The following is an archived copy of a message sent to a Discussion List run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq.
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Dear All, Yes, this project is vital and indeed, reading Madeleine Albright and Peter Hain statements one can only choose between being despaired and laughing at the contradictions. I think we should underline how paradoxal the sanctions policy is. For instance the State Department's page that you mention states: " Myth: The international community has not taken measures to care for the Iraqi people. Fact: The UN designed the oil-for-food program in 1991-unprecedented in size and scope-to provide food and medicine for the Iraqi people. " and a few lines after... " Myth: Saddam's palaces are used by the Iraqi people Fact:(...) Saddam's inner circle is immune from harsh living conditions facing the general population." " We can point out that if the sanctions are designed to harm Saddam then, according to their OWN statements, it's a failure; furthermore if they are not aimed against the Iraqi peole, then again, according to their own statements it's also a failure. Of course, every person of this list is already convinced, but reading their webpage, the public can easily be fooled. So I agree that it would be nice to build an anti-embargo counterpart... and probably ask the U.S state departement to add a link to such a page. Would it be posssible to send our ideas to a single person and ask this person to process them and publish them online ? Peace, Nazim >From: Colin Rowat <cir20@cus.cam.ac.uk> >Reply-To: colinrowat@email.com >To: soc-casi-discuss@lists.cam.ac.uk >Subject: developing solid responses to frequent misleading claims >Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2000 17:13:15 +0100 (BST) > >Dear list members, > >Anyone who has followed the public statements of US or British officials >on Iraq will see that a small set of misleading statements are repeatedly >made (e.g. simple explanations of the differences between nutrition in >Iraqi Kurdistan and the rest of the country, a failure to explain that the >1991 version of "oil for food", rejected by Iraq, would have offered less >oil sales than the UN deemed necessary to meet Iraq's minimum needs, etc). > >As these statements are likely to continue to recur it therefore seems >sensible to assemble a response to them. I therefore wondered whether >there might be people on this list who might be willing to > >(i) come up with a list of statements of this sort; and > >(ii) develop answers to them, which could be put on CASI's website. > >Three sources for the first come to mind: Albright's Personal View >in the Financial Times on 2 August, Hain's comment in the Independent on 7 >August and the State Department's own "myths and facts" page at >http://www.state.gov/www/regions/nea/iraq_myths-facts.html > >If anyone is interested in this, please let me know so that we can discuss >how to proceed with this. > >Thanks! > >Colin Rowat > >****************************************************** >Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq >http://www.casi.org.uk fax 0870 063 5022 > are you on our announcements list? >****************************************************** > >393 King's College www.cus.cam.ac.uk/~cir20 >Cambridge CB2 1ST tel: +44 (0)7768 056 984 >England fax: +44 (0)8700 634 984 > > >-- >----------------------------------------------------------------------- >This is a discussion list run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq >For removal from list, email soc-casi-discuss-request@lists.cam.ac.uk >Full details of CASI's various lists can be found on the CASI website: >http://welcome.to/casi ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a discussion list run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq For removal from list, email soc-casi-discuss-request@lists.cam.ac.uk Full details of CASI's various lists can be found on the CASI website: http://welcome.to/casi