducing the country's high rate of childhood mortality. Over a million children have died as a consequence of the severe sanctions initiated by the U.S. following the 1991 war. Now the pain is finally easing -- just in time for Bush's new war.