US troops 'starve Iraqi citizens'(UN Scumbag)

BBC ^ | 10/15/05

[nypokerface]

A senior United Nations official has accused US-led coalition troops of depriving Iraqi civilians of food and water in breach of humanitarian law.

Human rights investigator Jean Ziegler said they had driven people out of insurgent strongholds that were about to be attacked by cutting supplies.

Mr Ziegler, a Swiss-born sociologist, said such tactics were in breach of international law.

A US military spokesman in Baghdad denied the allegations.

"A drama is taking place in total silence in Iraq, where the coalition's occupying forces are using hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population," Mr Ziegler told a press conference in Geneva.

He said coalition forces were using "starvation of civilians as a method of warfare."

"This is a flagrant violation of international law," he added.

'False allegations'

Mr Ziegler said he understood the "military rationale" when confronting insurgents who do not respect "any law of war".

But he insisted that civilians who could not leave besieged cities and towns for whatever reason should not suffer as a result of this strategy.

Lieutenant Colonel Steve Boylan, a US military spokesman, later rejected the accusations.

"Any allegations of us withholding basic needs from the Iraqi people are false," he said.

Even though some supplies had been delayed during fighting, he argued that "all precautions" were being taken to take care of civilians.

"It does not do relief supplies any good if you have them going into a firefight," he said.

The Geneva Conventions forbid depriving civilians of food and water.

Cutting off food supply lines and destroying food stocks is also forbidden.

Mr Ziegler, who opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq, said he would urge the UN General Assembly to condemn this practice when he presented his yearly report on 27 October.

[advance_copy]

Ironic that it was the UN, by their "oil for food" fraud committed in collusion with Saddam Hussein, who helped deprive Iraqis for years. Now this minion of the UN falsely accuses brave Americans, who not only brought basic sustenance, but also freedom to Iraqis.

[pissant]

Mr. Ziegler can FOAD

[John Jorsett]

Here's a disembowelment of this bogus claim.

The United Nations accuses the United States of war crimes: Fisking Jean Ziegler

Jean Ziegler, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, has accused the United States of intentionally starving Iraqi civilians:

"A drama is taking place in total silence in Iraq, where the coalition's occupying forces are using hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population," Mr Ziegler told a press conference.

He said coalition forces were using "starvation of civilians as a method of warfare."

"This is a flagrant violation of international law," he added.

Needless to say, we denied the charge.

Ziegler, who is an outspoken opponent of the Coalition's invasion of Iraq, is going to seek condemnation of American tactics by the General Assembly at the end of October when he issues his report.

This is the same Jean Ziegler, by the way, who claimed back in March that twice as many children were "starving" in the new Iraq as under Saddam. According to the BBC, Ziegler alleged that "[w]hen Saddam Hussein was overthrown, about 4% of Iraqi children under five were going hungry; now that figure has almost doubled to 8%."

Since pre-invasion Iraq was not known for its outstanding public health data, I wondered what the source was for Ziegler's allegation. After some tiresome hunting through the United Nations web site, I found this report (pdf), which claims an increase in acute malnutrition in Iraqi children from 4% just before the war to 7.7% in 2004 (see paragraph 19). Expecting to see some original United Nations data, imagine my disappointment to follow the footnote for the pre-war data to an obscure link to this press release. Yes, Ziegler's cited evidence for his claim of surging acute malnutrition among Iraq's children is the "October surprise" Lancet article on civilian deaths, which study Slate's Fred Kaplan discredited here and the Chicago Boyz here (in the spirit of fairness, Crooked Timber's strong defense of the study is here). So, Ziegler's eruption to the press in March did not cite to any original finding of the United Nations for the pre-war data, only the recitation of the Lancet claims as if they were new in his report to the United Nations.

Presumably, Ziegler relied on the Lancet paper because the United Nations reported in 2000 -- back when international human rights organizations were for repealing the sanctions that were containing Saddam -- that a quarter of all Iraqi children suffered from "chronic malnutrition." (pdf, paragraph 65) It is not clear how the United Nations term "chronic malnutrition" differs from Ziegler's "chronic undernourishment" and "acute malnutrition." If "chronic malnutrition" and "chronic undernourishment" mean the same thing, then even if one accepts Ziegler's rehashing of the Lancet data conditions do not seem to have gotten worse since before the war.

Interestingly, Ziegler's March 2005 claim that 7.7% of Iraqi children suffer from "acute malnutrition" is also at odds with other contemporaneous United Nations data. In April 2005, the United Nations published a huge survey of living conditions in Iraq in 2004, one year after the invasion. The United Nations "living conditions" report contains a lot of data about childhood nutrition, including a 7.7% number which I assume is the basis for Ziegler's factoid. Apparently, in 2004, 7.7% of Iraqi children under 5 suffered from "severe undernutrition" (not Ziegler's "accute malnutrition") measured by comparing the actual height of the children to the expected height for their age (p. 57). However, the same report shows that only 2.6% of children were severely undernourished by comparing their actual weight with the expected weight for their age (p. 56), and only 1% suffered from "acute malnutrition" measured by weight compared to the expected weight for the height of the child (p. 58). Ziegler, therefore, took the worst measure of "severe undernutrition" (height to expected height for age), called it "acute malnutrition" and compared it to the pre-war data estimated by the Lancet paper. On this basis he claimed that "acute malnutrition" had "doubled" since the invasion.

Interestingly, if one compares the April 2005 "living conditions" survey with data offered before the war by UN agencies opposed to the sanctions, childhood nutrition has improved considerably. This is probably no more valid a comparison than Ziegler's cherry-picking comparison of the "living conditions" data to the Lancet's retrospective survey, but I have not found anybody who has made this point.

In any case, even if, arguendo, the data in the Lancet paper is as valid as Crooked Timber argues, in March 2005 Ziegler appears to have deliberately misrepresented the data that the United Nations published just a few weeks later. Presumably, he did this in the service of his political beliefs about Operations Iraqi Freedom.

It will be interesting, therefore, to see Ziegler's ultimate report on American tactics, which is not expected for a couple of weeks. Will it involve original research, or will it be yet another derivative restatement of somebody else's study?

[Gay State Conservative]

Mr Ziegler, a Swiss-born sociologist....

Aren't the Swiss the ones who played footsie with the Nazis during WWII and managed not to suffer a single casualty?

Yah,I thought so.

Note to Herr Zeigler...the United States of America will *not* be lectured to by Switzerland or any Swiss citizen! Got it???????

[26lemoncharlie]

Time to withold the "FOOD AND WATER" from the UN and athe rest of the Socialist world!! The Theives at the UN should be prosected and HUng, WHY are these Criminals in the Oil for Food scandal above the LAW! This Swiss Miss, Official should clean up his own back yard.

[EagleUSA]

A senior United Nations official has accused US-led coalition troops of depriving Iraqi civilians of food and water in breach of humanitarian law.
-------
Talk about MASSIVE HYPOCRISY ???

[Americanexpat]

The US gives residents time to evacuate, saw it during other sieges, if they are still in there they are most likely supporters or sympathizers. I don't see a damn thing wrong for witholding food and water to make the bad guys surrender.

My sympathy button is broke today.

[VRWCTexan]

January 2003
http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=105&sid=1593122

Jean Ziegler, a Swiss UN ambassador, has launched broadsides against capitalism and its proponents during a speech at the World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre.

To rapturous public applause, the sociologist and author railed against capitalism and the elites – Bush, Sharon, Putin and bin Laden - as well as the UN and IMF.

[VRWCTexan]

http://66.218.69.11/search/cache?p=Mr+Ziegler%2C+a+Swiss-born+sociologist&sm=Yahoo%21+Search&toggle=1&ei=UTF-8&u=world.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/1794&w=mr+ziegler+swiss+born+sociologist&d=GU7BsWFULenY&icp=1&.intl=us

Sept 2005 (following Israel's pull-out in Gaza)

A UN report, by Jean Ziegler, a Swiss sociologist and UN special envoy, blames Israel’s security policies for “collective punishment” of the Palestinians. The 25-page report says 22% of Palestinian children under the age of five suffer severe malnutrition, and most families have only one meal a day.

[VRWCTexan]

Israel accused of starving West Bank
Miftah 10/6/2003

A United Nations report which blames Israel for causing starvation in Gaza and the West Bank has prompted a furious diplomatic row with the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon. The leaked report by Jean Ziegler, a Swiss sociologist and UN special envoy, blames Israel's security policies for "collective punishment" of the Palestinians.

Ziegler spent 10 days in the occupied territories in July and was due to present his report to the UN General Assembly in New York on November 18. Furious Israeli officials, however, have denounced the report as "highly political", saying that Ziegler had gone beyond his mandate.

With support from American diplomats at the UN, Israel has called for the report to be rejected before it reaches the floor of the Assembly, and asked the UN Human Rights Commission, for whom Ziegler was working as a food rights specialist, to discipline him.

[RobbyS]

The Wehrmacht could have overrun Switzerland in a week with minimal casualties. Like Sweden, Switzerland was a useful "neutra;" for the Nazis. and each got fat while the rest of Europe starved.

[SandRat]

[saquin]

This Jean Ziegler is a Swiss sociologist who has not been to Iraq as far as I know and is simply an outside "human rights investigator" to the U.N. (read: lefty idealogue)

His claims don't even deserve a response.

[freema]

Sure it does...I just can't post mine, I'm in polite company.

[pankot]

What do you expect from a sociologist? Leeches who feed (ie, make money) off of human suffering,real or imagined?

[tet68]

His claims don't even deserve a response.

Yes they do, Mr. Ziegler where is your condemnation of the
terrorists for withholding water and food from those civilians, they are doing so by their very presence.

[LoudRepublicangirl]

I'm sorry, I thought I was reading about New Orleans again...

[King Prout]

take your BP meds first

[bubman]

Sounds more like a lefty kool aid socialist to me. I bet this POS never worked a day in his life. Sometimes I wander if our forces and those of Israel are targeting the wrong "terrorists" This a$$hole deserves one right between the eyes. Oops sorry didn't see him !!!