Ramsey Clark's Letter to the UN Regarding Latest Military Threats on Iraq H.E. Sir John Weston Permanent Mission of UK to the UN 885 2nd Avenue New York, NY 10017 November 11, 1998 Dear Ambassador Weston: President Clinton has chosen the anniversary of the armistice ending World War I to further threaten Iraq with another violent assault. He charges that failure to act "would permanently damage the credibility of the U.N. Security Council to act as a force for promoting international peace." It is a phrase reminiscent of Plato's unnamed Athenian Stranger who favored "seeking peace by making war." He taunts the U.N. to act, asserting "Failure to respond [will] embolden Saddam to act recklessly." It is a threat by a weakened President thinking only of his personal political standing. U.S. contempt for U.N. authority is shown by its defiance of the recent General Assembly vote of 157 nations versus 2 nations protesting the U.S. criminal blockade of Cuba, its refusal to pay dues to the U.N. year after year and its selective defiance, and support for violations by other nations of General Assembly, Security Council and International Court of Justice resolutions and decisions. The Security Council should immediately admonish the U.S. that it must not again attack Iraq. The Security Council is already responsible for military attacks on Iraq, albeit at the insistence of the U.S., including 110,000 aerial sorties unleashing 88,500 tons of bombs across Iraq by U.S. aircraft in January and February 1991 which destroyed 80% of Iraq's military capacity according to the Pentagon. Iraq has been further decimated by the most severe Security Council sanctions in history since August 6 (Hiroshima Day) 1990. More than a million and a half people have died in Iraq as a direct result of those sanctions, as U.N. agencies have reported. The great majority of the victims were infants, children, elderly and chronically ill persons. This is unquestionably a violation of the Genocide Convention. U.N. inspection teams over a period of seven years claim to have destroyed 90% of the remaining Iraqi missile capacity and designated military material. Iraq is not capable of a serious threat against anyone. The notion that Iraq is a threat to the region is a false fantasy created by the U.S. to justify its vast military presence in the region, to dominate the oil resources and to contain Islam. Iraq is no threat to its neighbors as every Security Council member knows. It is barely able to survive. Turkey regularly attacks the Kurdish people and others living on northern Iraqi soil at will with U.S. support and U.N. acquiescence. There are many nations on earth that pose far greater threats of minor violence and to world peace than Iraq. As the recently published "Israel and the Bomb", Columbia University Press, again demonstrates, Israel developed and has manufactured some hundreds of nuclear bombs in violation of Security Council resolutions and international law. Random assaults on Iraq at the whim of the United States since 1991 include scores of Tomahawk cruise missile and rocket assaults. The U.S. has used the cradle of civilization as a shooting gallery, striking such dangerous targets as the Al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad, killing two employees, the home of Layla al Attar, the famous artist and museum director, killing her and others, and a United Nations helicopter killing all its occupants. A new U.S. strike will target vital support systems for the population of Iraq, just as its 1991 assault targeted the infrastructure; water supply, electric power, transportation, communications, food storage, processing and distribution, fertilizer and insecticide manufacture. It is a crueler form of corporal punishment imposed on the entire population than public lashings and executions favored by former colonial powers. The destruction of the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan on August 20, 1998 illustrates the U.S. strategy. The plant produced 50% of the pharmaceutical available in the Sudan. The cost of EL Shifa products was 20% of the international market prices. It produced 90% of the antibiotics used for malaria which is the leading cause of death there. Major international pharmaceutical companies do not produce drugs for malaria, or engage in research to address the spread of new virulent types of malaria which are reaching epidemic levels in part of Africa and Asia. A single U.S. missile attack destroyed the single most important health facility in the Sudan and will cause thousands of deaths. Everyone in the Sudan, including the entire diplomatic corps, knew of the El Shifa plant and its importance to the health of the people. U.N. inspections in Iraq over a period of seven years have been manipulated by unproven U.S. claims time and time again. Strategically placed agents of the U.S. and British intelligence agencies in U.N. inspectors' positions have had the single purpose of continuing the sanctions by making false claims that Iraq is developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons with missiles and can complete the task in weeks, or months without inspection. The United States spends more on arms annually, $275 billion presently, than the rest of the Security Council combined. U.S. arms expenditures are approximately 25 times the gross national product of Iraq. The U.S. has in its stockpiles more nuclear bombs, chemical and biological weapons, more aircraft, rockets and delivery systems in number and sophistication than the rest of the world combined. Included are twenty commissioned Trident II nuclear submarines any one of which could destroy Europe. It is the U.S. that ought to be inspected. The U.S. is today, far more than when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., observed it in 1967, "the greatest purveyor of violence on earth." It is imperative to world peace, the survival of the U.N. as an organization of independent nations and to simple justice that the Security Council immediately inform the U.S. that it must not again attack Iraq, or any other country. Sincerely, Ramsey Clark Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such. (b) Causing serious bodily, or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on a group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Art. II, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
After reading those articles, please think try to understand and then make your statement... Use your brain it's very easy and obvious ... Don't be blind or fooled.... I know that it is more difficult for you than for me .. I CANNOT BE FOOLED easily by the media since I have another vision of the world which is a global vision and not one that is dictated to me such as the bad saddam and the good bush... I would say both of them are bastards but the embargo was not an Iraki one but a us one and it is the embargo that is killing people not saddam... It is obvious I think... If not read and reread those articles they are written by non muslim, non arab and people that have been to Irak so they know much better that you and me what they are talking about...
I would say Saratoga is right, you sucks and no I never said that muslims were perfect and american devil contrary to others in this forum.. America is a great country and I have great respect for it and there are very good people up there.. I simply don't accept its foreign policy.. BUt apparently it is also the case of some american you do not need to be a fanatic muslim and arab like me to be against what is done by the US in the name of human rights...
traderfut2000, You've opened my eyes. Now I understand. Saddam is a good person. He loves his country, he loves his people. He has never hurt, harmed or killed anyone (nevermind his own people). The US is evil and out to destroy this saint. Because the US wants its oil. Saddam selflessly spends from the coffers of his government for the construction of hospitals, roads, water treatment plants, schools, etc. Those 'palaces' shown on TV are fakes made up by the media to brainwash the masses. The few Iraqis who make it out alive are all telling lies for God knows what reason. (Maybe they are just jealous that they aren't a saint like Saddam.) Saddam doesn't spend one cent on himself and lives in abject poverty despite the pleas of his people to atleast buy a rug for his small cave. That's just the kind of guy he is! He plows every and all funds into the country and for the people. Its those bastards that tie his hands and don't let him do more for his people. Saddam doesn't spend his money on weapons, a secret police network or any other 'bad' things. This is what the US does. Because it is evil. If Saddam wasn't under the embargo, Iraq would surpass Switzerland in life quality. That is why they are trying to stop him. He is a genius, a renaissance man. Got it. How could I have been so blind!!
I am here to help... But I never said Saddam was a good man.. still your silly interpretation and I never said the US were evil.. your silly interpretation once again But if you don't know how to read english and specifically the 2 articles I posted then I am sorry... I am no english teacher... But the guy from the UN was not pro Saddam but his words were clear the US are killing Iraki chikdren and if you don't understand that and if you don't trut this source that is a source from a guy who was there then I can nothing for you
You are really childish... How old are you 12????? We are dealing with serious things here... It's about human lives... Saddam is not worse than the crazy Sharon and still sharon is labelled a man of peace ... a guy that is trying to intimidate a democratically elected man Yasser Arafat and Israel is state that violated all the resolutions during 50 years.. So Sharon and Israel can violates all the UN resolutioins but Saddam cannot and he is a bad guy.. this is so childish but what is scarrying is your reactions since you don't seem to care about innocent human lives... If you want war then go to Irak.. Bush will be happy to send you there go and see the sufferings of iraki... But Bush will certainly not go with you like all the other good guy of the US governement... and by the way take Dotlash with you...
I'll make you a deal traderfut, I will go and fight on the american side if you will go and fight on the Iraqi side. Deal ?
... I am against war and I don't want to fight with Irak or with the US.... But if you are so pro war then go for it... and you will see what war means and it sucks... you will be traumatised for your whole life and it will haunt you and then you will become a real human being and a real man which for the time being you are far from...
Babak ...So telling the Iraqi people to 'do something' is (if you will excuse me) extremely naive... No offense taken. I was replying on a more general sense, and in the framework of immediate military attack. If they ask for help from western nations we should consider giving them. When the situation reaches unbearable limits, uprisings do happen and topple the dictator at the top. ...Actually, some of them tried. You know what happened to them? The were exposed to a cocktail of lethal gas. All of them. Saddam wanted to make a vivid example to all that this was the consequence of challenging him. Women, children, old men, no one was spared. Sarin gas doesn't ask questions. It just kills... If I recall the facts correctly, the gas was used against the Kurdish, that were seeking independence, and they were helping Iran when in war with Iraq. And at that time we the United States of America were fully in support of Saddam. And yes you are correct, war is hell, and that is the last thing we should opt for not the first. But I also think we have other way greater priority problems that we need to deal with before we go out there. Thank you for the response. Just a thought: how would/should we respond if China tomorrow goes in and topples Saddam (for humanitarian reasons of course) and they set up their own puppet gov't? or Russia? After all they are members of the UN punishing Iraq for defying un resolutions. Russia is at present the biggest trading partner with Iraq. Russians can provide Iraq with all the nukes and additional bios and chems Saddam wants. And we are the ones that sold him all the Anthrax and Chems he asked for when he was fighting Iran. Before we go out there swinging and throwing bombs around, maybe we should rethink out foreign policies. And what are we providing Pakistan now? After we are done using them for a base against the taliban then what?. Pakistan has demonstrated nuclear capability (even hinted attack/defense) against India and who knows what else they have. I just hope that cool heads prevail. Josh