[PEN-L:1864] US and British bombs killed hundreds

["Frank Durgin" <fdurgin1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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                   Eyewitness to air assault denounces media cover-up

                   US and British bombs killed hundreds
                   of Iraqi civilians

                   By Barry Grey
                   24 December 1998

                   Jean Marie Benjamin, a priest at a Christian
                   humanitarian foundation in Iraq, on Monday confirmed
                   Iraqi government reports of heavy civilian casualties
and
                   denounced the Western media for concealing the
                   devastating impact on innocent men, women and
                   children of last week's US-British air assault.

                   Benjamin left Baghdad after the four-day bomb attack.
                   He said he personally saw children hospitalized for
burns
                   undergoing operations without the benefit of anesthesia.
                   He further charged that the so-called smart bombs had
                   destroyed houses, hospitals and other nonmilitary
                   facilities, and killed hundreds of victims.

                   The barrage of 400 cruise missiles and 650 sorties
                   against a defenseless country took a terrible toll.
Baghdad
                   has officially acknowledged 62 soldiers killed and 180
                   injured. For its own reasons, the Iraqi government has
                   given no precise account of the number of civilian dead
                   and wounded and the extent of damage to civilian
                   facilities. But Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said on
                   Monday the brunt of the air strikes had been born by
                   civilians.

                   Casualties among civilians were "much, much higher"
                   than among military personnel, Aziz said. Declaring:
                   "They want to ? strip Iraq of any serious industrial
                   capabilities," Aziz recalled the statement of former
                   Secretary of State James Baker, who told him in 1991,
                   "We will bring you back to the pre-industrial age."

                   Nizar Hamdoon, Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations,
                   told CNN on Sunday that "thousands of Iraqis" had been
                   killed or wounded in the air raids.

                   In addition to Republican Guard barracks, presidential
                   palaces, Ba'ath Party headquarters, air defense
                   installations, communications facilities, intelligence
                   centers, missile factories and an oil refinery, US
missiles
                   struck colleges, post offices, dormitories and a museum,
                   according to the Iraqi government.

                   The carnage inflicted by American and British hi-tech
                   weapons of mass destruction has compounded the death
                   and suffering caused by eight years of crippling
economic
                   sanctions. Last October Denis Halliday, head of UN
                   humanitarian operations in Iraq, resigned his post in
                   protest over the refusal of the UN, under pressure from
                   Washington, to lift the sanctions.

                   He told a briefing in Washington that UN estimates of
                   5,000 to 6,000 Iraqi children dying every month as a
                   result of the sanctions were "probably modest." He
                   attributed the death toll to a lack of clean water, a
                   breakdown in the sanitation system, inadequate diet and
                   a lack of medical care.

                   According to the UN's own figures, the sanctions are
                   responsible for an increase of 90,000 deaths per year.
                   Various reports estimate that between 500,000 and
                   1,000,000 Iraqi children have died since 1990 as a
result
                   of the sanctions.

                   The US government has no doubt made an estimate of
                   Iraqi civilian dead and wounded from the 70-hour
                   bombing campaign. When the US was on the verge of
                   launching the air war in mid-November, the Pentagon
                   advised Clinton that the "rolling" attacks would
possibly
                   kill 10,000 Iraqis. "That was the medium case scenario,"
                   one administration official said at the time.

                   The Clinton administration, with the complicity of the
                   mass media, is remaining silent on the civilian toll
from
                   the air war in keeping with its general policy of
                   concealing from the American public the human impact
                   of its vendetta against Iraq.

                   See Also:
                   Agents provocateur: the activities of Richard Butler and
                   UNSCOM
                   [24 December 1998]

                   The bombing of Iraq:
                   A shameful chapter in American history
                   [19 December 1998]

                   UNSCOM aided Pentagon targeting
                   Controversy mounts over role of UN inspectors in Iraq
                   [18 December 1998]


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