Six Years of US Occupation of Iraq – Human Life Versus Dollars
20th March 2008 will be the sixth anniversary of the second Iraq war. The war was actually started more than a decade before, when on 17th January 1991, Coalition force of thirty four countries led by the United States attacked Iraq. This battle continued for more than forty days and finally cease fire was declared on 28th February 1991. In this war for the first time massive air power was used by the coalition force which was termed as operation ‘Desert Storm’ by the US army. In the first Gulf War more than 100, 00 civilian were killed and somewhat equal numbers of combat Iraqi were also killed. In this war many ethics was ignored by the champions of human rights. In this war Coalition force had used depleted uranium in tank kinetic energy penetrators and also in 20-30 mm cannon ordinance. Depleted uranium is a toxic material which has many side effects and even many US gulf war- I veteran are reported to be suffering from several aliments due to the use of depleted uranium. Even after the war which ended after the withdrawal of the Iraqi military from the Kuwait many sanctions were imposed on Iraq. Only through oil for food programme Iraq was allowed to import certain life saving commodities. These sanctions had adverse affect on the life of the Iraqi people, who was explicitly living on the mercy of the United States. The adverse affect of the sanctions can be estimated from a study which is been done by the Harvard School of Public Health. The study found evidence that there was a three fold increase in the mortality of the Iraqi children under five year of age caused by the Gulf war and trade sanctions, in which atleast 46,900 children died between January and August 1991. In 1998 UNICEF report it is indicated that economic sanctions in Iraq resulted in an increase to 90,000 deaths per year.
The second Iraq war was started on 20th March 2003. The belligerent action on Iraq by US and UK was defended by the head of both these nations. George Bush and Tony Blair applauded the invasion of Iraq, as the regime of Saddam Hussein was collaborating with the international terrorists and possessing weapon of mass destruction (WMD). In the words of Mr. Tony Blair, the actual trigger was Iraq’s failure to take a final opportunity to disarm itself of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons that the US and coalition officials called an immediate and intolerable threat to world peace. Similarly, a false bogey of WMD was created by G.W Bush. In September 2002 just before the US Congressional vote on the use of the military force in Iraq Bush told the nation on his weekly radio address, “the Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to build more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological and chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given”. According to Washington based Centre for Pubic Integrity (an institution of investigative journalism) George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials, including Vice- President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made atleast 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001 about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. This forged logic was exposed as till date not a single verification is been made by any investigating agency that Iraq had any WMD. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006) of the US had approved this fact that no trace of WMD was found in Iraq. The multinational Iraq Survey Group in its Duelfer Report established that Iraq had abandoned its nuclear weapon programme in 1991 and had henceforth made no effort to revive it.