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WASHINGTON - March
27 -
Dr. APRIL HURLEY, MARTIN EDWARDS, Ret. U.S. Army Captain
CHARLES LITEKY, KATHY KELLY, DANNY MULLER, vitw@vitw.org, www.iraqpeaceteam.org, http://electroniciraq.net/news/426.shtml
Hurley and Edwards (al-Dar Hotel), Liteky and Kelly (al-Fanar
Hotel) are in Baghdad with 20 other members of the Iraq Peace
Team. Phone lines are intermittent. Team members are assessing
damage, visiting hospitals and placing articles and photos on
the web. Several additional team members have recently crossed
into Iraq from Jordan. Muller, in Chicago, is in regular touch
with team members.
JOY GORDON,
jgordon@fair1.fairfield.edu, www.harpers.org/online/cool_war
Gordon, a Fairfield University professor, wrote "Cool War: Economic
Sanctions as Weapons of Mass Destruction," which appeared in Harper's
magazine (Nov. 2002). She said today: "The head of USAID, Andrew
Natsios, claimed Tuesday that the Iraqi regime chose 'not to repair
the water system or replace old equipment with new equipment,
so in many cases people are basically drinking untreated sewer
water in their homes and have been for some years.' But it has
been the U.S. government that has prevented the procurement of
the material needed to fix the water system. As a veto-bearing
member of the Security Council's 661 Committee, whose approval
is required for infrastructure contracts for the oil-for-food
program, the U.S. government unilaterally blocked billions of
dollars of urgent humanitarian goods, including critical water
and sanitation supplies. This, despite the frequent pleas from
the Secretary General and continual requests from agencies such
as UNICEF. While child mortality rates skyrocketed from water-borne
diseases and other illnesses, the U.S. government unilaterally
blocked or delayed urgently needed humanitarian contracts, including
three sewage treatment plants, refrigerators for blood banks --
even $210 million of child vaccines."
JAMES JENNINGS,
jimjennings@earthlink.net, www.conscienceinternational.org
President of Conscience International, a humanitarian relief organization,
Jennings is currently in Amman, Jordan, working with the U.N.
and other relief organizations. He said today: "The U.S. government
has recently discovered the Geneva Conventions, along with Iraq's
desperate humanitarian need, after years of deliberate deafness
to urgent pleas. Now, ironically, these two agendas have suddenly
become a lately-invented casus belli for invasion. The international
humanitarian aid community is firmly against the idea of armies
posing as humanitarians, with bread in one hand and a gun in the
other. This discredits genuine humanitarian assistance and puts
the lives of aid workers in jeopardy."
SARAH ZAIDI,
szaidi@cesr.org, www.cesr.org
Zaidi is the research director of the Center for Economic and
Social Rights and coauthor of the report, "The Human Costs of
War in Iraq," issued in February following a CESR research visit
to Iraq. The report warned of a humanitarian catastrophe in the
event of war and outlined likely failures of water and sewage
systems, as is now occurring in Basra.
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