Burying Genocide - The UN "Oil For Food" Programme

[dudeness]

Half a million dead Iraqi children are deemed irrelevant in coverage of allegations of UN oil for food' programme corruption

04/23/04 "Media Lens" -- As Media Lens has reported on many occasions, mainstream media show an astonishing capacity for overlooking western crimes against the people of Iraq: a country utterly devastated by two US-UK wars, and by twelve years of sanctions that resulted in more than a million civilian deaths.

Current coverage of allegations of corruption in the UN's oil for food¹ programme is a dramatic case in point.

The oil for food programme was set up in 1996 by Denis Halliday, then the UN¹s humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, as an ameliorative measure to counter some of the worst effects of sanctions. In 1998, Halliday resigned in protest at the devastating effects of the revamped programme. "These sanctions," he told journalist John Pilger, "represented ongoing warfare against the people of Iraq. They became, in my view, genocidal in their impact over the years, and the Security Council maintained them, despite its full knowledge of their impact, particularly on the children of Iraq." (John Pilger, 'Who Are The Extremists?', Daily Mirror, August 22, 2003)

more..http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6081.htm