Please President Bush, attack Iraq

Here's a piece from Charlie Clements

I am a public health physician and a human rights advocate. I have just
returned from a 10-day emergency mission to Iraq to assess the 
vulnerability of the civilian population to another war.  I'm also a distinguished 
graduate of the USAF Academy and a Vietnam veteran, so I have some sense of the
potential consequences of the air war we are about to unleash on Iraq 
as a prelude to the introduction of American troops.

The population of Iraq has been reduced to the status of refugees.  60% 
of them or almost 14 million Iraqis depend entirely on a government 
provided food ration that by international standards is the minimal for human
sustenance.  Unemployment is greater than 50% and the majority of those 
who are employed make between $4-$8 a month. (The latter figure the salary 
of a physician that works in a primary health center.) Most families are 
without economic resources as they have sold off their possessions over the last
decade to get by. Hospital wards are filled with severely malnourished
children and much of the population has a marginal nutritional status.

The food distribution program funded by the U.N. Oil-for-Food sales
supervised  is the world's largest and is heavily dependent upon
transportation that will be one of the first targets of the war.  The 
U.S. will severe transport routes to prevent Iraqi armed forces from 
movement or re-supply.  The feeding program will be its first victim.

Even before the transportation system is hit , U.S. aircraft will spread
millions of graphite filaments in wind dispersed munitions that will 
cause a complete paralysis of the nation's electrical grids.  Already literally 
held together with bailing wire, because they have been unable to obtain 
spare parts due to sanctions, the poorly functioning electrical system is 
essential to the public health infrastructure.

The water treatment system, too, has been a victim of sanctions.  
Unable to import chlorine and aluminum sulfate (alum) to purify water, there are
already 1000% increases in the incidence of some waterborne diseases 
(typhoid cases have increased from 2200 in 1990 to more than 27,000 in 1999). 
People will not have potable water in their homes and they will not have water 
To flush their toilets.

The sanitation system, which frequently backs-up sewage ankle deep in 
Baghdad neighborhoods when the ailing pumps fail, will now have no pumps at all.
There will be epidemics as water treatment and water pumping will come 
to a halt.  Pregnant women, malnourished children, and the elderly will be 
the first to succumb. UNICEF estimates the excess child mortality in the 
last ten years has been more than 500,000 and that figure will climb steeply in 
the aftermath of another war. They are part of the "collateral damage" from 
the last war.

The health care system of Iraq cannot handle an emergency of this 
nature even if there were not thousands of victims of "collateral damage" as we have
promised a cruise missile every five minutes for the first 48 hours 
seeking out military, intelligence, and security forces around Baghdad, Basra, 
and Mosul, Iraq's largest cities.

Even though it is against the Geneva Conventions to target infrastructure that 
primarily serves civilians, it did not give us pause in the Gulf War and will 
not this time. If the U.S. pursues this war without the backing of 
the U.N. Security Council, it will undermine a half century of efforts by 
the world community to establish a foundation of humanitarian and human 
rights law that guide international behavior.  Such an act would also violate 
the U.N. Charter and make a mockery of the very institution we have helped 
to fashion in the hopes it would help prevent crimes against humanity.  
Many might define the consequences of such an attack on the population of 
Iraq as just that.

There was a lot that made me angry on that trip. I have worked in war 
zones before and I have been with civilians as they were bombed by U.S. 
supplied aircraft, but I don't think I've experienced anything on the magnitude 
of the catastrophe that awaits our attack in Iraq.

I have just described the basics without any of the horror scenarios 
such as the unleashing of weapons of mass destruction, civil war or retribution 
by mobs vying for power or revenge, or house to house fighting as Baghdad
becomes another Mogidishu or Jenin.

Saddam is a monster, there is no doubt about that.  He needs to be 
contained and many former U.N. weapons inspectors feel he has been 'defanged.' His
neighbors do not fear him any longer.  There are many Iraqis who want 
him removed but not by a U.S. war. We may be unleashing forces of hatred and
resentment that will haunt us for decades in every corner of the world. 
  
I can just hear Osama Bin Laden now, "Please President Bush, attack Iraq.
There's nothing better you could do to help the cause of Al Qaida!"