From: Ali Abunimah
To: morning@npr.org
Subject: Lies about Iraq

March 7, 2000

Dear NPR News,

Bob Edward's interview on Morning Edition today, with Patrick Clawson of the AIPAC offshoot Washington Institute for Near East Policy, presented a pack of lies and propaganda to the public. Edwards enabled this and did nothing to challenge outright falsehoods.

It must be said that NPR can no longer pretend to have any commitment to honest reporting about Iraq. With this kind of performance you discredit yourselves completely.

I will take the lies, falsehoods and deceptive omissions in order of appearance.

Edwards introduced the segment:

"The United Nations economic sanctions on Iraq are in their ninth year. They require the United Nations to approve all of Iraq's imports and exports, including oil. Some critics say the sanctions have caused widespread food shortages among iraqi citizens and should be lifted. But Patrick Clawson research director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy says the sanctions should remain in place. He blames Iraq's president Saddam Hussein for suffering by Iraq's people."

This disingenuous introduction omits to mention that the criticism of the sanctions comes from senior UN officials who administer programs on the ground in Iraq, and 70 members of Congress, such as House Minority Whip David Bonior, who recently called the sanctions "infanticide masquerading as policy." And what about the many UN reports over the years who have confirmed and provided the hard data for what these people are saying? Is it fair to equate this body of opinion with the--as we shall see--baseless assertions of Mr. Clawson? Is this what you call "balance"?

Clawson begins: "The tragedy is that Iraq is actually a relatively well to do country. Even under current sanctions, Iraq's income is quite a bit higher for instance than that of its neighbor Syria. Iraq's income is much higher than most countries in Africa, and yet the suffering in Iraq is quite intense because Saddam Hussein's government doesn't really care about the suffering of ordinary Iraqis."

Let us unpack this pack of.... By all accounts, Iraq has descended from being a highly developed country to being at a level of poverty near that of subharan Africa. Mr. Clawson's argument that all the suffering is due to the evil Saddam doesn't hold much water. Prior to the sanctions Iraq was at a very high level of social and economic development. Its health system was the best in the region, and its universities produced graduates and professionals who were sought all over the Middle East. But all along Iraq had exactly the same government headed by exactly the same Saddam Hussein. Mr. Hussein was not better, he did not respect human rights more, and he was not more peace-loving. He was the same. The only difference was at that time, he was a US ally, fighting dreaded Iran, and receiving American support.

Clawson admits "There's clearly quite a lot of malnutrition in Iraq. The Iraqi government exaggerates the extent but there's no question that people are indeed starving to death."

Now supposing the Iraqi government exaggerates the extent, are the UN findings that one in five Iraqi children go to bed hungry also too high? How much malnutrition would be enough for Mr. Clawson?

Clawson continues: "The United Nations' oil for food program allows Iraq to bring in more than enough food. In fact 2300 hundred calories a day which is more than the US government says is a healthy diet for people. But the Iraqi government does not distribute the food well and the Iraqi government withholds the food from some parts of the country where it doesn't like the people."

Mr. Clawson cannot and did not cite any evidence for this claim, nor was he asked for any. Because the facts are totally opposite to what he says. The UN officials who administer the UN program in Iraq, agree that the reason Iraqis are starving is because the program itself is insufficient. Hans von Sponeck, the humanitarian aid coordinator who just resigned, said that the program has not met the Iraqi people's "minimum requirements" and could not provide more than an average of 49 cents per day of needed food and medicine to Iraqis. Jutta Burghardt, a World Food Program official who resigned soon after Sponeck, agreed with this and said "I fully support what Mr. von Sponeck was saying." (AFP, February 16, 2000)

This goes right to the heart of the frequently repeated but evidenceless State Department charges that the oil for food program is enough, but is not working because Iraq's government withholds supplies. In July last year, von Sponeck responded to these charges, saying "We have no evidence there is a conscious withholding of medicines ordered by the government." (Reuters, July 22, 1999) There are reported problems distributing food as one would expect when Iraq's transport facilities are so degraded.

Latching on to Clawson's tone, Edwards asks: "What is Saddam Hussein doing with his oil profits if he's not feeding his people?" This is a crucial question which Clawson doesn't answer. Instead, he says, "Saddam uses his $6 billion in personal wealth and he uses the money from smuggling oil out of Iraq outside of UN control to bring in luxury goods. For instance he's had $2 billion in construction on new palaces for himself since the gulf war. And to bring in military related items that are banned by the UN imports."

If Clawson had answered the question, he would have had to say that all of the revenue from Iraq's oil sales under the UN resolutions goes into UN escrow accounts. It is this revenue that accounts for the vast bulk of Iraq's nominal income, but none of it goes to the Iraqi government. From the UN accounts, approximately thirty percent is immediately deducted to pay UN costs and reparations. The rest is disbursed by the UN with the approval of the sanctions committee. The US, rather than trying to facilitatie the operation of this program, as Clawson claims, uses its position on the sanctions committee to block billions of dollars in contracts for supplies and equipment to Iraq.

As for Clawson's assertions about the palaces, this is stuff and nonsense that comes from the State Department. When Edwards asks how it is known that Iraq has spent $2 billion on palaces, the best Clawson can come up with is to say:

"Well we can look at these very impressive buildings that he's built and make an estimate how much it would cost to build them and that estimate is particularly informed by the inspections of these palaces which took place by the UN after a long charade about whether or not Saddam was hiding some of his weapons of mass dfestruction in those palaces."

First of all, the US government routinely calls any government building in Iraq a "palace," in an attempt to make us imagine a Disney-like Arabian wonderland of harems and veils, and its claims about new construction dubious. Secondly, the US estimates are ludicrous. They are obviously based on what it would cost to build equivalent government buildings at United States prices and they take no account of the fact that salaries and wages in Iraq have collapsed to the point where a doctor or a teacher earns two dollars a month. How much do you think a construction worker makes? Iraq's current GDP is estimated to be a fraction of its pre-sanctions level of about $60 billion. Let us generously put it at $20 billion today. How large would these "palaces" have to be to absorb an amount equivalent to 10% of GDP? They would, I suppose have to be visible from space with the naked eye. The estimates about Saddam Hussein's personal wealth are similarly suspicious and have no credibility whatsoever.

Edwards asks: "And he [Saddam] continues to make weapons and bring in equipment to do that?" Clawson replies, "It's not so clear if he's making the weapons or just stockpiling the stuff so that he could make the weapons once the world's attention is not so carefully focussed on him."

It would have been useful for Mr. Edwards to recall the words of Assistant US Secretary of State Martin Indyk, who in a no doubt inadvertent moment of honesty declared at a September 13, 1999 press conference, "You know, we do not at this point have evidence of any kind of action to reconstitute those weapons of mass destruction." Where does Mr. Clawson get his superior intelligence from?

As for the military materials being smuggled in, how are they getting there? The US patrols all the seaways, and all cargos to the Jordanian port of Aqaba are inspected by Lloyds of London, and nothing has been found. Mr. Clawson is right that Iraq smuggles oil, and Iraq does this in open defiance of the sanctions. I expect any country subjected to such an embargo would do the same. But what is clear is that the United States turns a blind eye to smuggling when it is done to the benefit of its allies, such as Turkey, or by the Kurdish groups whom Washington has tried to coopt.

Clawson also states: "And Saddam's got this program we turned a blind eye to, selling about $300 million of oil each year to Jordan."

This is outrageous. Iraq's oil sales to Jordan occur under the full view and consent of the United Nations, because Jordan has no other source of oil. Jordan officially informs the United Nations sanctions committee of the arrangments every year. Should Jordan's people also be subject to the sanctions? And of the 4.8 million tonnes of oil Iraq will supply to Jordan in 2000, under the terms of an agreement signed by the two countries in January, half is being given free of charge, and the other half at a heavily discounted price of $19 per barrel.

Finally Edward asks: "What can the United States or the United Nations do about all this?"

Then comes the biggest lie of all. Clawson: "The United States' focus has been on trying to get the oil for food program to work better and emphasising more access to Iraq by humanitarian organizations and trying to shame Saddam's government by exposing just how much he has put impediments in the way of the effective functioning of this oil for food program."

How exactly does the United States achieve these ends? By blocking billions of dollars of "oil for food" contracts? By personally villifying UN humanitarian officials who have the honesty and integrity to state what they see? By making it illegal for US citizens to travel to Iraq and take medicine and supplies with them?

A dimension of the sanctions you have refused to cover, ever, is that they violate human rights. Under their present government, Iraqis enjoy no political or civil rights. But the UN sanctions add to that by stripping them of the economic and social rights they did enjoy, and which are guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

It really is all too much. It is beyond comprehension that you air this kind of garbage over the testimony and scientific evidence of the UN, of international agencies, of countless experts on nutrition and health who have been to Iraq since 1990, and to the testimony even of some of your journalistic colleagues who unlike NPR make an effort to seek out the truth.

I have heard many appalling reports on NPR over the years, but this segment was really as low as you have gone in a long time.

Sincerely,

Ali Abunimah
ahabunim@midway.uchicago.edu