The regimes of the Middle East are incredibly repressive. Tortures, suppression of rights for women, lack of freedom for expression and state violence have all been facts of life in the Middle East. Before 9/11 the US believed it could make cynical business deals to maintain control over "the greatest material prize in world history" - the words of the State Department after WWII. The US betrayed their values of liberty and democracy in the Middle East by supporting a rogues gallery of international criminals; Saddam Hussein among them. After 9/11 the US realized they could no longer support criminals without consequence. The post WWII US attitudes towards foreign policy could no longer be maintained. George Kennan discussed those policies in the important State Department paper Policy Planning Study 23, "We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population... Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity... To do so we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming.... We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.
... We should cease talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."1
The post 9/11 goal of the US is to maintain our disproportionate share of the wealth AND maintain our "vague ... objectives such as human rights, living standards, and democratization." The days of dealing in “straight power concepts …. Unhampered by idealistic slogans” are over. The slogans are back per George W. Bush, our leader. Henry Kissinger's realpolitik is dead. Conservative New York Times columnist William Safire articulated the new policy shortly after the 2005 inauguration, "The Republican Party today is characterized by a mission to defeat terror while exporting freedom abroad."2
George Bush stated his admirable vision to the world in his 2005 inaugural address. He spoke of "the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul." Our foreign policy will be conducted "with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." The transformation he cautioned will be "the work of generations" because not every country "is going to immediately adopt America's vision of democracy." In other words we cannot control what every country does, how they treat their people or how fast they reform - but we can control how we treat their governments. We will have friendlier relations with more democratic, free countries and treat repressive governments coldly; "every ruler and every nation" will be treated according to how they treat their people. "We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation: the moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right," Bush said. Elsewhere, "we will encourage reform in other governments by making clear that success in our relations will require the decent treatment of their own people."
The inaugural address was written by a team of conservative thinkers; but they were the President’s words. It is His vision. The American press properly appreciated the speech. David Ignatius writing in the Washington Post described the President's remarkable maturation.
Watching television footage of George Bush's first inauguration, you can see how nervous he was -- his body tense, his eyes darting back and forth. His suit seemed half a size too big, and he confessed to a television interviewer that he was afraid he might cry when he saw his dad on the podium.The completed story is how the President's bold new vision, "resolute sense of purpose" and "his idealism about American values" couple him with Woodrow Wilson.3 9/11 changed Bush into a leader with bold visions of world democracy and a globally free society. Ignatius's colleague David Brooks at the New York Times wrote, "If you want to understand America, I hope you were in Washington" to hear the president's speech filled with "high ideals... about freedom." Brooks lambastes "Anti-Americans" who laughably insist the "high-toned language" is "a cover for the quest for oil, or the desire for riches, dominion and war." The new vision will "be practical and present in the world, yielding consequences every day" for authoritarians. The president will no longer be able to face China, Russia, or any other US ally without putting pressure on them to change their domestic policies. However, we must be cautious and patient because "people must choose freedom for themselves," much as the Iraqis did - with a little prodding from the US military.4
That George Bush is gone. He grew into his job and into himself after Sept. 11, 2001. You can question many of the decisions he has made, and his style of governing, and still recognize that he has emerged as a political leader. This time the suit fits, the voice is firm, the man is fully formed. Yet the story isn't complete.
The most important principle shaping US foreign policy is democracy and liberty; we know this because He told us. You can read it in the inaugural speech. Bush has a deep appreciation for freedom and liberty; the cynicism of Kissinger is dead; after 9/11 we can no longer afford to "cozy up to Arab dictators" for marriages of convenience. Those are the essentials of the "Bush Doctrine."
Fortunately the press understands what is happening even when obtuse officials in the White House do not. This is important because op-ed columnists and TV commentators have a responsibility to shape public opinion so they must get the story right. According to the Washington Post, "White House Officials said... that President Bush's soaring inaugural address, in which he declared the goal of ending tyranny around the world, represents no significant shift in U.S. foreign policy but instead was meant as a crystallization and clarification of policies he is pursuing in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East and elsewhere." The President's new vision is a continuation of policy; our policies were already underpinned by these values. The new boss is the same as the old boss. According to multiple officials from the White House the speech "is not a discontinuity" or "a right turn."5 The President confirmed this interpretation the day after the inaugural address in a press briefing. An "anti-American" might point out that the essence of existing policies are built around economic need and American self interest and have been for over fifty years. The Pentagon Defense Science Board opined in a document last year that American policies are elevating "the stature of and support for radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single-digits in some Arab societies.” They continued, “Solutions lie not in short term, manipulative public relations. Results will depend on fundamental transformation of strategic communication instruments and a sustained long term, approach at the level of ideas, cultures, and values.” Let us pretend for a moment we are critics and imagine what we might say about this. We might call the speech “manipulative public relations” with no meaningful change of policy; although the properly informed know otherwise. We might listen to the Pentagon analyst’s interpretation; “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states.” 6 (See more on this report here)
The President did not call for a restructuring of American policy, he recast the existing ones. The policies are not, as cynics like the CIA, State Department, or Pentagon claim, motivated by economics or corporate interests under the new interpretations. The level of the President's frankness and transparency is welcome. Detractors were all too quick to point out minor contradictions. The Washington Post remarks, "Some of the administration's allies in the war against terrorism -- including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Uzbekistan -- are ranked by the State Department as among the worst human rights abusers. The president has proudly proclaimed his friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin while remaining largely silent about Putin's dismantling of democratic institutions in the past four years. The administration, eager to enlist China as an ally in the effort to restrain North Korea's nuclear ambitions, has played down human rights concerns there, as well."
The first sentence of the 2004 State Department's report on Uzbekistan reads, "Uzbekistan is an authoritarian state with limited civil rights." Internal repression includes torture, political killings and no freedom of speech or the Press. However, "Bush met with Uzbekistan's president in 2002 and signed a declaration of 'strategic partnership,' and senior officials such as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have visited the country. The United States 'values Uzbekistan as a stable, moderate force in a turbulent region,'" according to the State Department. US - Uzbek relations have improved dramatically through the years of the Bush Presidency. The "Administration" also "signed free-trade deals with Morocco and Bahrain, which, after some promising steps toward political reforms, have begun to crack down on human rights groups."7
Libyan relations have also been steadily improving. Muammar Qaddafi, the "idiosyncratic ruler" of Libya renounced his WMD programs, accepted responsibility for the downing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and opened his oil markets to Western Countries. His government is still repressive: the State Department comments, Libya's "human rights record remained poor, and the government continued to commit numerous, serious abuses... The reported methods of torture included: chaining prisoners to a wall for hours; clubbing; applying electric shock; applying corkscrews to the back; pouring lemon juice in open wounds; breaking fingers and allowing the joints to heal without medical care; suffocating with plastic bags; deprivation of food and water; hanging by the wrists; suspension from a pole inserted between the knees and elbows; cigarettes burns; threats of being attacked by dogs; and beating on the soles of the feet." The Financial Times of England reports on our effort to bring Democracy to Libya. They report that US officials have been meeting with Qaddafi to discuss business deals for American oil companies. From multiple sources including Business Week, The Financial Times, the Israeli paper Haaretz, and the New York Times we can learn how excited American oil companies are to export American values to Libya. (Click here for more information)
Another crucial US ally, Saudi Arabia, continues harshly repressive government policies. Last year it was discovered that the Saudis published pamphlets and books for US mosques urging Muslims to kill, ignore, attack, and insult American infidels. The State Department remarks on their government in 2004; the "human rights record remained poor overall with continuing serious problems" where "citizens did not have the right to change their government. Security forces continued to abuse detainees and prisoners, arbitrarily arrest, and hold persons in incommunicado detention. There were cases in which Mutawwa'in continued to intimidate, abuse, and detain citizens and foreigners. Most trials were closed, and defendants usually appeared before judges without legal counsel. Security forces arrested and detained reformers, some of whom continued at year's end to seek an open trial. The Government reportedly infringed on individuals' privacy rights. The Government continued to restrict freedoms of speech and press, assembly, association, religion, and movement." US relations with Saudi Arabia are almost the same as they have been for decades; except now they are policies motivated by human rights.8
Perhaps the first step towards realizing the President’s vision of a free, democratic Iraq was the recent Iraqi elections. National Review editor Jonah Goldberg understands the President's vision. He remarked after the Iraqi election, "A foreign policy realist might have said, 'Oops, no WMDs' - and then bugged out." The US knows that the war was never solely about WMDs however, "we called Saddam's bluff, which was our perfect right given the stakes... Bush decided to stay partly out of a different realist analysis of our national interest: A democratic Middle East, he believes, is the best chance for stopping the production of terrorists."
Goldberg makes a mistake in judgment when he contends that Bush is not bound by Colin Powell's "'Pottery Barn rule,' which holds that if 'you break it, you bought it'" because "Iraq was already broken - broken by a madman responsible for unspeakable crimes inside Iraq and out." The charge about Saddam is correct, but our wise leader George Bush understands the crucial roles the following had on the broken state of Iraq; sanctions that UN diplomats Hans Von Sponeck and Dennis Halliday called "genocidal" which probably killed around one million children and elderly in the 1990s; the US's support for Saddam Hussein during the Shiite uprising after the first Gulf War leading to a massive slaughter; and direct US support and armament of Saddam through the 1980s when he was at his zenith of power. Bush's policy in Iraq is to fix what the US helped break with the “madman’s” help. 9
The Iraqi people are to be commended for the elections. It was an expression of solidarity and a rejection of violence. Last year the US appointed an interim government and the Shiite Ayatollah Sistani demanded elections. When Sistani threatened to bring his protest to the streets the US government relented and announced it would hold elections in January after the US elections. The January elections were not the initial plan until the threat of mass protest put the US in a precarious political position; this is a great victory for popular protest. Nonetheless, the President deserves the credit for allowing them to happen and is evidence of his commitment to democracy. The "purple finger revolution" was possible because of his leadership.
Charles Krauthammer wrote in the Washington Post that Iraqis were "free to dance" at last. Voters turned "out to vote in great numbers, with great enthusiasm and determination."10 Michael Gove in the London Times separates the winners from the losers of the election; "I would say that the people who seemed a little glum yesterday morning include Saddam Hussein, Robin Cook, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, George Galloway, Osama bin Laden, Douglas Hurd, Bashar al-Assad, Menzies Campbell, Jacques Chirac, BBC News and Current Affairs, Robert Fisk and Sean Penn." Sean Penn and Jacques Chirac must be in league with insurgents and Saddam Hussein because they oppose the US war.11
The elections were slightly flawed but to pay attention to the trivial problems is to miss the big picture. Nonetheless it may be somewhat important to review what nonbelievers of the "Bush Doctrine" heretically insist on pointing out.
The Sunni boycott undermined the hope for a truly representative government. The Sunnis boycotted because of the American liberation efforts in Fallujah which leveled the city, damaged or destroyed virtually all of the buildings, had dogs fighting over charred corpses in the streets, displaced several hundred thousand residents who became refugees in nearby cities, and attacks on hospitals to "shut down what officers said was a propaganda weapon for the militants: Falluja General Hospital, with its stream of reports of civilian casualties." Virtually all of the candidates ran anonymously because they were afraid of violence. The Iraqi voter did not see the names on the lists until the day they voted and often had no idea whom they voted for. The election was monitored from outside the country. In spite of these setbacks the Iraqis turned out in surprising numbers to elect an Iran friendly government.12
The US appointed officials who received US backing and funding performed poorly than expected in spite of their advantages including; US funding and support, exposure to the people while in office and bribes for press reporters.
The two candidates who the US preferred for Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi and Adel Abdul Mahdi, failed to win the post. Iyad Allawi's list did very poorly. The Finance Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi's heavily pro Iran list emerged as the strongest bloc in the elections. The Washington Post describes Mahdi's politically relevant features; he is a man with "the smooth, urbane face of the party, and he appears not in clerical robes, but in a Western suit" with "a message of moderation."13 Mahdi favors a secular government and was educated by American Jesuits. Virtually unpublished and unreported were his remarks to a press conference in Washington December 22, 2004. The only dispatch on it from Inter Press Service reports that the man with the "smooth, urbane face" wanted to hand Iraqi oil to American companies;
Iraqi Finance Minister Abdel Mahdi told a handful of reporters and industry insiders at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. that Iraq wants to issue a new oil law that would open Iraq's national oil company to private foreign investment. As Mahdi explained: "So I think this is very promising to the American investors and to American enterprise, certainly to oil companies."Mahdi and Allawi both failed to become the new Prime Minister. Instead Ibrahim Jafari "whose views may be closer to Tehran's than Washington's" after spending "9 years in Tehran" has won the post.15 The Iraqis voted for candidates with strong ties to Iran. This presents a diplomatic problem for the US. "Anti-Americans" theorize that the US will solve this problem by undermining the new government much as it has done in the past to democratically elected governments they did not like. The theory is that they will not allow an unfriendly regime in such a strategic country for the sake of democracy. This is a theory based in the old world order of Kissinger, Carter, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Negroponte, Bolton, Elliot Abrams, Wolfowitz, Reagan, Clinton, Bush I, etc. It is not consistent with the new interpretation of existing policies under the "Bush Doctrine" and its executers Bush II, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Negroponte, Elliot Abrams, Wolfowitz, Bolton, etc. and should be ignored.
In other words, Mahdi is proposing to privatize Iraq's oil and put it into American corporate hands.
According to the finance minister, foreigners would gain access both to "downstream" and "maybe even upstream" oil investment. This means foreigners can sell Iraqi oil and own it under the ground - the very thing for which many argue the U.S. went to war in the first place.
As Vice President Dick Cheney's Defense Policy Guidance report explained back in 1992, "Our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in the [Middle East] region and preserve U.S. and Western access to the region's oil."14
The triumph of the President's vision is not yet realized and detractors use an intentional myopia to criticize the president and his policies. The "war of ideals" as Thomas Friedman puts it, will not be won in 2, 3, or even 10 years. It could take decades. In thirty years if everything turns out ok then there will be a lot to answer for the left of today. The costs of the war will ultimately be worth the result. We should briefly sketch out some of those costs however to have a deeper appreciation for how much we have sacrificed.
Thus far they have included nearly 2000 dead coalition troops and tens of thousands wounded. Nobody knows how many Iraqis have paid the price. Various estimates based on news reports and hospital figures measure between 15,000 and 40,000. The only scientifically based research published in the British medical journal The Lancet posited the likely number as of fall 2004 at 100,000 dead due to coalition forces. Most of the deaths were the result of aerial bombardment. They tried to determine the cause of death, when possible verified death certificates and did not count deaths attributable to insurgent violence. They chose several Iraqi cities at random – excluding Fallujah because the fighting there had been so intense - several neighborhoods within those cities at random, and then polled households within each neighborhood. After tabulating the results they compared the death rate before the invasion with the current rate and determined that it is most likely that 100,000 people are dead who would not have been dead otherwise.
The costs of the collapse of the civilian infrastructure are borne heavily by children and the elderly. The United Nations, aid agencies and the interim Iraqi government reported in the fall of 2004 that the acute malnutrition rate of children under 5 climbed from 4 percent to 7.7% because of the war. The increase affects 400,000 Iraqi children who are now suffering from chronic diarrhea and dangerous deficiencies of protein; a condition known as “wasting.” The new rate of malnutrition rivals the African nation of Burundi torn by more than a decade of war and far surpasses Uganda and Haiti.16
US soldiers use armor piercing shells made from depleted uranium. Medical experts and independent researchers have drawn direct causal links from the radioactive ammunition and increased birth defect and cancer rates among populations who come into contact with spent DU ammo; including US soldiers. The Seattle Post reports "nearly 12 years after the use of the super-tough weapons was credited with bringing the [first Gulf] war to a swift conclusion, the battlefield remains a radioactive toxic wasteland." Similar radioactive hot spots exist in Bosnia where DU ammo was used in 1995. The birth defect rate had increased almost 1000 percent after the first Gulf war. Doctors described birth defects that were similar to the ones following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since the beginning of the current war millions of tons of DU have been used in Iraq. The consequences will be felt for generations of people. The Pentagon denies any connection between DU and health problems.17
While all of these costs may be awful and continuously rising they will be worth it because one day all of these efforts will result in a Middle Eastern beacon of Democracy. And while these costs are largely shouldered by the people in Iraq (or wherever else we fight) we are to understand that we are better able to determine if the cost is worth it for them. Whether that day is in 50 years or 5 years there will be generations of people who will thank us for benignly making their decision during a time when they were unable to. Some may claim it is an absurd leap in logic that a foreign based led coup would result in a democratic society. Some would be incorrect.
As grotesque as these costs may be, the actions the anti-war crowd claims would have been the preferable alternative to war are even more appalling. Some claim the US should have reformed the US sanctions so they were no longer intentionally - and successfully - killing Iraqi citizens. The sanctions had the unintended effect of making the Iraqi people dependent on their government for food and medicine. Rather than create civil unrest and spark a coup they resulted in a depressed population who increasingly relied on the government to survive. "Anti-Americans" actually believe that Saddam Hussein's government may have likely been overthrown as countless other dictators before him have; Mobutu, Pinochet, Batista, Somoza, Suharto, Marcos, the Shah, etc. They do not understand the uncertainty of the situation called for immediate action. There is no way to know or prove that he would have been overthrown; that is the weakness of the anti-war’s recommendations.
The Bush heretics also recommended diplomatic pressure on neighboring states and allies to contain Saddam Hussein. Currently the US uses diplomatic tactics for Iran, North Korea, Lebanon, etc. However, for the Iraqi threat it would have useless because talking solves very little. We only do it when we have to. Disarmament was supposed to be accomplished by the resumption of UN inspections. While the inspections teams eventually proved to have been successful in disarming Iraq; it ignores a larger point. There should be a country powerful enough to keep other states in line. Internationalists cite UN Article 51 which forbids the use of aggression except in self defense. International law ignores moral superiority. The US is allowed actions that other states are not by virtue of its moral certitude. It is illegal for Iran, Syria, etc. to invade Israel and enforce the numerous UN resolutions and decisions they have ignored for years or disarm their illegal stockpile of nuclear weapons because those countries are morally corrupt. It is legal for the US to invade a country and depose of its government because the US is morally sound. We cannot trust the intentions guiding fundamentally evil governments like Iran or Syria. They are not concerned with spreading democracy and liberty as we are. Whereas torture is something both Syrian and US armed forces do, it is not something US forces would do.
Internationalists who insist on making "quaint" arguments about international law ignore the 16 resolutions Saddam ignored since the first Gulf War. They do not understand that the fainthearted UN was going to do nothing. The US had to step in and selflessly enforce the law; to do otherwise would be to invite a precedent of might makes right where the law is arbitrary for those who can ignore it. There are technicalities such as the fact that the US violated international law in order to enforce it. That the resolutions authorized no country to unilaterally enforce their rules. Or that the US redefined the resolutions as necessary to keep them in place. Or that the US was caught planting spies in inspection teams to Iraq during the 1990s. That the US permits Israel an illegal stockpile of nuclear weapons and stands virtually alone with them on a security fence that has been condemned by the world court. Or that the US was convicted for international terrorism over mining Nicaraguan harbors. They may cite these facts and several hundred others to make the case that the US is hostile towards international law and institutions preferring to use legal arguments when expedient and ignore them when they get in the way. They could that, but they would be wrong. The US is the world’s sheriff as evidenced by the invasion in Iraq.
The anti-war recommendations are hopelessly idealistic and vague. Perhaps Saddam would have been overthrown and perhaps not, maybe inspections would have kept him disarmed as they did in the 1990s and maybe not, maybe external pressure would have kept him in check as it had through the 1990s and maybe not. The realist understands that an invasion while costly to both sides and resented by the native population as imperialist could eventually at some point in the indeterminate future and by undefined means reach a desirable end.
Footnotes:
1.
The "the greatest material prize in world history" is credited to the State Department by Noam Chomsky in multiple books and articles.
Kennan, George. "Policy Planning Study 23." State Department
2.
Safire, William. "Character is Destiny." New York Times 12 January 2005, Op-ed3.
Ignatius, David. "Bush's Next Test." Washington Post 19 February 2005, Op-ed4.
Brooks, David. "Ideals and Reality.", New York Times, January 20055.
Staff. "Bush Speech Not a Sign of Policy Shift, Officials Say." Washington Post 22 February 20056.
Department of Defense. "The Report of the Pentagon Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication." Washington, 2004They go on to remark;
They continue to remark on American perceptions of the world and of themselves.
• Muslims do not “hate our freedom,” but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states.
• Thus when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy. Moreover, saying that “freedom is the future of the Middle East” is seen as patronizing, suggesting that Arabs are like the enslaved peoples of the old Communist World — but Muslims do not feel this way: they feel oppressed, but not enslaved.
• Furthermore, in the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq
has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. U.S. actions appear in contrast to be motivated by ulterior motives, and deliberately controlled in order to best serve American national interests at the expense of truly Muslim self determination.
• Therefore, the dramatic narrative since 9/11 has essentially borne out the entire radical Islamist bill of particulars. American actions and the flow of events have elevated the authority of the Jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims. Fighting groups portray themselves as the true defenders of an Ummah (the entire Muslim community) invaded and under attack — to broad public support.
• What was a marginal network is now an Ummah-wide movement of fighting groups. Not only has there been a proliferation of “terrorist” groups: the unifying context of a shared cause creates a sense of affiliation across the many cultural and sectarian boundaries that divide Islam.
• Finally, Muslims see Americans as strangely narcissistic — namely, that the war is all about us. As the Muslims see it, everything about the war is — for Americans — really no more than an extension of American domestic politics and its great game. This perception is of course necessarily heightened by election-year atmospherics, but nonetheless sustains their impression that when Americans talk to Muslims they are really just talking to themselves.
Americans believe that while the U.S. necessarily shapes foreign policies to support our national interests, those same interests are not necessarily in opposition to the interests of other nations and cultures. To the contrary, Americans are convinced that the U.S. is a benevolent 'superpower' that elevates values emphasizing freedom and prosperity as at the core of its own national interest. Thus, for Americans, 'U.S. values' are in reality 'world values' — exemplified by the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the 1975 Helsinki Accords — so deep down we assume that everyone should naturally support our policies.
Yet the world of Islam — by overwhelming majorities at this time — sees things differently. Muslims see American policies as inimical to their values, American rhetoric about freedom and democracy as hypocritical, and American actions as deeply threatening.
7.
Kessler, Glen & Wright, Robin. "Bush's Words On Liberty Don't Mesh With Policies U.S. Maintains Close Ties With Repressive Nations." Washington Post 21 January 2005, A258.
On the Saudi pamphlets see:Staff. "Don't dare say hello to your `infidel' neighbor." Haaretz 2005
Nir, Ori. "New Report Documents Saudi Funds For Hatred." The Forward 4 February 2005
9.
On the intent of sanctions to kill Iraqis see Nagy, Thomas. "The Secret Behind the Sanctions, How the US Intentionally Destroyed Iraq's Water Supply." The Progressive September 2001. Particularly the following passage"The primary document, "Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities," is dated January 22, 1991. It spells out how sanctions will prevent Iraq from supplying clean water to its citizens.On the deaths caused by the sanctions see Amnesty International. The USG admitted to 500,000 in 1996 when Madeline Albright was interviewed by Leslie Stahl.
"Iraq depends on importing specialized equipment and some chemicals to purify its water supply, most of which is heavily mineralized and frequently brackish to saline," the document states. "With no domestic sources of both water treatment replacement parts and some essential chemicals, Iraq will continue attempts to circumvent United Nations Sanctions to import these vital commodities. Failing to secure supplies will result in a shortage of pure drinking water for much of the population. This could lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease."
The document goes into great technical detail about the sources and quality of Iraq's water supply. The quality of untreated water "generally is poor," and drinking such water "could result in diarrhea," the document says. It notes that Iraq's rivers "contain biological materials, pollutants, and are laden with bacteria. Unless the water is purified with chlorine, epidemics of such diseases as cholera, hepatitis, and typhoid could occur.
Halliday and Sponeck were long time UN diplomats who worked as administrators in Iraq before resigning
10.
Krauthammer, Charles. "Free to Dance in Iraq." Washington Post 4 February 2005, A1711.
Gove, Michael. "Who Won the Iraqi Elections?" London Times 1 February 200512.
On the destruction of Fallujah hospital see:Schmitt, Eric. "A Goal Is Met. What's Next?" New York Times 15 November 2004, A1.
On Iranian ties see:
Wright, Robin. "Iraq Winners Allied With Iran Are the Opposite of U.S. Vision." Washington Post 14 February 2005, A08
Staff. "Iran in Iraqi Government." PRNewswire Newsweek. 20 February 2005
13.
Struck, Doug. "Prospective Iraqi Premier a Man of Many Labels, Shiite Finance Minister Was Student Activist, Opponent of Hussein." Washington Post Foreign Service 14 February 2005, A0814.
Juhasz, Antonia. "Of Oil And [Iraqi] Elections." Global Policy Exchange Forum 27 January 2005Inter Press Service, Emad Mckay
2 comments:
"The most important principle shaping US foreign policy is democracy and liberty; we know this because He told us."
ROFL
This is what I think: Bush Doctrine
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