May 12: Iraq Genocide Memorial Day

[Karmadillo]

http://www.counterpunch.org/heller05102010.html

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What about the greatest crime, the U.N. sanctions that the U.S. imposed that lasted from 1990 to 2003? Does anyone remember them? For years virtually no Iraqi oil could be sold and Iraq didn’t have the money to buy enough food, and medicine and necessaries. Every item imported into Iraq had to have permission from the U.N. sanctions committee and decisions there were made with stone hearted sadism. The committee would endlessly object to imports, out of their supposed deep concern over “dual use”, the possibility that equipment or supplies let into Iraq could be used in some military sense. Heart and lung machines, firefighting equipment, wheelbarrows, detergent all were held back. Vaccines would be permitted in, but no equipment to repair refrigeration would be allowed, so the vaccines would go bad.

And the people died and died and died. Babies starved to skeletons, suffered, perished. The numbers were immense, unbelievable.

Reacting to a report from the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization that over 500,000 children had died Leslie Stahl on “60 Minutes” asked then U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright about it On May 12, 1996 the program broadcast this conversation.

Leslie Stahl: We have heard that a half a million children have died. I'm mean that's more children than died in Hiroshima. You know, is the price worth it?

Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price we think, we think the price is worth it

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That was the only time a major American journalist grilled a U.S. official about the sanctions. And it had no effect. The sanctions ground on for seven more terrible years. How many Iraqis died all told? A million, a million and a half? No one knows. How many children were stunted from their years of malnutrition? Conveniently most Iraqi government medical records were burned up in the looting after Bush “liberated” the country.

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So I would propose that rather than celebrate a “Victory in Iraq” day, we instead mark May 12 (the day of Albright’s admission) as Genocide in Iraq Day. Using Mark Twain’s ideas for a memorial to the millions killed in the Congo as inspiration, why not bulldoze Lafayette Park near the White House and construct on the land a pyramid of a million baby bottles and toys for our Presidents to view during their morning constitutionals and for school children to wonder at on their trips to D.C.

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[Karmadillo]

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[Mnemosyne]

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