The New Rulers of the World - Paying the Price: Part 1 -<>-ShipPagan-<>- (it's on Iraq)

I've noticed that since I've been gone (nearly a year) alot of arguments have popded up over Iraq. For those who think Iraq is soley to blame for it's conditions and such, read on.

These are excerpts from the book The New Rulers of the World, Chaper 2 - Paying the Price, by John Pilger.

Paying The Price

"We do not seek the destructions of Iraq. Nor do we seek to punish the Iraqi People for the decisisons and policies of their leaders." President George Bush Senior "We Think the Price is worth it..." US Ambassador Madeleine Albright, when asked if the deaths of half a million Iraqi children were a price worth paying for sanctions.

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"They know we own their country... we dictate the way they live and talk. And that's what's great about America right now. It's a good thing, especially when there' a lot of oil out there we need." Brigadier-General Willaim Looney, US Ariforce, director of the bobming of Iraq.

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Wherever you go in Iraq's southern city of Basra, there is dust. It rolls down the long roads that are the desert's fingers. It gets in your eyes and nose and throat; it swirls in the markets and school playgrounds, consuming childeren kicking a plastic ball; and it carries, accroding to Dr Jawad Al-Ali, 'the seeds of our death'. Dr Al-Ali is a cancer specialist at the city hospital and a member of Britan's Royal College of Physicians. He has a neat moustache and a kindly, furrowed face. His startched white coat, like the collar of his shirt, is frayed.

'Before the Gulf War, we had only three or four deaths in a month from cancer,' he said. 'Now it's thirty to thirty-five patients dying every month, and that's just in my department. That is twelve times the increase in the cancer mortality. Our studies indicate that 40 to 48 percent of the population in this area will get cancer: in five years' time to begin with, then long afterwards. That's almost half the population. Most of my own family now have cancer, and we have no history of the disease. It had spread to the medical staff of this hospital; yesterday, the son of the medical director died. We don't know the precise source of the contimination, because we are not allowed to get the equipment to conduct a proper servey, or even test the excess level of radiation in our bodies. We strongly suspect depleted uranium, which was used by the Americans and British in the Gulf War right across the southern battlefiedls. Whatever the cause, it is like Chernobyl here; the genetic effects ar new to us. The mushrooms grow huge, and the fish in what was once a beautful river are inedible. Even the grapes in my garden have mutated and can't be eaten.'

Along the corridor, I met Dr Ginan Ghalib Hassen, a paediatrician. At another time, she might have been described as an effervescent personality; now she, too, has a melencholy expression that does not change; it is the face of Iraq. 'This is Ali Raffa Asswadi,' she said, stopping to take the hand of a wasted boy I guessed to be about four years old. 'He is nine years,' she said. 'He has leukaemia. Now we can't treat him. Only some of the drugs are available. We get drugs for two or three weeks, and then they stop when the shipments stop. Unless you continue a course, the treatment is useless. We can't even give blood transfusions, because there are not enough blood bags...'

In the next bed, a child lay in his shrouded mother's arms. One side of his head was serverly swollen. 'This is neuroplastoma,' said Dr Hassen. 'It is a very unusual tumour. Before 1991, we saw only one case of this tumour in two years. Now we have many cases.' Another child had his eyes fixed on me and I asked what would happen to him. She said, 'He has an abdominal mass. We have operated on him, but unless the tumour recieves treatment, it will recur. We have only some drugs. We are waiting for the full course. He has a renal failure now, so his future is bad. All the futures here are bad.'

Dr Hassen keeps a photo albumn of the childeren she is trying to save and has been unable to save. 'This is Talum Saleh,' she said, turning to a photograph of a boy in a blue pullover and with sparkling eyes. 'He is five-and-a-half years old. This is a case of Hodgkins Disease. Normally, with Hodgkin's, a patient can expect to live and the cure can be 95 per cent. But if the drugs are not available, complications set in, and death follows. This boy had a beautiful nature. He died.'

I said, 'As we were walking, I noticed you stop and put your face to the wall.'

'Yes, I was emotional... I am a doctor; I am not supposed to cry, but I cry every day, becuase this is torture. These childeren could live; they could live and grow up; and when you see your son and duaghter in front of you, dying, what happens to you?'

I said, ' What do you say to those in the West who deny the connection between depleted uranium and the deformaties of these childeren?'

'That is not true. How much proof do they want? There is every relation between congenital malformation and the depleted uranium. Before 1991, we saw nothing like this at all. If there is no connection, why have thsese things not happened before? Most of these childeren have no family history of cancer. I have studied what happened in Hiroshima. It is almost exactly the same here; we have an increased percentage of congentital malformation, an increase of malignancy, leukaemia, brain tumours: the same.'

Under the economic embargo imposed by the United Nations Security Council in 1990 and upgraded the following year, Iraq is denied equipment and expertise to decontaminate its battlefields, in contrast to how Kuwait was cleaned up after the Gulf War. The US army pysicist responsible for cleaning up Kuwait was Professor Doug Rokke, whom I met in London. Today, he himself is a victim. 'I am like many people in souther Iraq,' he said. 'I have 5 000 times the recommended level of radiation in my body. The contamination was right throuhgout Iraq and Kuwait. With the munitions testing and preparation in Saudi Arabia, uranium contamination covers the entire region. The effect depends on wether a person inhaled it or ingested it by eating and drinking, or if the got it in an open wound. What we're seeing now, respiratory problems, kidney problems, cancers, are the direct result of the use of this highly toxic material. The controversy over wethere of not it's the cause is a manufactured one; my own ill-health is a testament to that.'

Professor Rokke says there are two urgen issues to be confronted in the West, 'those with a sens of right and wrong': first, the decision by the United State and Britain to use a 'weapon of mass destruction', such as depleted uranium. He said 'In the Gulf War, well over 300 tons were fired. An A-10 Warthog attack aircraft fired over 900 000 rounds. Each individual round was 300 grams of solid uranium 238. When a tank fired its shells, each round carried over 4 500 grams of solid uranium. These round were not coated, they're not tippedl they're solid uranium. Moreover, we have evidence to suggest that they were mixed with plutonium. What happend in the Gulf was a form of nuclear warfare.

'The second issue is the denial of medical care to American and British and other allied soldiers, and the tens of thousands of Iraqis contaminated. At international symposiums, I have watched Iraqi officials approach their counterparts from the Department of Defence and the Ministry of Defence and ask, plead, for help with decontamination. The Iraqis simply don't know how to get rid of it from their own enviroment. I watched them put their case, describing the deaths and the horrific deformities that are showing up; and I watched them rebuffed. It was pathetic.'

----Continued in Part 2----

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