THE EDITOR, Sir:
I WOULD like to comment on the article "Going after Saddam" by John Rapley. It was really disappointing for several reasons.
First, Iraq's capability to produce weapons of mass destruction has been all but destroyed. UN inspectors (and not the US spy teams posing as such) confirm this. Ask yourself how a country with starving children and a crumbling infrastructure can build any sort of potent offensive capability: bio-warfare when water treatment is impossible is ridiculous.
Secondly, the general consensus among the more dovish hawks (if there is any such thing), conservatives and even liberals is that doing nothing is better than waging war. What people fail to comprehend is that the US and the UK are ALREADY waging war on Iraq: what else would you call regular bombing runs over 'no-fly zones'? And these zones are not UN sanctioned or enforced, but are rather the result of the arbitrary decisions of these two allies to 'punish' Saddam further. I suppose they might as well get it over with and just completely destroy the country.
Finally, the sanctions that have been used on Iraq in combination with the targeting of civilian water treatment plants, power stations, and general infrastructure during the Gulf War has killed at least 500,000 Iraqi children due to malnourishment and disease (this was the tally at 1995, I believe, it is probably much worse now).
If one takes into account the soldiers killed during the war, adults dying from lack of medicine and cancer (the depleted uranium shells and bomb casing used by the US/UK are quite toxic), and bombing runs, it is not impossible for over a million people having died to punish one man, the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein. Is this sane? Now they want to invade the country and kill more people. The only response from Mr. Rapley is that it's bad timing. Mr. Rapley when is it a good time to massacre people?
I am etc,
GARY THORPE
Canada
Via Go-Jamaica
