![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.larryjohnsononline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Bert-Sacks.jpg\" "\\"Bert")
<\/a>Bert Sacks<\/p><\/div>(Seattle activist Bert Sacks defied the draconian sanctions against Iraq, for which the U.S. government fined him $16,000. But he refused to pay despite years of government threats and court actions.) Welcome to the sixteenth monthly posting:<\/strong> Those who\u2019ve followed these postings know that my legal battle with the federal government over a $16,000 fine has ended. The fine was because I traveled to Iraq to bring medicine to Iraqi children without asking for a U.S. license. The judge dismissed the government\u2019s efforts to collect from me on the grounds that the government waited too long to sue me.<\/p>\n I\u2019d like to use this posting \u2013 possibly my last on this website \u2013 to reflect on what the past 21 years have meant to me since I first learned about Iraq and then traveled there. Was it worth it? What have I learned? How has it changed me?<\/p>\n I begin with the front-page story of the New York Times of March 22, 1991. It is a long article and I ask the reader\u2019s indulgence. I have added my emphasis with bold and italics. But I include the entire article: it foretells the whole tragedy of the Iraqi mis-adventure the U.S. was about to engage in. Remember, the Soviet Empire had just collapsed. This article tells how, as the world\u2019s sole superpower, we intended to proceed.<\/p>\n The New York Times The report, prepared by a United Nations team that visited the country between March 10 and March 17, says the bombing has relegated Iraq \u201cto a pre-industrial age\u201d and warns that the nation could face \u201cepidemic and famine if massive life-supporting needs are not rapidly met.\u201d<\/p>\n It calls for \u201ca major mobilization and movement of resources\u201d to provide immediate substantial supplies of food, agricultural equipment, fuel, electrical generators and machinery for water purification, garbage disposal and sewage treatment. The report was prepared by Under Secretary General Martti Ahtisaari, who was sent by Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar. He was accompanied by representatives of Unicef, the United Nations Development Program, the High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization. Mr. Ahtisaari, a Finn, earned praise in 1989 for his handling of Namibia\u2019s move to independence.<\/p>\n A White House spokesman said the Administration would \u201cgive the report careful study,\u201d but declined to comment on its findings.<\/p>\n The report seemed to be at odds with allied military officials\u2019 insistence that the damage in Iraq was largely confined to military sites and transportation links. But allied briefers acknowledged that they had destroyed power plants and oil refineries, and the United Nations report stresses that the lack of electricity and fuel is paralyzing hospitals, water purification and sewage treatment plants and irrigation projects.<\/p>\n It says the monthly allocation of food staples to the population fell from 343,000 tons last September to 135,000 tons in January.<\/p>\n Most Workers Are Idle The report says that until Iraq acquires fuel and electrical generating equipment, \u201cfood that is imported cannot be distributed; water cannot be purified; sewage cannot be pumped away and cleansed; crops cannot be irrigated; medicines cannot be conveyed where they are required; needs cannot even be effectively assessed.\u201d <\/p>\n Diplomats say the report\u2019s findings are likely to bring pressure for a substantial relaxation in the trade sanctions against Iraq when the special committee monitoring compliance with the restrictions meets on Friday. <\/p>\n The United States has said sanctions should be lifted only when Baghdad fulfills all the allies\u2019 conditions for a permanent cease-fire. The special committee can grant a waiver on food and shipments of humanitarian aid, but the entire embargo may be lifted only by a Security Council resolution. <\/p>\n Ever since the trade embargo was imposed on Aug. 6, after the invasion of Kuwait, the United States has argued against any premature relaxation in the belief that by making life uncomfortable for the Iraqi people it will eventually encourage them to remove President Saddam Hussein from power. <\/p>\n Complex New Resolution<\/strong><\/p>\n An American draft of a proposed resolution on a permanent cease-fire that has been circulating here indicates that the Bush Administration wants the Security Council to lift only the ban on food shipments after adopting the complex new resolution.<\/p>\n Under the American draft, even after a permanent cease-fire is set, Council permission would still be needed for imports of \u201cmaterials and supplies for essential civilian needs,\u201d though the Council would examine this requirement every 60 days in the light of Baghdad\u2019s compliance and could eventually lift it.<\/p>\n As expected, the American draft also requires Iraq to agree to the destruction of its ballistic missile systems as well as chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n 1963 Frontier Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n Only when Iraq formally agrees to all provisions of the draft, which is still under discussion, would a cease-fire become effective.<\/p>\n The United States draft says Iraq must accept the boundary agreement it made with Kuwait in 1963 but subsequently rejected. And it empowers the Security Council to guarantee that frontier with \u201call necessary means,\u201d a phrase that would permit the use of military force against any violator.<\/p>\n In addition, it calls for deployment of a United Nations military observer force along the frontier to monitor possible cease-fire violations and establishes a special fund to pay compensation for damage caused by Iraq\u2019s annexation of Kuwait.<\/p>\n The draft maintains a complete ban on sales of military equipment to Iraq as well as dangerous technologies used in making chemical, biological or nuclear weapons and sets out a four-month timetable for Iraq to comply with all these provisions.<\/p>\n The original sanctions banned all trade and financial dealings with Iraq and occupied Kuwait, except for the provision of medicine. Food was allowed when the committee judged that humanitarian circumstances required it.<\/p>\n This month the committee agreed to speed approval of shipments of food and humanitarian aid, but the call for lifting the restrictions appears to go further than the United States envisages at present.<\/p>\n At Odds With U.S. Position<\/strong><\/p>\n Assessing the effects of allied bombing and the trade embargo on Iraq\u2019s economy, the report says \u201cthe recent conflict has wrought near-apocalyptic results upon the infrastructure of what had been until January 1991 a rather highly urbanized and mechanized society.\u201d <\/p>\n The report says that about 9,000 Iraqi homes were destroyed or damaged beyond repair during the war, including 2,500 in Baghdad and another 1,900 in Basra, and that about 72,000 people have been left homeless. <\/p>\n It says \u201cmost means of modern life support have been destroyed or rendered tenuous\u201d and warns that \u201cfor some time to come\u201d the country has been \u201crelegated to a pre-industrial age but with all the disabilities of post-industrial dependency on an intensive use of energy and technology.\u201d <\/p>\n After surveying the food shortage and warning that this year\u2019s harvest may fail, the report recommends that \u201csanctions in respect of food supplies should be immediately removed, as should those relating to the import agricultural equipment and supplies.\u201d <\/p>\n The report concludes: \u201cIt is unmistakable that the Iraqi people may soon face a further imminent catastrophe, which could include epidemic and famine, if massive life-supporting needs are not rapidly met. The long summer, with its often 45 or even 50 degree temperatures (113-122 degrees Fahrenheit) is only weeks away. Time is short.\u201d <\/p>\n Copyright \u00a9 1991 The New York Times Company<\/em><\/p>\n Simply put the U.S. says it will use famine and epidemic to overthrow Saddam Hussein.<\/p>\n That is what the article tells us, on the front-page of our paper of record. The deaths of 100,000s of Iraqi children are foretold. When after 12 years of trying, our goal failed of removing Saddam Hussein from power by \u201cmaking life uncomfortable for the Iraqi people\u201d, we moved on to our final option: initiating an illegal war of aggression, invading Iraq to accomplish our geopolitical agenda of controlling this oil-rich part of the world.<\/p>\n Even as I write this now, I experience some feeling of anger. At the time, I couldn\u2019t believe we were doing what the article said. But after reading in The New England Journal of Medicine of 46,900 excess deaths of Iraqi children in just eight months \u2013 and after my first trips to Iraq to see for myself \u2013 my feelings of anger had grown very intense!<\/p>\n That was the first lesson I had to learn. I was eaten up by my anger at what I knew and had seen. As a result I wasn\u2019t very skillful in educating about this. And no less important, I was suffering deeply from my anger \u2013 an afflictive emotion \u2013 and in danger of burn-out.<\/p>\n As someone wanting to make things better, I\u2019ve now come to see the work in a new light: I have to be willing to look into the darkness \u2013 to accept that that\u2019s how our world is at this moment \u2013 and to work as skillfully as I can to change it. But without the anger and hurtful criticism and even hatred for those responsible, which I had been feeling.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a hard task.<\/p>\n I was brought up on the American (and not just American) way of seeing the world as divided into \u2018good guys and bad guys.\u2019 Of course we were the good guys. We made mistakes, sometimes, but even those mistakes were done with good intentions. Working on the Iraq sanctions issue put this view right in my face. What I knew about Iraq challenged that Manichean view of reality and forced me to look deeper into how things really are.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been helped by honest introspection \u2013 admitting that I have not always been the good guy that I like to think of myself as being \u2013 as part of an eclectic spiritual practice.<\/p>\n
\n<\/em><\/p>\n
\nAfter The War;
\nU.N. Survey Calls Iraq\u2019s War Damage Near-Apocalyptic
\n<\/strong>
\nBy PAUL LEWIS, Special to The New York Times
\nUNITED NATIONS, March 21 \u2014 A United Nations survey of civilian damage caused by the allied bombardment of Iraq calls the results \u201cnear apocalyptic.\u201d The survey, which was made public today, recommends an immediate end to the embargo on imports of food and other essential supplies to prevent \u201cimminent catastrophe.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nU.S. Position on Sanctions<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>
\nThe report says 90 percent of Iraq\u2019s industrial workers \u201chave been reduced to inactivity and will be deprived of income as of the end of March.\u201d Most families already \u201clack access to adequate rations or the purchasing power to meet normal minimal standards.\u201d <\/p>\n