Letter: Iraq's travails
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Your support makes all the difference.Sir: Once again the United States has manufactured a "crisis" out of Iraq's desperate plea to have eight years of genocidal trade sanctions lifted, and once again the coverage of this issue in the popular press has conformed perfectly to the classic definition of propaganda. How many layers of lies must reporters and editors wade through before it dawns on them that they might be getting a distorted picture - and thus may be misleading their readers with information that's highly biased or wholly fabricated?
Did Saddam do anything that could reasonably be interpreted as aggression? Were there threats of any kind coming from Iraq? Is it reasonable to think that Iraq might invade Kuwait again, or might launch an attack on another of its neighbours? Is there any evidence at all that Iraq is still trying to develop the "weapons of mass destruction" we keep hearing about, or that there may be a stash of them hidden away somewhere?
It seems to me that all of the threats and aggression have come from Washington. Iraq has done nothing at any time during the past eight years except try to get the sanctions lifted. We need to remember that these sanctions were originally meant to last only until Iraq pulled out of Kuwait. They remain in place today only because the US - through bribery and arm-twisting - got the UN to extend them with a new set of conditions.
The US has since added another condition: the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. No matter how much more suffering the Iraqi people must endure, no matter how many more thousands of Iraqi children must die, the US will not allow the lifting of sanctions until Iraq has a new and fully "compliant" president.
This is not what I call liberation. This is what I call fascism.
Dr THOMAS ANDERSON
Summerland, British Columbia, Canada
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