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A friend in Oz sent me this. Did anyone from AWADtalk participate in the peace rallies this Saturday? I'm ashamed to say I didn't even know they were going on, until they were over....I tip my hat to everyone who did attend.
This letter is a very interesting eyewitness account by a photojournalist who has spent a lot of time in Iraq. Please don't read it if you believe the US is right to attack Iraq. You'll just try to find a way to make it wrong. This is for interest only, and for anyone to act who feels he/she wants to. We can't all be photojouranlists and help in that way, but there must be something we can do? so if anyone has any positive ideas, I'd love to hear them....
This letter forwarded by David Hazen is from Thorne Anderson, a former
journalism professor, who was in Iraq recently as a reporter. It
presents a point of view we see rarely. If you get all your news from
the US dominated Media, as I do, the information will surprise you. My
own experience in Iraq in 1966 tells me that the people there are very
much like us despite basic differences in history and religion. Barb
Dear Friends, Some of you have written to me with concerns for my safety
in Iraq, but this was easily one of the safest assignments I have taken.
In all my time in Iraq, in spite of an intense awareness of the threat
of an impending attack by the United States, I never met a single Iraqi
who had a harsh word for me. Iraqis are very good at distinguishing
between the U.S. government and a U.S. citizen. Some friends and family
are also already wondering why I would want to go back to Iraq, as I am
committed and already anxious to do. It just seems to me that as a
photojournalist, Iraq is where I might best play a role in making a
small difference.
I did some work for Newsweek and Time magazines while in Iraq, but that
kind of work has really become secondary for me. I do what I can to
influence (in admittedly small ways) what kinds of stories those big
magazines do, but ultimately their stories are nearly worthless at
confronting the inhumanity of American foreign policy in the Middle
East. I will continue to work with Time and Newsweek (and with other
corporate media) on stories that I don't find offensive, but the bulk of
my efforts are now going into reaching alternative media and in
supporting anti-war groups in the states. I hope I can find some time
soon to come to the states for a speaking tour of sorts.
There's a lot of talk about whether or not the U.S. will go to war with
Iraq. What many people don't realize is that the U.S. is already at war
in Iraq. I made two trips last month into the "no-fly zone" created by
the U.S. with Britain and France in southern Iraq. Actually it would be
better named the "only we fly" zone or the "we bomb" zone. "We" refers
to the United States who does almost all of the flying and bombing
(France pulled out years ago, and Britain is largely a nominal
participant). There is another no-fly zone in the north, which the U.S.
says it maintains to protect the Kurds, but while the U.S. prevents
Iraqi aircraft from entering the region, it does nothing to prevent or
even to criticize Turkey (a U.S. ally) from flying into northern Iraq on
numerous occasions to bomb Kurdish communities there.
Turkey's bombing in Iraq is dwarfed by that of the U.S. The U.S. has
been bombing Iraq on a weekly and sometimes daily basis for the past 12
years. There were seven civilians killed in these bombings about two
weeks ago, and I'm told of more civilians last week, but I'm sure that
didn't get much or perhaps any press in the U.S. It is estimated that
U.S. bombing has killed 500 Iraqis just since 1999. Actually I believe
that number to be higher if you take into account the effects of the
massive use of depleted uranium (DU) in the bombing. The U.S. has
dropped well in excess of
300 tons of this radioactive material in Iraq (30 times the amount
dropped in Kosovo) since 1991. Some of the DU is further contaminated
with other radioactive particles including Neptunium and Plutonium 239,
perhaps the most carcinogenic of all radioactive materials, and these
particles are now beginning to show up in ground water samples.
I spent a lot of time in overcrowded cancer wards in Iraqi hospitals.
Since U.S. bombing began in Iraq, cancer rates have increased nearly six
fold in the south, where U.S. bombing and consequent levels of DU are
most severe. The most pronounced increases are in leukaemia and lung,
kidney, and thyroid cancers associated with poisoning by heavy metals
(such as DU).
But the most lethal weapon in Iraq is the intense sanctions regime. The
toll of the sanctions is one of the most under-reported stories of the
past decade in the U.S. press. I have seen a few references to the
sanctions recently in the U.S. press, but invariably they will subtly
discredit humanitarian concerns by relying on Iraqi government
statements rather than on the statistics of international agencies. My
careless colleague at Time magazine, for example, recently reported that
"the Iraqi government blames the sanctions for the deaths of thousands
of children under the age of five." That's simply not true. The Iraqi
government, in fact, blames the sanctions for the deaths of *more than a
million* children under the age of five. But lets put that figure aside,
for there's no need to rely solely on the Iraqi government, and let's
refer instead to UNICEF and WHO reports which blame the sanctions
directly for the excess deaths of approximately 500,000 children under
the age of five, and nearly a million Iraqis of all ages. We all have an
idea of the grief borne by the United States after the September 11
attacks. Employing the crude mathematics of casualty figures, multiply
that grief by 300 and place it on the hearts of a country with one tenth
the population of the United States and perhaps we can get a crude idea
of what kind of suffering has already been inflicted on the Iraqi people
in the past decade.
The greatest killer of young children in Iraq is dehydration from
diarrhoea caused by water-borne illnesses which are amplified by the
intentional destruction of water treatment and sanitation facilities by
the United States. The U.S. plan for destroying water treatment
facilities and suppressing their rehabilitation was outlined just before
the American entry into the 1991 Gulf War. The January, 1991, Dept. of
Defense document, "Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities," goes into
great detail about how the destruction of water treatment facilities and
their subsequent impairment by the sanctions regime will lead to
"increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease." I can report from
my time in Iraq that all is going to plan. Cholera, hepatitis, and
typhoid (previously almost unheard of in Iraq) are now quite common.
Malaria and, of course, dysentery are rampant, and immunities to all
types of disease are extremely low. Even those lucky children who manage
to get a sufficient daily caloric intake risk losing it all to diarrhea.
Around 4,000 children die every month from starvation and preventable
disease in Iraq -- a six-fold increase since pre-sanctions measurements.
Treatment of illnesses in Iraq is complicated by the inability of
hospitals to get the drugs they need through the wall of sanctions. In a
hospital in Baghdad I encountered a mother with a very sick one-year-old
child. After the boy's circumcision ceremony, the child was found to
have a congenital disease which inhibits his blood's ability to clot,
which results in excessive bleeding. The child encountered further
complications when he took a fall and sustained a head injury which was
slowly drowning his brain in his own blood. In any other country the boy
would simply take regular doses of a drug called Factor 8, and he could
then lead a relatively normal life. But an order for Factor 8 was put
"on hold" by the United States
(prohibited for import), so the doctor, the mother, and I could only
watch the child die.
Much is made of Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass
destruction, but it is the sanctions, the use of depleted uranium, and
the destruction of Iraq's health and sanitation infrastructure that are
the weapons of greatest mass destruction in Iraq. The situation is so
bad that Dennis Halliday, the former Humanitarian Coordinator for the UN
in Iraq, took the dramatic step of resigning his position in protest at
the sanctions. "We are in the process of destroying an entire society,"
Halliday wrote. "It is as simple and terrifying as that. It is illegal
and immoral." And Halliday isn't alone. His successor, Hans Von Sponeck,
also resigned in protest and went so far as to describe the sanctions as
genocide. These are not left-wing radicals. These are career bureaucrats
who chose to throw away their careers at the UN rather than give tacit
support to unethical policies driven by the United States.
Being in Iraq showed me the utter devastation U.S. policy (war and
sanctions) has wrought there and has given me a vision of what horror a
new war would bring. And, of course, an attack on Iraq would be just the
beginning of a terrifying chain of reactions throughout the Middle East
and the rest of the world. Having worked in Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Israel and Palestine in the past year, I am intensely aware of how the
fragile politics and powers outside Iraq can be dramatically unsettled
by a U.S. invasion within Iraq.
It's easy to imagine an impending tragedy of enormous proportion before
us, and I ask myself who must step up and take responsibility for
stopping it. Clearly the U.S. government is the most powerful actor, but
it is equally clear that we cannot turn aside and realistically expect
the U.S. government to suddenly reverse the momentum it has created for
war. So I feel the weight of responsibility on me, on U.S. citizens, to
do whatever we can with our individually small but collectively powerful
means to change the course of our government's policy. I try to picture
myself 10 or 20 years in the future, and I don't want to be in the
position where I reflect on the enormous tragedies of the beginning of
the 21st century and admit that I did nothing at all to recognize or
prevent them.
I don't know how this letter will sound to my friends and family who are
living in the U.S., in a media environment which does very little to
effectively question U.S. policy and almost nothing to encourage
ordinary people to participate in making a change. I imagine this letter
may sound like the political rant of some kind of extremist or
anti-American dissident. But that's not how it feels to me. This doesn't
feel like a political issue to me so much as it feels like a personal
issue. I am appalled on a very human level at the suffering which U.S.
policy is already inflicting and I am terrified by the prospects for an
even more chaotic and violent future.
And let's be honest about U.S. policy aims. Those in the U.S. government
pushing for war say they are doing so to promote democracy, to protect
the rights of minorities, and to rid the region of weapons of mass
destruction. But is the U.S. threatening to attack Saudi Arabia or a
host of other U.S. allies which have similarly un-democratic regimes?
How many of us would advocate going to war with Turkey over the brutal
repression of its Kurdish minority and of the Kurds in Iraq? And do we
expect the U.S. to bomb Israel or Pakistan which each have hundreds of
nuclear weapons? Let's remember that leaders in the previous weapons
inspection team in Iraq had declared that
95% of Iraqs weapons of mass destruction capabilities were destroyed.
And let's not forget that in the 1980s, when Iraq was actually using
chemical weapons against the Kurds and the Iranian army, the U.S. had
nothing to say about it. On the contrary, at that time President Reagan
sent a U.S. envoy to Iraq to normalize diplomatic relations, to support
its war with Iran, and to offer subsidies for preferential trade with
Iraq. That envoy arrived in Baghdad on the very day that the UN
confirmed Iraq's use of chemical weapons, and he said absolutely nothing
about it. That envoy, by the way, was Donald Rumsfeld.
While Iraq probably has very little weaponry to actually threaten the
United States, they do have oil. According to a recent survey of the
West Qurna and Majnoon oil fields in southern Iraq, they may even have
the world's largest oil reserves, surpassing those of Saudi Arabia.
Let's be honest about U.S. policy aims and ask ourselves if we can, in
good conscience, support continued destruction of Iraq in order to
control its oil.
I believe that most Americans -- Republicans, Democrats, Greens, Purples
or whatever -- would be similarly horrified by the effects of sanctions
on the civilian population of Iraq if they could simply see the place,
as I have, up close in its human dimensions; if they could see Iraq as a
nation of 22 million mothers, sons, daughters, teachers, doctors,
mechanics, and window washers, and not simply as a single cartoonish
villain. I genuinely believe that my view of Iraq is a view that would
sit comfortably in mainstream America if most Americans could see Iraq
with their own eyes and not simply through the eyes of a media
establishment which has simply gotten used to ignoring the death and
destruction which perpetuates American foreign policy aims. While the
American media fixates on the evils of the "repressive regime of Saddam
Hussein," both real and wildly exaggerated, how often are we reminded of
the horrors of the last Gulf War, when more than
150,000 were killed (former U.S. Navy Secretary, John Lehman, estimated
200,000). I simply don't believe that most Americans could come
face-to-face with the Iraqi people and say from their hearts that they
deserve another war.
I believe in the fundamental values of democracy -- the protection of
the most powerless among us from the whims of the most powerful. I
believe in the ideals of the United Nations as a forum for solving
international conflicts non-violently. These are mainstream values, and
they are exactly the values that are most imperilled by present U.S.
policy. That's why, as a citizen of the United States and as a member of
humanity, I can't rest easily so long as I think there is something,
anything, that I can do to make a difference.
Love, Thorne
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I haven't had a chance to read the whole letter yet but I did go on the demmo on Saturday (with my parents and a group of friends from South Africa) in London - absolutely amazing with over 1 million people, and many of them just ordinary families like ourselves!! I must say though, at times it felt more like a peace shuffle than a march but I guess that would be due to the higher than expected turnout.
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"The U.S. has dropped well in excess of 300 tons
of this radioactive material in Iraq since 1991." - A PhotojournalistNo wonder some think the Peace Marchers kooks.  Why, no matter what the forum, is this misstatement allowed to stand as stated? No wonder most Brits polled said that the USA is a greater threat to world peace than Saddam Hussain.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Hi, mg--
I realize that the U.S.'s threat of war against Iraq is of worldwide concern--and rightly so. What can we do about it? U.S. citizens can write our Congressmen; I suppose anyone from anywhere could write to Pres. Bush.
I have received some letters of concern about a political thread being on AWADtalk; and given what has happened in the past here in those circumstances, I have to say I share the concern. War is indeed a huge event, and we humans to tend to want to discuss our worries with our friends and loved ones. Nonetheless, this place was set up to discuss language, and, given that no matter what anyone might say here about the Iraq situation it won't change a thing about it, I would like to ask that discussion be Private, so as to avoid another round of public animosity. Please.
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Carpal Tunnel
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I see I took too long in composing my other post. I would like to add a bit about my personal philosophy, here. In a nutshell, it is "Why waste my energy getting all hot and bothered, when nothing I do will change the outcome anyway?"
That last phrase is the important qualifier. I hadn't actually realized I had that philosophy until the time I was in my 20's at a self-service gas station, and the sensor that should have stopped the flow failed, and gasoline splattered down the side of my car and on me. I told the attendant, and he wanted to know why I wasn't yelling and screaming. I said, "Well, it wouldn't do any good, would it?", and he had to admit that it wouldn't have.
If there IS a situation where worry and anxiety could improve the outcome--say you have a difficult exam coming up, and the anxiety results in more intense studying--I say yes, go for it. But if, for ex., you have a blood test coming up; I say try to hold the fear to a minimum: no amount of worry on your part can change the outcome--something will be there, or it won't.
Our instincts tell us we have to prepare for "fight or flight". But today, most of the time neither of these is necessary or even possible. But the "get ready" reaction causes increased heart rate and just generally puts stress on our bodies, and if it isn't going to change the situation, I say why put my body through that?
All this by way of explaining why I feel that we shouldn't risk having the verbal equivalent of fistfights here. Even if Bush were to see it (unlikely!), it wouldn't have the least effect on his decision. Yet we would be left with hurt feelings and anger. All for naught.
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Hi Jackie - and everyone - It wasn't my intent to cause problems or raise a political discussion here on the board - just to bring something to wider attention, than it might otherwise have received. I found it interesting for two reasons: 1. It provides a bit of an antidote to mainstream reporting. Take it or leave it.... 2. It is written by a photojournalist. I found it interesting to read the thousands of words this man used, when he must be so used to using his camera to take pictures worth a thousand words each, instead. It honestly wasn't my intention to offend anyone. We are all adults here, right? (perhaps especially bonzaialsatian!  ) We can read things and not agree with them, without yelling and screaming (as you pointed out, Jackie!). I try to read things that provide a new point of view, without railing against them if they run against everything I've believed to be true. How else can we learn? But if you read something that makes no sense to you, no one is saying you must believe it. People will choose. I just hope that anyone who appreciates having had the opportunity to read the above, will consider passing it on to others of their acquaintance (as one person has told me they will - by PM, I suspect to aid in keeping politics off the board). And if anyone was offended/insulted, then I apologise - that was not my intent. I just hoped to provide a different perspective.
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Carpal Tunnel
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We are all adults here, right?
No, what ever makes you think that?
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No, what ever makes you think that?I said "adults," not "grown-ups"!
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perhaps especially bonzaialsatian! Me? Adult? Oh please! 
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