[lbo-talk] Clinton administration attack on Sudan

C. G. Estabrook galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu
Wed Mar 31 13:17:26 PST 2004


"...not properly supported"? That's a devastating argument.

For some support, see the following from "Universalism and the West - An Agenda for Understanding," by Werner Daum, former German ambassador to Sudan, in Harvard International Review 23:2 (Summer 2001):

"It is difficult to assess how many people in this poor African country died as a consequence of the destruction of the Al-Shifa factory, but several tens of thousands seems a reasonable guess. The factory produced some of the basic medicines on the World Health Organization list, covering 20 to 60 percent of Sudan's market and 100 percent of the market for intravenous liquids. It took more than three months for these products to be replaced with imports. It was, naturally, the poor and the vulnerable who would suffer from the plant's destruction, not the rich."

http://www.hir.harvard.edu/articles/index.html?id=909

An attempt by the UN to hold an inquiry into the matter was blocked by the US. --CGE

On Fri, 26 Mar 2004, Luke Weiger wrote:


> 1) The planners of the raid thought it was a plant for manufacturing
> weapons; not medicine. The intelligence, as we now know, was
> completely wrong. I don't think anyone has argued that the Clinton
> team intentionally bombed what they knew to be a pharmaceutical plant;
> if that was the case, of course they should be doing time.
>
> 2) The bombing raid was planned in such a way that the total of
> civilians killed by the bombing itself was minimized (I believe only
> one person was killed in the raid).
>
> 3) I think the US should've rebuilt the factory, though we have very
> little idea just how "severe" the consequences were for the Sudanese
> people. The data is ambivalent at best, and Chomsky's assertion that
> the death toll was substantially greater than 911 was not properly
> supported.
>
> -- Luke
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu>
> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org>
> Sent: Friday, March 26, 2004 5:46 PM
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] 'shillin' with Al Franken
>
>
> > Of course it wasn't "justifiable." In a well-run society, it's one of the
> > crimes that Clinton would be doing time for. Chomsky said at the time,
> > "What would the reaction have been if the bin Laden network had blown up
> > half the pharmaceutical supplies in the US and facilities for replenishing
> > them?" He pointed out that the consequences were more severe in Sudan,
> > with a death toll substantially greater than that of 911. --CGE
> >
> >
> > On Fri, 26 Mar 2004, Luke Weiger wrote:
> >
> > > What reason is there to think that the cruise-missile bombing wasn't
> > > justifiable? Perhaps the US should've built them a new pharmaceutical
> > > factory after the fact, but that's a different question.
> >



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