Recently, it's been reported that Iraq refused to allow a new group of UN experts to assess the impact of sanctions. But we should recall that Iraq already pays the salaries of 400 UN workers in the country. These workers file regular reports about conditions within Iraq. Instead of asking Iraq to foot the bill for new assessment teams, why not heed reports already filed by UN workers in Iraq? Why not draw from the conclusions of Mr. Denis Halliday and Mr. Hans von Sponeck, both of whom resigned their senior UN posts because they couldn't in conscience continue to supervise UN policies that directly harm Iraqi civilians.

Supporters of sanctions have criticized visits like ours, saying that the Iraqi government welcomes us only because we are useful for propaganda purposes. But our visits give us the insights necessary to balance the reports, which prevail in the US media, and the claims of government officials who have no direct knowledge of Iraq. Democracy is based on information. Our accounts of living with needy families in southern Iraq are necessary if the US public is to make clear, informed decisions about our relations with Iraqi people. We don't return with government propaganda. We report what we've seen and heard. Our main contact in Basra is the Catholic Archbishop who is in union with Rome. The Pope has called the sanctions cruel and pitiless and, with numerous other religious leaders, heads of state, members of Parliament, and two Nobel laureates, has called for an end to sanctions. Are all of these people anti-sanctions activists?

US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright asserts that the US now believes force is not the answer to remedy Iraq's rejection of a new UN weapons inspection team. If force is not the answer, then why has the US been regularly bombing Iraq? While I was there, US and British planes attacked a railway station, a grain storage area, and decrepit tire stores in a rundown area? I visited each of these spots and was bewildered by the show of force. A fraction of the money used to launch the daily sorties that patrol and bomb in the no-fly zones could solve a host of problems for Iraqi civilians.

Albright told news reporters that religious groups who believe the US engineered sanctions are the cause of suffering in Iraq hold Alice in Wonderland fantasies. Yet Ms.Albright fantasizes that the whole problem can be reduced to simple, cartoonized terms of the "good guys," - US policy makers - and the demonized "bad guy," Saddam Hussein. Ms. Albright says it's very simple-he is the villain. Those words work well for public relations purposes, but the imagined simplicity of the situation hardly coheres with the complex reality that afflicts Iraqis with whom I lived this summer.

If you're a child, the villain is not Saddam Hussein and it's not Bill Clinton. If you're a child with a queasy stomach, nausea and weakness, the villain is diahhreah that might become dysentery and the villain is a terrible sickness you can't control. If you're a child who wears the same clothes every day and sleeps in those clothes and can't go to school because you have no shoes, the villain is poverty, relentless, inescapable poverty. I grew very close to radiant little girls with gleaming eyes who, upon hearing US warplanes fly overhead, instantly plugged up their ears and shouted out loud to drown out the sound. The villain is panicky fear that the plane will again bomb your street.

Is it an Alice in Wonderland fantasy to allow people to sell their products in a classic capitalist manner and buy what they need? If you don't allow people to sell what they have and buy what they need, they suffer. That's reality, not fantasy.

Ms. Albright claims that the regime's strategy is to ignore UN charters and seek to produce at all costs the deadliest weapons humanity has ever known. It sounds like she should be talking about another country. The US has sought to preserve, at all costs, its ability to sell weapons to Iraq's neighboring states. Meanwhile, the US has rejected the nuclear non-proliferation weapon treaty, refused to ratify the comprehensive test ban treaty, refused to sign the land mines treaty and insisted it can bomb Iraq without authorization from the UN Security Council. The country that has developed, stored, sold and used more weapons of mass destruction than any other country on earth is the United States.

Scott Ritter, a former US Marine employed by the UN as a chief weapons inspector says Iraq is quantitatively disarmed. He strongly favors lifting sanctions.

Iraq has been criticized for turning down an offer from the UK to provide free medial treatment in the form of a "flying hospital," a project already approved by the UN sanctions committee. At first glance, this may seem unwise, but we should consider this offer from the perspective of a country dealing with two other countries, the US and the UK, that regularly bomb Iraq and that have vowed to overthrow Iraq's government. Would the US accept a flying hospital from a country actively bombing us at the same time? Is the flying hospital going to take care of the people who've just been bombed? Britain is participating in the no-fly zone patrol that hasn't been approved by the UN.

Ms. Albright says "We must continue to do all we can to ease the hardships faced by Iraq's people, but we must also defend the integrity of this institution (the UN) our security and international law." Rather than defend the integrity of the UN, the US led sanctions have turned the UN into an instrument of economic warfare waged directly against children. From the Gulf War onward, the US has violated international law by targeting civilian populations. Iraq does not pose a threat to its neighbors, most of whom have steadily built their own arsenals with US made weapons, making purchases that prop up our economy. Iraq poses a threat to the US only because it threatens the US ability to control Iraq's most precious resources.

The US State Dept had the opportunity to remove Saddam Hussein from power in 1991, following the Gulf War, and chose not to. The Bush administration explained that it did not want Iraq to become fragmented and that it felt the Baath party was the only group that could hold it together. They continue to want the current regime to be strong internally and weak externally. They want to keep Saddam Hussein in power, crippled, but as a convenient excuse to maintain the economic sanctions and US dominance in the region. This is their policy, but they don't want to verbalize it. This is what they've achieved, but they've achieved it at a terrible price for Iraqi children

If I am an Alice in Wonderland for believing that the lives of over a half million children are not an acceptable price for this so-called achievement, then head me toward the looking glass.

-Kathy Kelly
September 14, 2000

Kathy Kelly is a cofounder of Voices in the Wilderness, the first U.S. grassroots organization to bring activists into Iraq to witness the effect of sanctions, to bring food and medicine to the people of Iraq, and to educate the public upon their return.

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