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by Peter Herreid '01 "How can you expect me to condemn human rights abuses in Algeria and China... when the UN themselves are responsible for the worst situation- in Iraq." -Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights The Iraqi people continue to suffer with lack of food, clean water, and medicine eight years after the UN sanctions were imposed. Since Hell rained from the skies during the Gulf War, conditions inside the blockaded country have amounted to nothing short of genocide. The UN Oil for Food program was set up in 1996 to ward off criticism of UN sanctions being inhumane. The program allows for Iraq to export oil under the eyes of UN monitors in exchange for food, as well as to pay for weapons inspectors, UN bureaucracy, and reparations to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The program is grossly inadequate. Current director of the program, Benon Sevan, stated, "Given the depressed price of oil and the state of Iraq's oil industry, there's currently a $900 million gap between the revenue expected and what's needed to fund the humanitarian program." Not only do the sanctions leave people hungry now, but they also cause irreversible developmental damage to Iraq's generation of children, of which about 30% suffer with malnutrition. Given Iraq's capacity to export oil, Al Gore's January proposal to lift the limit off Oil for Food was only another slap in the faces of Iraqi women and children. Iraq's infrastructure and economy is shattered. Bombing of sewage treatment plants, power plants, and industry combined with a blockade leaves the country short of electricity and clean water. Raw sewage drains into waterways. Chlorine used to clean water is blocked by sanctions because of possible weapons manufacturing. Therefore, waterborne diseases run rampant and medicine is lacking to treat the illnesses. This has been the principle cause of malnutrition, illness, and death in young children. Before the sanctions, Iraqis had clean water and 97% of the urban population and 78% of the rural population had access to medical care. The U.S. use of uranium-depleted weapons during the Gulf War is believed by many to be causing widespread radiation sickness. Though, there has not been enough attention given to the reported rise in childhood leukemia and cancer to provide proof, the Defense Department admitted in 1991 that the use of depleted uranium "results in remnants that are subject to atmospheric oxidation and/or aqueous corrosion. Either process can lead to environmental contamination that has the potential to cause adverse impacts on human health, primarily through the water pathway." Over concern of groundwater contamination, communities in Minnesota fiercely opposed Honeywell having test ranges in their vicinity. However, little media attention or care has been given to the millions of depleted uranium rounds desecrating Iraq. The U.S. has no intention of lifting the sanctions. The search to rid Iraq of the potential for "weapons of mass destruction" is a never-ending campaign, which U.S. officials have admitted will not end with Saddam Hussein in power. Chemical weapons require the simplest of materials and the most limited of knowledge. The biological weapons that the U.S. supplied Saddam before the Kuwaiti invasion could be stored in any fridge in Iraq. The weapons potential will never be destroyed, so the roots of desperate outrage should be combated instead. The U.S. sanctions and occasional bombardment of Iraq has not weakened Saddam's power. "Yet where once Iraqis indicated in at least subtle ways how they despised him, the years of the embargo have turned almost all their ire against the enemy outside," observed Time journalist Johanna Mcgeary. Oppression pushes the Iraqi people to believe in the "great demon of the West." Not only does this create post WWI-like breeding grounds to support fanatical nationalism; it also creates a dangerous backlash throughout the rest of the Islamic world. Bill ClintonÕs most famous legacy may yet be the Arab challenge of the future, not Monica. Why must innocent people die? The popular rumor of the Iraqi government abusing the UN Oil for Food program is false. Former head of the program Dennis Halliday exclaimed, "There's no possibility of funds being siphoned off whatsoever!" Every penny from oil sales goes into the hands of the UN. The money used to buy humanitarian supplies is sent directly from the UN to international contractors. If the UN must monitor and blockade weapons, why must it also strangle the economy? What if Iraqi people lived in a demilitarized country, able to be healthy and educated? Would there still be any support for the U.S. created warmonger? Under the American system, we supposedly have a voice in our foreign policy. Yet, the media and public continue to ignore the plight of the Iraqi people. We wallow in hypocrisy as we overlook Turkish oppression of the Kurds and Israel's chemical weapons program. When images from the Vietnam War confronted dinner tables and living rooms the country went insane. Yet, the war on the third world has continued, but it seems that if white Americans are not dying, it is not real to us. Students have spoken out and affected policy. When Madeline Albright was trying to gather support for airstrikes in February of 1998, students shouted her down, yelling, "One, two, three, four! We don't want your racist war." We must speak too!
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