by Gabriele Zamparini

The UN sanctions against Iraq, wanted by the governments of the US and the UK and imposed on 6 August 1990 (HIROSHIMA DAY) ended only with the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. In 1996, Madeleine Albright – US Ambassador at the United Nations and soon to become Secretary of State under President Clinton – said about half million children murdered by those sanctions: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it." And the sanctions went on.

Those sanctions killed a terrifying number of innocent people. One million? Two millions? Will we ever know? Denis Halliday, former UN Assistant Secretary General and Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq (1997-98) said: “I had been instructed to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide: a deliberate policy that had effectively killed well over a million individuals, children and adults.” After thirty-four years with the United Nations, he resigned in protest over the effects of the embargo on the civilian population. [Source: The New Rulers of the World, by John Pilger, Verso, 2002]

Hans Von Sponeck, who had succeeded Denis Halliday as UN Assistant Secretary General and Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq (1998-2000), resigned on February 13, 2000. He asked: “How long should the civilian population of Iraq be exposed to such punishment for something they have never done?” Like Halliday, he had been with the United Nations for more than thirty years. [Source: Ibidem]

To understand the New Iraq one needs to remember that genocidal embargo, as well as the First Gulf War.

The New Iraq: Genocide & Cholera Freedom

A few days ago I titled my blog Innocence in the Time of Cholera. A few days later IRIN reported: Heath services struggle to prevent cholera spreading.

The New Scientist reports: "A cholera epidemic has been on the cards since Iraqi water treatment plants were destroyed in the 1991 Gulf war. In 2003 the WHO reported that the UN trade embargo had prevented repairs and as a result. Now one of these outbreaks seems to be spreading out of control."

For an interesting view from inside Iraq, read this Iraqi blogger

As the British liberal Independent would say, "sowing and watering the seeds of democracy". By the way, the "anti-war" Independent hasn't given yet to its readers the results of a study conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB). The ORB's study suggests a total of 1,220,580 deaths as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (ie as a result of violence rather than a natural death such as old age). You may listen to an interview with Johnny Heald, co-author of the study, on the US National Public Radio

The British media watchdog MediaLens informed us that Gilbert Burnham, MD and Professor of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Les Roberts, Associate Professor at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, submitted [Note: submitted does not mean published] this op-ed last Thursday to three US papers: Ignorance of Iraqi death toll no longer an option

Leila Fadel is the Baghdad bureau chief for McClatchy Newspapers. Read her latest report from Baghdad. From "Inside Iraq", a blog updated by Iraqi journalists working for McClatchy Newspapers, you may read Now we have Article 41, an interesting update on women rights in liberated Iraq.

Remember the infamous debaathification? Baathists, Sunni and Shia alike, Muslim and Christian alike, have been hunt, tortured and killed by the US Occupation, its puppet government of sectarian warlords taking orders from their Iranian masters, the sectarian pro-Iranian militias, especially the Badr Brigades and the Mahdi Army, and yes, with the help of Iran as well.

This Baathist-hunt in occupied Iraq has been part of a ferocious ethnic cleansing against Sunni, and a vicious, systematic mass murder campaign against nationalists, the Iraqi resistance and its sympathizers (or those perceived as such), Palestinians (while IRAN claims to be seriously concerned for the faith of the Palestinian People, the backed Iranian militias operating in Iraq have been hunting and killing the Palestinians of Iraq. Read also here), against gay… and whoever doesn’t conform to the New Iraq.

According to Amnesty International, there are about 4.2 million displaced Iraqis, 2.2 million of whom are within Iraq, with the vast majority of the rest in Syria and Jordan.

I have already linked and suggested this excellent article by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., the president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a research and educational center of classical liberalism, libertarian political theory, and the Austrian School of economics. Rockwell writes:

The US has unleashed bloodshed in Iraq that is rarely known even in countries we think of as violent and torn by civil strife. It is amazing to think that this has occurred in what was only recently a liberal and civilized country by the region’s standards. This was a country that had a problem with immigration, particularly among the well-educated and talented classes. They went to Iraq because it was the closest Arab proxy to Western-style society that one could find in the area.

It was the US that turned this country into a killing field. Why won’t we face this? Why won't we take responsibility? The reason has to do with this mysterious thing called nationalism, which makes an ideological religion of the nation's wars. We are god-like liberators. They are devil-like terrorists. No amount of data or contrary information seems to make a dent in this irreligious faith. So it is in every country and in all times. Here is the intellectual blindness that war generates.

The title of Rockwell's article, None Dare Call It Genocide.

This is the New Iraq, the result of that Supreme International Crime, the war of aggression waged by the United States, the United Kingdom and their despicable Coalition of the Willing. This is the New Iraq, the result of the infamous political process and its sectarian, death squads government whose puppets take orders from their American and Iranian masters. This is the New Iraq, as annihilated by the Western liberators and those sectarian militias imported directly from (Badr Brigades) and backed by (Mahdi Army) Iran, a country that actively participated to the supreme international crime, the war of aggression against Iraq. This is the New Iraq, a country that had to be wiped out in the geopolitical game for the control of “the greatest strategic prize in history”. Welcome to the New Middle East...

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