[PEN-L:36306] Hussein is also responsible for SARS and bad weather

["k hanly" <khanly@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In spite of the fact that US missiles have gone astray into Iran, Turkey,
and Kuwait, Hussein's anti-aircraft fire is responsible for blasts in
civilian areas of Iraq according to some US officials. Now it seems that
Hussein is responsible for all the deaths under the UN sanctions not those
who imposed the sanctions. Blair is often even more nauseating than Bush.
He may be sincere but only in thinking that outrageous lies are legitimate
instrumens in his greater "moral" cause. This is not to say that Hussein has
been wholly blameless.

On CBC today two historians claimed that no matter what happens now Hussein
will be a heroic figure and martyr to masses of Arab people just as his
namesake. They also thought that Arab regimes who stood by or helped the US
would face continuing difficulties. Obviously, any export of democracy will
need  to be guided with a very strong hand since otherwise radical Islamism
would sweep any democratic elections and create regimes far more
anti-American than present regimes.

Cheers , Ken Hanly

March 28, 2003
Editor Matthew Rothschild comments on the news of the day.
Now They Cite the Toll of Sanctions
http://www.progressive.org/webex03/wx032803.html

At the Bush-Blair press conference on March 27, I heard an increasingly
common and absolutely shameful justification for this Iraq war.

Tony Blair was the one who uttered it. To illustrate the brutality of
Saddam's regime, Blair said, "Over the past five years, 400,000 Iraqi
children under the age of five died of malnutrition and disease,
preventively, but died because of the nature of the regime under which they
are living."

But that's not exactly right. All those children died, in large part,
because the United Nations--at the behest of Britain and the United
States--insisted upon maintaining economic sanctions on Iraq. These
sanctions prevented basic items from getting to Iraq, items like chlorine to
purify the water supply there. And, yes, Saddam is partially responsible, as
well. If he had obeyed U.N. Security Council resolutions, those sanctions
might have been lifted.

For years, human rights activists urged a lifting of these economic
sanctions because of the terrible toll they exacted, a toll that only now
Tony Blair seems concerned about, only now when he can use that toll as an
excuse for war.

This is the bottom of the barrel of immorality. During the Clinton
Administration, Madeleine Albright notoriously told Lesley Stahl of Sixty
Minutes that this civilian death toll was "worth it." Albright understood
and acknowledged U.S. complicity in those deaths, but accepted them anyway.
That was bad enough.

Now Blair and Bush have finally discovered the sanctions issue themselves,
but they refuse to acknowledge any responsibility for those deaths and
instead seize upon them simply to justify their war of aggression.

But Britain and the United States could have forced the U.N. to lift those
sanctions any time they wanted to. They could have saved those 400,000
children from dying. They chose not to.

Now to come out and say they are aghast at the toll is not only a futile
exercise in hand-washing but also an amazingly brazen switcharoo.

(For a related commentary, see "George Will Discovers Economic Sanctions,"
This Just In, March 17, 2003.)
http://www.progressive.org/webex03/wx0317b03.html


_______________________________________________
Cheers, Ken Hanly