In 1991, the US destroyed Iraq's infrastructure and then proceeded through sanctions to ensure that what had escaped military operations would be demolished too. Iraq's military power and industrial capabilities were debilitated, its people starved and its children deprived of food and medicine.
The US has used every pretext to keep the sanctions in place in connivance with UNSCOM. Once its lies could no longer be dissimulated, and the end of the sanctions seemed near, UNSCOM reverted to its old ploys, seeking to prolong the sanctions for an undefined duration and ignoring the terms prescribed in the Memorandum of Understanding reached with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. UNSCOM's head sought to propagate lies that the Iraqis possessed warheads tainted with nerve gas. The fact that certain UNSCOM members were US and Israeli intelligence agents, as Iraq had repeatedly alleged, was confirmed.
Concerned for its security, Iraq requested their expulsion and the appointment of other inspectors. This was the justification the US had been waiting for to launch a military strike against Baghdad and topple Saddam Hussein's regime.
In any country, a leader draws his strength from the people's support, but basically from the strength of the nation itself. To destroy Saddam, therefore, the US has to destroy the Iraqi people, as well as Iraq's scientific, industrial and military capabilities. Reducing Iraq to an ignorant, backward and unproductive nation would allow the US to tighten its grip over the entire region and to liquidate the Palestinian question. Will the Iraqis, the heirs to the world's most ancient civilisation, succumb to a pack of cowboys?
*This week's Soapbox speaker is minister plenipotentiary at the Iraqi Mission to the Arab League in Cairo.
In 1991, the US destroyed Iraq's infrastructure and then proceeded through sanctions to ensure that what had escaped military operations would be demolished too. Iraq's military power and industrial capabilities were debilitated, its people starved and its children deprived of food and medicine.