http://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/030299_reese02.htm
Embargo Makes Deathbeds of Hospital Beds
for Iraqi Children
Published in The Orlando Sentinel on March 2, 1999.
By Charley Reese
Commentary
Johanna Berrigan, a Catholic Worker lay person out of
Philadelphia, is used to working with poor people, but she
wasn't prepared for a "death row for infants" that she found
in Baghdad hospitals.
The hospitals, devoid of almost everything they need, and
staffed by doctors exhausted and grieving, are just a place
to die for the thousands of Iraqi children suffering from
diseases and infections brought on by the malnutrition and
contaminated water.
Our government is responsible for that. The embargo on
Iraq, which even denies the Iraqis chlorine to use for
purifying their water supply, has become a weapon of mass
destruction. Half a million dead children -- and that's a
United Nations number -- is mass destruction, I would
say.
Berrigan said in 1989 about 92 percent of the Iraqis had
access to health care and that education was free through
the university level. In that year, there was not a single case
of cholera in the country. Today, there are thousands of
cases -- a direct result of contaminated water. There has
been a fourfold increase in childhood leukemia, possibly
linked to the depleted uranium the United States used in its
shells.
She said a small infection that easily could be dealt with
escalates to kidney failure and coma for the malnourished
Iraqi children whose doctors lack medicines and even
antiseptics. In one hospital ward she toured, they were
using kerosene in an attempt to sterilize because it was all
they had.
But don't think the U.S. government isn't on the job. It has
just threatened another group of Americans with tens of
thousands of dollars in fines and long prison sentences for
taking "medicines and toys" to Iraq. Under this
administration, compassion for dying children is apparently
a criminal activity.
But, as Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf said, long before he
came back to do speeches at $50,000 a pop, "We have
bombed Iraq back into the pre-industrial age." That was a
great feat for a superpower, taking on a Third World
country with only 100 or so out-of-date airplanes. But he
was admitting what is now evident: We bombed a heck of a
lot more than just military targets.
We need to halt this asinine and inhumane policy of killing
children and elderly. It has not hurt Saddam Hussein one bit.
In fact, people in Berrigan's group picked up the information
that the army and the Baath party are pressuring Hussein to
take a tougher line.
Bill Clinton, of the forked-tongue tribe, tries to pretend that
letting Iraq sell a little oil can solve the problem. Unsaid, of
course, is that Iraq's oil-producing equipment is in such bad
shape that it can't even pump what it would be allowed to
sell. And unsaid is all the delays and outright blocking of
contracts the United States does behind the scenes. And, of
course, we now know that the United Nations
arms-inspection team was riddled with spies and covert
agents. So much for all those lies.
There's food in Iraq, smuggled and at black-market prices.
People suffering are the poor, the rural, the elderly, the
chronically ill -- and the children.
Berrigan noted that in the gift shops in the Al Rashid Hotel
were nothing but the personal possessions of Iraqis who
had pawned those belongings to get money for food or
medicine.
If you have no compassion for Iraqis, then consider your
own welfare. If we keep this up, long after Saddam Hussein
is only a memory, Iraqis will be stalking Americans, in
search of vengeance.
We are showing the world a cruel and ugly face, and sooner
or later there will be payback.
And, by the way, don't blaspheme by calling yourself a
Christian while turning your back on these dying children.
[Posted 03/01/1999 7:23 PM EST]
