Kofi Annan’s decision to halt the oil for food program prior to the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq without a decision from the Security Council and solely on American orders is considered a breach of the United Nations Charter. This is by far the worst and most dangerous decision that any secretary-general has made since the inception of the United Nations. American foreign policy planners have worked since the eighties to bring down and destroy Iraq. Like lambs being led to the slaughter, they lured the political leadership to wage war against Iran. Then after having been overstrained, politically, economically and socially they were again enticed to invade Kuwait, bringing on another Gulf War, followed by international sanctions and the consequent obliteration of the Iraqi nation. It would have been so easy to destroy Saddam Hussein’s regime with Kuwait liberated but the American plan was to make sure that the regime stayed in place. Then came the new military invasion campaign — the reasons for it varied between the Anglo-American political leadership, finally resting on the need to get rid of Saddam, his weapons of mass destruction and to give Iraq American-style democracy ensuring it becomes a protégé of Washington.
During the Second Gulf War, Iraq was bombed more than 200 times with deadly ethylene gas and depleted uranium. According to reports of the oil for food program’s executive committee, widespread harmful radiation affected more than two million Iraqis; hundreds of radiation-related injuries have been recorded. During the Iraqi invasion, American forces purposely targeted vital areas that affect the nation and not the political leadership. An electricity station was hit and so was a water purification plant. In Basra, British forces blew up a food storehouse that the Iraqi government had stockpiled in anticipation of a military siege. The action wasn’t accidental as it occurred after the British entered Basra.
Once Baghdad was handed over to the Americans, the looting by thugs and prisoners whom America let loose on the streets began. Meanwhile the Americans sat back and watched Baghdad and its organizations, which supposedly belong to the Iraqi people, being destroyed. Washington says Iraq doesn’t need humanitarian aid because at the moment it has $21 billion in the American branch of the French Bank. What is required then is a national Iraqi government to lead the country and start providing the basic necessities to the Iraqi people as quickly as possible. This can be achieved in record time. Washington however has a different view — with whom will they be dealing in this so-called reconstruction of Iraq?
In an interview with Dr. Ashraf Al Manilawi — one of the international observers of the oil for food program, he said: “Today the American administration claims that it just wants to destroy Saddam Hussein’s regime and help and liberate the Iraqi people. I say that is untrue. Washington has targeted that very same Iraqi nation. In the official report No. 119 (of which I have a copy) issued by the GAO in 1991, before the start of the Second Gulf War — it was stated that the aim of the war on Iraq was to degrade the will of the civilian population. In 1995 an official report by Pentagon central command decided to place chlorine and other materials used to purify drinking water on the prohibited list in order to prevent Iraq from importing it — this after destroying factories that produce these substances. The report lists the number of illnesses to which the people of Iraq would be subjected as a result of the contaminated water, principally dysentery and typhoid. These two illnesses are the most widespread in the country and especially among children, whose mortality rate was half a million annually.”
I once asked Madeleine Albright when she was the permanent representative of the US on the Security Council about the death of more than half-a-million Iraqi children as a result of the sanctions: “Is it worth all these lives?” To which she replied: “Yes it is, and a lot more besides.”
Arab News Opinion 28 April 2003
