Top Ten Lies about Iraq

by Ruth Wilson, Free Press contributor

any people are confused about US policy in Iraq. For the past 8 years, Americans have been inundated by Gulf War and sanctions propaganda from the government and the mainstream media. It is time to break through the web of lies that has been spun, and begin to perceive an accurate picture of events.

1) Saddam Hussein is a powerful enemy of the United States.

In fact, Saddam is not very powerful at all on the world stage, and key US leaders view him as a trusted friend. The Iraqi military was never terribly strong to begin with, and was overwhelmingly defeated in the Gulf War. More than 100,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed, while the American side lost only 79 soldiers in combat. In 1996, it was estimated that the Iraqi army was less than half the size it was before the war. Iraq does not posses a single nuclear weapon, and its program to develop nuclear bombs has been essentially destroyed. During the Gulf War, the United States and Britain surrounded Iraq with more than 1,000 nuclear weapons and threatened to use them. Although they usually talk tough, American officials occasionally reveal some of their true feelings. The following remarks appeared in the New York Times (October 31, 1997), "'He's done more to promote our policy than we have,' one (unnamed) official said. Another added, 'God Bless Saddam.'" US leaders were happy because Mr. Hussein was kicking out American weapons inspectors, thus providing an excuse to continue the UN sanctions against Iraq, and possibly a chance to shoot some missiles. The Iraqi dictator is portrayed as a scary enemy to the American public, and his image is being used to frighten us into spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the Pentagon, but Saddam Hussein is actually a boon to US corporations.

2) Bill Clinton hates Saddam and really wants to get rid of him.

Bill Clinton says he hates Saddam Hussein, but what he does is another matter. President Clinton is basically continuing the policy of George Bush, who left Saddam in power at the end of the 1991 Gulf War and supported him afterwards.

During the Gulf War cease-fire negotiations, General Schwarzkopf gave the Iraqi army permission to use armed helicopters to put down a popular rebellion. Tens of thousands of Kurdish and Shii'te rebels were slaughtered while US forces stood by and did nothing to intervene. According to Noam Chomsky, the US also refused to help an Iraqi general who rebelled against Hussein. The Americans blew up an Iraqi arms dump to prevent the rebel general's forces from obtaining weapons and disarmed his men when they were in retreat. More recently, the CIA was involved in two major plots in Iraq, both of which had the net result of helping Saddam Hussein to find and eliminate his enemies (see #7). Bill Clinton needs villains outside the country to distract Americans from problems at home, and he knows that so long as Saddam Hussein stays, he will have an excuse to maintain the oil embargo against Iraq.

3) The reason for the Gulf War in 1991 was that the international oil embargo against Iraq did not work to force Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait.

As Noam Chomsky argued eloquently at the time, the embargo together with the threat of force probably did work after only a few months, and the war was most likely not necessary to persuade Iraq to get out of Kuwait. Iraq offered to withdraw in exchange for some minor border concessions in August of 1990, but the US refused to negotiate. In January, 1991, Iraq proposed "...to withdraw in return for an agreement of an unspecified nature on the Palestinian problem and weapons of mass destruction..." ("What We Say Goes" by Chomsky, from the 1992 South End Press anthology Collateral Damage ed by Cynthia Peters). Again the United States rejected the possibility of negotiation. A last minute French proposal for a peaceful solution to the crisis was also rejected out of hand by the US and Britain. James Webb, former Secretary of the Navy, wrote, "The Bush administration...relentlessly maneuvered our nation into a war."(Wall St. Journal, Jan 31,1991)

What were the real reasons for the Gulf War? Perhaps one reason was simply to boost public support and funding for the Pentagon. The war also offered an opportunity to test and show off American high-tech. weapons in combat. Another reason for the war and for the continuing presence of the US military in the vicinity of Iraq, was and is to enforce the oil embargo.

4) The reason the United Nations oil embargo against Iraq continues today is to force Iraq to get rid of weapons of mass destruction.

Although this is the technical reason that the sanctions against Iraq continue, it is obviously not the true reason. At the close of the shooting war in 1991, the UN Security Council put in place Resolution 687, which said that the oil embargo and other sanctions would remain in place until Iraq destroyed all nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, and accepted long-term monitoring of the situation. (Notice that the Security Council had just decided to extend the same embargo, which they had claimed was absolutely useless for kicking Iraq out of Kuwait.) Three years later, the Economist (Nov.19, 1994) reported that amazingly enough, the sanctions had worked, and Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were essentially gone. "After a dodgy start, Mr. Hussein eventually cooperated with the watchdogs, which are now as sure as they can be that the lethal stuff has been identified and got rid of." Months earlier, the Wall St. Journal (Mar.28, 1994) quoted Rolf Ekeus, the head of the UN special commission (UNSCOM), "We feel we have a good handle on their existing weapons programs. We have found them, identified them and destroyed them." So, why wasn't the embargo lifted in 1994?

There was a brief panic on the oil markets amid fears that the embargo might end quickly, but then oil investors and executives breathed a sigh of relief. The monitoring system had to be tested for an indefinite period of time, and the Clinton administration let it be known that the sanctions would stay in place until Saddam Hussein was gone. The Economist noted that, "If or when Mr. Hussein concludes that whatever he does, America will not allow him to start reselling his oil, his period of careful compliance is likely to be over."

5) Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are a major threat to the US and the world.

There is much hysteria in the media about this issue, but the fact is that whatever weapons Iraq has or is capable of making are not a major threat to the US and the world. The UN inspectors report there is "...no evidence that Iraq has nuclear weapons." (NY Times, July 28,1998). Iraq essentially lacks delivery systems for biological weapons (NY Times, Nov.21, 1997). The US destroyed much of Iraqi chemical weapons stockpile during the Gulf War, and UNSCOM has been getting rid of the rest since 1991. Since the US and Britain made it clear that they would not allow the sanctions to be lifted even if Iraq destroyed all massive weapons, there have been lots of fun and games with the UN inspectors. It appears that Saddam Hussein is now essentially working for the US and Britain. He is allowed to stay in power in Iraq and sell a limited amount of oil on the black market, and in return he provides a seemingly endless stream of excuses for the UN Security Council to continue the oil embargo.

The sanctions against Iraq are the toughest enacted against any country since the United Nations began. Contrast the treatment of Iraq with that of India and Pakistan, both of which recently tested nuclear weapons. The two nuclear outlaws were only slapped on the wrist with mild sanctions, which the US began to revoke almost immediately after they went into effect.

6) The reason for the UN embargo is to force Saddam out of power.

Although no UN resolution calls for this outcome, US leaders claim that the unofficial reason for the sanctions is to get rid of the evil dictator. In fact, Hussein was left in power deliberately at the close of the Gulf War, and the US has supported him since. The sanctions were never designed to target the Iraqi dictatorship. They have hit the entire population. The sanctions did not include any travel restrictions on top officials for the first 7 years of the embargo (1990-1997). Finally, in November of 1997, a travel ban was approved, but it applies only to those members of the Iraqi regime who directly interfere with UN weapons inspectors. The Security Council has prohibited Iraq from making weapons of mass destruction, but has done nothing to prevent it from making conventional weapons for Saddam's military. The US looks the other way, while the Iraqi government smuggles out relatively small amounts of oil in trucks and ships, bringing in a few $100 million per year for

7) The CIA has been trying to overthrow Saddam, but just has not succeeded yet.

Actually, the CIA has been helping Saddam Hussein demolish the Iraqi opposition. As Cockburn and St. Clair have pointed out, the CIA is not a rogue agency, but "...the obedient executor of the will of the US government, starting with the White House "(White Out). In recent years, the agency's actions have had the net result of bolstering the Iraqi dictatorship. (See sidebar for more on the CIA.) In 1996, a CIA project helped Saddam to find out which of his military officers were planning a coup against him. Some 800 officers were promptly arrested and 30 were executed. Also in 1996, the CIA gathered together a large number of Iraqis who wanted to fight for democracy, in the town of Salahudin in the northern Kurdish region. Then, the American CIA officers cleared out, and Hussein's forces marched in and began slaughtering the Iraqi democrats. Saddam's men had been invited into Kurdistan by a man who was working with the CIA, Massoud Barzani. Barzani leads a Kurdish faction and is following a family tradition, since his father used to work for the CIA. His brave Kurdish fighters, "...guided Iraqi intelligence to the homes and offices of Iraqi National Congress members in Salahuddin (sic)" (Seattle Times, Sep. 8, 1996). More than 150 members of the Iraqi opposition were killed and perhaps 600 more fled to the Turkish border. Soon afterwards, American officials forgave Barzani for his "blunder" and dispatched Assistant Secretary of State Robert Pelletreau to arrange peace talks between Barzani and his Kurdish rival Talabani. As Peter Jennings commented on ABC news (June 26, 1997), "It certainly looks The surviving members of the Iraqi National Congress were flown out of Turkey on US planes. After a brief stay in Guam, they were brought to California, where 26 of the Iraqis were promptly arrested and placed in INS prison. All evidence against the freedom fighters was kept secret, even from their lawyers. Six of the Iraqis still remain in prison in California, after almost 2 years. The case has become an embarrassment to the Clinton administration, and former CIA director James Woolsey is now a defense lawyer for the six. Some of the evidence was recently declassified after Republican Senators Trent Lott, Orrin Hatch, and Jesse Helms petitioned for full disclosure.

8) The Gulf War and the 8-year-old UN embargo have not hurt Iraqi civilians very much.

The war and the continuing embargo have caused a holocaust in Iraq. According to conservative estimates by international research teams, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children under the age of five have died as a direct result of the UN sanctions, and thousands more continue to die each month. It is not known how many older children and adults have died because of the embargo and the after-effects of the war.

"What we are seeing is a dramatic deterioration in the nutritional well being of Iraqi children since 1991," says Philippe Heffinck, UNICEF representative in Baghdad. "And what concerns us now is that there is no sign of improvement since Security Council Resolution 986...came into force." Resolution 986 is the "food-for-oil" deal, which has allowed Iraq to sell a limited amount of oil under strict UN supervision since Dec.1996. Nearly a million Iraqi children have been stunted by malnutrition.

Before the sanctions began, Iraqi children were eating quite well. Iraq contains more oil than Kuwait, and before 1990, Iraq was pumping 3 million barrels per day. Most of the profits were being used to import food and civilian supplies for the Iraqi population (roughly 20 million people) and to pay for reconstruction from the Iran-Iraq war. The remaining petrodollars tended to go for military imports. Then, the UN suddenly cut off the oil flow, and the money started to dry up. Domestic food production declined over time, due to shortages of farm machinery, fertilizer, chemicals, and spare parts.

During the Gulf War, the US targeted Iraq's electrical power plants and infrastructure. When the electricity went out, sewage treatment plants backed up, and water supplies became contaminated. The embargo has prevented Iraq from obtaining chlorine and spare parts to repair the systems properly, so water borne diarrhea and other diseases are still a major problem. Before the sanctions, Iraq had the most advanced and efficient healthcare system in the region. Today, Iraqi hospitals lack basic supplies, drugs, and sometimes doctors. The Iraqi economy has virtually collapsed, and hyperinflation has driven down government salaries so low, that many doctors have been forced to take menial outside jobs in a desperate attempt to support their families. Literacy is declining in Iraq, since approximately, 25% of Iraqi children are not enrolled in school. Many of these children now often have to work instead of learning to read.

The "food-for-oil" deal was recently expanded, and should be providing more food, but it does not solve the problems in Iraq. Under the terms of the agreement, nearly half of Iraq's strictly limited oil revenues are not used to buy food or medicine. Instead, 30 percent of the money goes to pay reparations to Kuwait, multinational corporations, and other parties who claim Gulf War injuries or loss of profits (a whopping bill of roughly $220 billion). The UN takes another 5-10% to pay for weapons inspections and 5-10% to maintain Iraq's oil pipelines. Currently, not enough money is left to address the crises of undrinkable water, untreated sewage, and devastated Iraqi hospitals.

9) Saddam Hussein is the one responsible for the suffering in Iraq.

The United States and Britain are primarily responsible for the suffering in Iraq, and they are using Saddam Hussein as a scapegoat. It is true that the small time dictator has done a number of things to make the situation worse, such as repeatedly rejecting and delaying the "food-for-oil" deal, turning away shipments of humanitarian aid, and building a new palace. The fact is, however, that one cannot rob a country of virtually its entire income for years, and bomb it repeatedly, without causing very serious damage. As the world's sole remaining superpower, the US is clearly calling the shots in the relationship with Saddam.

10) There is nothing we can do.

American leaders would not put such a tremendous effort into concealing the truth, unless they were terrified of public opinion. To the extent that this country is a democracy, we not only have the right, but the responsibility to stop our government from committing crimes. If people knew the truth about Iraq, they would be outraged. It is not in the self-interest of ordinary Americans to pay an estimated $50 billion each year to keep troops in the Gulf. It doesn't make us any safer to have a government that seems hell-bent on creating enemies in Iraq and elsewhere in the world. It is time to help the Iraqi people and begin to repair the damage we have done.