You said you wanted proof of the ongoing bombing, so that's what I've concentrated on here, even though the bombing of Iraq since 1998 has only killed a few hundred people (Iraq claims 311 civilians killed and 927 wounded by these air attacks, according to Reuters 12/26/00), while sanctions have killed over a million since 1990, mostly children under age five. I already had mentioned some sources on sanctions in my essay, such as the 60 Minutes interview with Madeleine Albright on 5/12/96, the Foreign Affairs article May/June 1999 "Sanctions of Mass Destruction," and a 3/9/00 Boston Globe article.
As for depleted uranium (DU), I said its half life is in the billions of years, but to be more exact, it has a half-life of 4.5 billion years (see Christian Science Monitor 1/11/01 "Bullet Debate: Answers in Iraq" and Christian Science Monitor 4/29/99 special report, "The Trail of a Bullet"). When I was a US Army Armor officer, I had a classified briefing in 1985 on tank munitions including DU, but today's unclassified reports have disclosed DU's dangers, so there is no need to reveal my classified briefing.
I felt like I was being asked to prove that cigarette smoking causes cancer, because if the media did their job, what the US is doing to Iraq should be common knowledge. I've been involved with Iraq issues since the mid 1990s, so it always amazes me how little other Americans know about Iraq. I have hundreds of pages of material, and there is more in the news every week (but not on the front page). To quote Tom Jackson of Voices in the Wilderness, "Anyone who has been watching can tell you that the bombings happen at least a couple of times per week."
Unfortunately, TV news only seems to cover one international story a year. Last year if it didn't involve Elian Gonzalez, it didn't make the news, and in 1999, the story was Kosovo. "Perhaps there will also be a day when journalists realize their deafening silence was a form of complicity". Most US newspapers feel that if they do one Iraq story a year, they've covered the issue (an exception is the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which last week, January 17, 2001, ran seven articles about Iraq).
You wrote, "The main [claim] that I think will concern a lot of people is the claim that we are bombing Iraq every other day. That seems very impossible not to be reported in any media." Well, it is reported, but not prominently. Newspaper articles frequently call the ongoing bombing of Iraq "The forgotten war."
As of this Tuesday 1/23/01, the US has already bombed Iraq at least twice in the last four days (Saturday 1/20/01 in the South, killing six civilians, and Monday 1/22/01 in both the North and South). Both attacks were reported by the AP and Reuters. Saturday's was also reported by the BBC, and by the New York Times on 1/22/01. Unfortunately smaller papers don't report these "routine" bombings.
This week's January 21, 2001 BBC News online article, "It was the highest death toll in several months of raids," reads in part: "People in southern Iraq lashed out against the United States and Britain as they buried six people killed in an Allied air strike the day before. It is the highest death toll in several months of patrols through air exclusion zones set up by the US and Britain to protect Iraqi opposition groups from possible government attacks. Iraq does not recognize the exclusion zones and says Western air strikes have killed more than 300 civilians in two years. Witnesses said the raids struck a cattle-feed depot run by the agriculture ministry 120 km south of Samawa, near the Iraqi-Saudi border. They said six of the employees at the warehouse were killed and three slightly injured. A US statement said Allied planes had attacked Iraq's radar systems and anti-aircraft artillery but made no mention of civilian casualties. The air exclusion zones were set up to protect Shi'a in the south and Kurds in the north from possible government attacks, but they are not backed by a UN resolution or recognized by Iraq. Western warplanes have frequently bombed targets since Baghdad started resisting the patrols two years ago. Recently a British newspaper reported that London was rethinking its policy because of the high number of civilian casualties -- a claim the Foreign Office denied. The US and Britain accuse Iraq of using civilian areas as a cover for its anti-aircraft guns. Reports from the area 24 hours after the attack said no military units were visible."
This week's January 22, 2001 New York Times article, "Iraq Rebuilt Weapons Factories, Officials Say" reads in part: "WASHINGTON, Jan. 21 ...American and British planes continue to patrol the 'no-flight' zones over northern and southern Iraq. Such patrols are routinely fired upon; indeed, Iraq launched a surface-to-air missile at one only hours before Mr. Bush took office on Saturday, prompting American jets to respond by striking antiaircraft batteries and a radar site. Such strikes help ratchet up Iraqi anger at the United States; today, the Iraqis said the American strikes killed six civilians in Samawa, an assertion that American military officials did not immediately dispute, while noting that they had not intended to strike civilian targets..." NY Times.
Since December 1998, US and British jets have flown more than as many combat missions as NATO pilots did during the 78 days of bombing Yugoslavia, flying 280,000 sorties (Pentagon sources cited in the Washington Post, June 16, 2000) and dropping over 1,650 bombs on Iraq (New York Times, Oct. 7, 1999). Without US casualties, news media don't think it worth reporting, and over ten years of enforcing the "no-fly zones," no US or UK plane has ever been hit (yet, hundreds of times they've felt it necessary to drop bombs). The air attacks have killed 300 Iraqis including over 200 civilians. Hundreds of livestock have also died from the attacks, such as the May 17, 2000 attack on a shepherd's camp that killed several hundred sheep as well as 14 civilians including Omran Harbi Jawair, 13. In memory of this boy, the Remembering Omran Bus Tour has been crossing the United States and Canada over the last couple months (see FOR's weekly Iraq Action Digest).
Bombings of Iraq make wire service reports and some newspapers, but buried near the last page, as they've become routine, and as an NY Times editor told me about the bombing of Iraq in 1999, once it's routine, it's no longer news. To explain why, here's a quote from last week's 1/17/01 Seattle Post-Intelligencer article titled "U.S. planes still patrol and bullets still fly. It seldom makes the news, but U.S. isn't done keeping watch in the Gulf," which says, "For three months last summer, while Tack's squadron VAQ-134 flew missions over northern Iraq from an Air Force base in Turkey, shooting incidents erupted virtually every day. Tack's own father was unaware of the active shooting. After a decade, if no [American] one's hit, it's not news."
The New York Times, 8/13/99 article "U.S. Planes Have Been Striking Iraq All Year" said, "While the nation's attention has focused on Kosovo, American warplanes have quietly, methodically and with virtually no public discussion been attacking Iraq. Over the past eight months, American and British pilots have fired more than 1,100 missiles against 359 targets. That is more than triple the targets attacked in four furious days of strikes in December that followed Iraq's expulsion of UN weapons inspectors, an assault that provoked an international outrage. By another measure, the pilots have flown some two-thirds as many missions as NATO pilots flew over Yugoslavia in 78 days of around-the-clock war there. And there appears to be no end in sight to the war... Every few days, in almost numbing routine, they have struck missile sites, radar stations and radio towers across both the northern and southern zones. Since late July [1999], there has been a new flurry of strikes in response to newly vigorous Iraqi challenges."
That 8/13/99 New York Times article also supports my statement that all this violence was caused by Clinton's December 1998 impeachment trial bombing of Iraq: "Iraq has never recognized the zones, but rarely challenged allied patrols of them. After December's raids, however, Saddam declared the zones a violation of Iraq's sovereignty, and his troops have made good on threats to challenge them. American and British warplanes respond when challenged. The Pentagon says the air strikes are merely defensive responses to the provocations, meant to protect the pilots. But the targets American and British pilots strike are often not the ones that directly threaten them." NY Times.
On June 16, 2000, the Washington Post ran an excellent and unprecedented front-page story, "Under Iraq Skies, a Canvas of Death."
"TOQ AL-GHAZALAT, Iraq --Suddenly out of a clear blue sky, the forgotten war being waged by the United States and Britain over Iraq visited its lethal routine on the shepherds and farmers of Toq al-Ghazalat about 10:30 a.m. on May 17. Omran Harbi Jawair, 13, was squatting on his haunches at the time, watching the family sheep as they nosed the hard, flat ground in search of grass.... Omran, who liked to kick a soccer ball around this dusty village, had just finished fifth grade at the little school a 15-minute walk from his mud-brick home. A shepherd boy's summer vacation lay ahead.
"That is when the missile landed.
"Without warning, according to several youths standing nearby, the device came crashing down in an open field 200 yards from the dozen houses of Toq al-Ghazalat. A deafening explosion cracked across the silent land. Shrapnel flew in every direction. Four shepherds were wounded. And Omran, the others recalled, lay dead in the dirt, most of his head torn off, the white of his robe stained red.
"He was only 13 years old, but he was a good boy," sobbed Omran's father, Harbi Jawair, 61.
"What happened four weeks ago at Toq al-Ghazalat, 35 miles southwest of Najaf in southern Iraq, has become a recurring event in the Iraqi countryside. A week of conversations with wounded Iraqis and the families of those killed, around Najaf and in northern Iraq around Mosul, showed that civilian deaths and injuries are a regular part of the little-discussed U.S. and British air operation over Iraq.
"Lt. Gen. Yassin Jassem, spokesman for Iraq's air defense command, said about 300 Iraqis have been killed and more than 800 wounded by U.S. and British retaliatory attacks in the 18 months since President Saddam Hussein ordered his antiaircraft batteries to fire on allied warplanes enforcing 'no-fly' zones in northern and southern Iraq. Of those killed, Jassem said in an interview, "well more" than 200 were civilians like Omran Harbi Juwair, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. "The Iraqi death toll has been substantiated in part by a UN survey that examined some incidents independently and accepted Iraqi reports on others. While not conclusive on the overall toll, interviews and observations during lengthy drives through the regions where airstrikes have often been reported backed up the government's contention that civilian casualties have become routine.
"The Pentagon says more than 280,000 sorties have been flown in the near decade since the no-fly zones were imposed, without a single loss of aircraft to hostile fire."
"air attacks have occurred as well in vast, open fields or grazing grounds--such as in the strike at Toq al-Ghazalat--with no signs of any military target present or having been present near the sheep and the boys who tend them in scenes reminiscent of the Bible.
"The mounting toll--averaging one civilian death every other day by Iraq's count--has prompted France to freeze participation in enforcing the no-fly zones. Civilian casualties began to mount after Operation Desert Fox in December 1998--a 70-hour U.S. bombing campaign against targets across Iraq. Iraqi air defenses received orders after that campaign to fire on U.S. and British patrols, drawing retaliatory airstrikes. After Iraq's decision to challenge patrols regularly, U.S. forces were authorized to attack any Iraqi air defense target--even unconnected to a specific attack, or at a time well after any challenge--in retaliation for antiaircraft fire, radar illumination or missile launch.
"I was thrown to the ground and covered with dirt," recalled Ziad Ibrahim Taha, a 50-year-old shepherd. "Then another blast. It lifted me right up into the air.
"Taha was with scores of people on a broad, flat expanse of open land 45 miles west of Mosul just before 10 a.m. on May 12 of last year. As he and others in the nearby village of Abu Auani recalled it, two, perhaps three warplanes made repeated passes over the congregated villagers, firing missiles and raking the area with machine guns.
"According to Iraqi authorities, 14 people were killed on the spot and five more died later from their injuries. Forty-six people were wounded and several hundred sheep were killed. Taha's right leg was injured. Two of his sons, Mohammed, 24, and Ahmed, 20, were killed, leaving him with one remaining son.
"Taha and others in Abu Auani said a group of youths were tending 400 head of sheep that morning and had taken refuge from the searing sun in a goatskin tent pitched on the grazing range less than a mile from the village of 500 residents. Older people remained at home, tending to their affairs. Then, Taha said, he heard the tremendous crash of an exploding missile coming from the direction of the grazing range. Alarmed, he and many others from the village ran to the site. Inhabitants of several other nearby villages also ran to look.
"What they found, Taha said, was carnage. Many sheep lay dead or dying. Several of the young shepherds were killed or wounded. As the wounded boys were carried away and owners began to slaughter their injured sheep and round up those that had fled, the number of rescuers and onlookers grew.
"When all the people were there together, another plane came, and another missile came down," he recalled.
"Nine missiles were fired in all, as best as he can remember, over an area of about 200 square yards. He said aircraft firing machine guns crossed the zone twice.
Hama Mahmoud Ahmed, 20. "I was running away carrying a wounded boy on my shoulder," he said. But the boy got cut through his stomach. Another boy I saw nearby got his head cut off.
"The attack at Abu Auani was one of the few in which the U.S. military has acknowledged an error. A communique from Incirlik Air Base that day said. One of the targets, believed to have been a surface-to-air missile site, now appears to have been a nomadic camp with a number of livestock in the area.
"The airstrikes leave behind a lethal litter that could claim civilian casualties for years. Saoud Nouri Jassem, 12, Khalis Abdullah Jassem, 15, and Ahmed Omar Abdullah, 15, were killed. Fadhli Abdullah Jassem, 10, and Muzhir Abdullah Jassem, 9, were hospitalized and still carry their wounds. At the edge of the village, they picked up an unexploded piece of munition." --Washington Post, June 16, 2000
On February 3, 1999, the New York Times ran a story, "U.S. Presses Air Attacks on Iraq in a Low-Level War of Attrition" which said, "The almost daily American air strikes on Iraq have turned into the equivalent of a low-level war, hitting a wide range of military targets, some of which pose little immediate threat to American or British pilots patrolling much of Iraq's territory. Last week, National Security Adviser Sandy Berger disclosed that President Clinton had given American pilots wider authority to retaliate when threatened by Iraqi forces, allowing them to strike at any defense system, not just those that actually target the American aircraft. So far, neither the United States nor Britain has lost any pilots or aircraft in the skirmishes. Their tactics are designed, in part, to limit the possibility as much as possible, by attacking with long-range missiles. Last week, at least one American missile missed its intended target and struck a residential area in southern Iraq, the Pentagon acknowledged. Iraq claimed that 11 civilians died in the strike.
Mainstream media information may be hard to find in the U.S. However, there is loads of information from religious groups, the human rights community, and the peace community, e.g. Amnesty International, the Fellowship Of Reconciliation (FOR, America's largest and oldest interfaith peace group), the American Friends Service Committee, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Friends Journal, Veterans for Peace, the International Action Center, Voices in the Wilderness, Peace Action, just to name a few. European and other international media regularly cover Iraq (World Press Review carries some of them), but American journalists only cover Elian.
Every week there are rallies against the sanctions going on across the U.S. (as reported in FOR's weekly Iraq Action Digest), and several cities have WEEKLY vigils on Iraq sanctions/bombing. In the past two months there have been scores of vigils and rallies around the 10th anniversary of the Gulf War, as well as the Remembering Omran bus tour stopping at cities throughout the U.S. and Canada.
In addition to the attached, I have hundreds of pages of information on Iraq sanctions on paper, as well as videos and books. I also have hundreds of pages of Iraq sanctions information in electronic formats, because since 1998 I have been getting a weekly "Iraq Action Digest" email (often 10 pages long) from the Fellowship Of Reconciliation (FOR), America's largest and oldest interfaith peace group. I lost all but the past year's worth of FOR's emails when I changed jobs, but that's still hundreds of pages.
The U.S. Pentagon regularly lists attacks on their web sites. I found some web sites from the U.S. European Command, which haven't been updated recently, but still list 67 different bombings of Iraq within 13 months.
My personal experience includes:
The Gulf War started 1/16/91 on my birthday, and my wedding date August 6, besides being my brother's birthday, is unfortunately the anniversaries of Iraq sanctions in 1990 and the 1945 Hiroshima bombing. So on our wedding anniversary, I brought my family to Washington DC in pouring rain for the August 6, 2000 march and rally to protest ten years of sanctions. Earlier, I had helped the Voices in the Wilderness "peace walkers" cross the Staten Island bridges. I've gone to symposiums at Princeton and biweekly meetings of an Iraq sanctions group in Princeton. At the symposiums, I heard speeches by Denis Haliday and Hans Von Sponeck (two consecutive UN assistant secretaries general in charge of the "oil-for-food" program who resigned in protest over the sanctions), as well as former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and others. I've talked with Americans, British, Canadians, and others who have visited Iraq and seen the wholesale destruction from sanctions. It has been my sad experience to watch videos of Iraq sanction victims and bombing victims. I have tried to ship baby formula to Iraq in violation of U.S. law, and know the prison term I could face for doing so. I gave a speech in sacrament meeting on Iraq sanctions, and was invited to speak about sanctions to the Vietnam Veterans of America as well.
Other Links
The Washington Post picked up on the AP story of the 1/22/01 bombings.
The 6/16/00 Washington Post story "Under Iraqi skies, a canvas of death" is still available at the Common Dreams website
The 1/17/01 Seattle Post-Intelligencer special report on Iraq (7 stories)
The 1/17/01 Seattle P-I story, "Sanctions hurt children more than Saddam"
The 1/17/01 Seattle P-I story "U.S. Planes Still Patrol and Bullets Still Fly"
The 8/5/00 Seattle P-I story, "Sanctions take grim toll on Iraqi children"
Some articles not attached here with information about the last couple of bombings: Britain Shows Flexibility on Iraq Arms Inspections Iraq Says US, British Jets Attack Its South, North http://iraqaction.org/nofly.html ("No-Fly Zones In Iraq" web site listing dozens of attacks)
A few more web sites with more information about Iraq:
http://www.afsc.org/conscience/Default.htm (American Friends Service Committee)
http://www.geocities.com/iraqinfo (Iraq Resource Information Site)
http://www.vitw.org (Voices in the Wilderness)
http://www.vitw.org/airwar.html (Voices in the Wilderness)
http://www.forusa.org (Fellowship of Reconciliation)
http://saveageneration.org/thecrisis/
http://www.eucom.mil (U.S. European Command, a Pentagon web site)
http://leb.net/IAC/ (Iraq Action Coalition)
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/iraq-index.html (New York Times Iraq index)
David L. Harten
Talk about a bag of wind!!!!
David, David, David. How many times do we need to tell you that he wasn't impeached for his lack of morals. HE WAS IMPEACHED BECAUSE HE LIED UNDER OATH!!!!!
"Clinton actually used the Muslim holy month of Ramadan as an excuse for the timing of the bombing. This may have fooled the American media, but didn't fool Muslims, as Clinton continued the bombing even after Ramadan had started (but halted the bombing as soon as the impeachment vote ended). "
I guess I missed that press conference.
Oh, by the way, the contributors and sources cited are very much made up of left-wing nut-burgers. Voices in the Wilderness. . .sheesh. . . .come on, those guys hate the US, not Clinton, but the entire US.
"As for depleted uranium (DU), I said its half life is in the billions of years, but to be more exact, it has a half-life of 4.5 billion years (see Christian Science Monitor 1/11/01 "Bullet Debate: Answers in Iraq" and Christian Science Monitor 4/29/99 special report, "The Trail of a Bullet"). When I was a US Army Armor officer, I had a classified briefing in 1985 on tank munitions including DU, but today's unclassified reports have disclosed DU's dangers, so there is no need to reveal my classified briefing." Well, I've had my share of classified briefings on the subject as well, and NO way is DU some sort of cause agent for any alleged illnesses. DU penetrating a body is of course, going to kill it. DU asprirated in dose's associated with being in a closed space are not of any concentration to cause any degree of lasting harm. We have studied the subject extensively and the DoD is quite away of the allegations and investigated them and found then not credible or medically verified.
Excellent reference: http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/
I'd seriously consider the article posted in this thread to be propaganda
BC will never pay any price for his crimes.
Let him fade into history as soon as possible by not ruminating on his sorry performance.
And he wasn't. He was impeached for lying about it under oath in a civil trial. But I agree, it was the least of his crimes.
Even they got it.
WOW!
This author is so far out in left field, he's criticizing the Clinton administration for being immoral war mongers.
Oh. . and by the way. . .I've flown Southern Watch missions and dropped a bomb or two. . .and this nonsense about US bombing who-knows-what for no good reason is unmitigated, pure nonsense and I'll state this plainly: David is a liar.
How many times does it need to be said that Bill Clinton was not impeached because of his affair with Monica Lewinsky? He was impeached for lying under oath and obstructing justice.
The left can comfort themselves by blaming the "puritanical impulses" of the vast Christian Conspiracy that supposedly impeached him, but the law is the law. At least in the House of Representatives it is.
If anyone actually reads this, please provide a synopsis.
Excellent article. The man who died today opposed the sanctions. Sanctions are excessively cruel and hurt first the weakest members of a society.
The reason DU has a half-life of 4.5 billion years is that it's not very radioactive.
That's what the 'Depleted' part means!
"as my wife likes to say, Americans elected him to be President, not Pope."
If your wife's boss insisted she service him orally, and she felt she was denied promotion because she refused [Jones] would she care?
What if other women at her office were promoted ahead of her or given valuable interviews with Revlon and the United Nations because they serviced him?
The investigation of Clinton was about Sexual Discrimination and Sexual Harassment. Unfortunately, when the MSM whipped out their "just about sex" propaganda, people like you and your wife were more than eager to swallow.
Read later.
In your spare time, please throw this one on the pile...