re: "Iraqi" propoganda

The following info on the sanctions and their effects are all from western
sources. . . .not Iraqi propoganda agencies:

(from the article "Dumb and Dumber" by Sean Gonsalves):

Following the [Gulf] war, Col. John Warden
explained how military planners targeted Iraq?s civilian
infrastructure to provide ?long-term leverage,? in full
knowledge that it ?could lead to increased incidences, if
not epidemics, of disease.?

Then in March 1991, the New York Times ran
a front-page article on a U.N. report de-tailing how the
war against Iraq had caused ?near apocalyptic damage,? and also
?famines and epidemics.? The report called
for ?massive life-supporting aid,? warning that ?time
was short.?

The story summarized the U.S. position on
the sanctions - ?...by making life uncom-fortable for the
Iraqi people it will eventually encourage them to remove
President Sad-dam Hussein from power.?

With a little digging, I discovered that
?uncomfortable? meant no electricity, no water, no sewage
treatment systems, and epidemics caused by
water-borne diseases for
the Iraqi people, which led a Harvard study
team to (under)estimate 10 years ago that 170,000
Iraqi children would die because of the sanctions.

. . . . . .
a 1992 survey published
in the New England Jour-nal of Medicine.
Doctors from
Harvard, Johns Hopkins and Oxford went to
Iraq to study
the sanctions? effect. They reported that
due to the
destruction of Iraq?s infrastructure,
46,900 Iraqi
children under the age of 5 died in the
first eight
months of 1991.

.. . . . . . . .
The well-read opinion pages of the
?liberal? New York
Times clarified the sanctions rationale.
?The purpose of
worldwide sanctions is to induce the
overthrow of
Saddam?s genocidal regime,? wrote William
Safire. ?If you
squeeze Iraq long enough, the Iraqi people
will oust
Saddam,? said Friedman, who candidly
explained the ?logic
of the sanctions.?

...................................

Denis Halliday, former U.N. humanitarian
coordinator in Iraq, and his successor Hans
von Sponeck
both re-signed in protest of the sanctions,
calling them
genocide. Add to that list Scott Ritter,
chief UNSCOM
inspector in Iraq, the pope and 53 U.S.
Catholic bishops.