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http://www.democracynow.org/news/clinton.html AMY GOODMAN: President Clinton, UN figures show that up to 5,000 children a month die in Iraq because of the sanctions against Iraq. PRESIDENT CLINTON: (Overlap) That's not true. That's not true. And that's not what they show. Let me just tell you something. Before the sanctions, the year before the Gulf War, you said this ... how much money did Iraq earn from oil? Answer - $16 billion. How much money did Iraq earn last year from oil? How much money did they get, cash on the barrel head, to Saddam Hussein? Answer - $19 billion that he can use exclusively for food, for medicine, to develop his country. He's got more money now, $3 billion a year more than he had nine years ago. If any child is without food or medicine or a roof over his or her head in Iraq, it's because he is claiming the sanctions are doing it and sticking it to his own children. We have worked like crazy to make sure that the embargo only applies to his ability to reconstitute his weapon system and his military statement. This is a guy who butchered the children of his own country, who were Kurds, who were Shi'ites. He used chemical weapons on his own people, and he is now lying to the world and claiming the mean old United States is killing his children. He has more money today than he did before the embargo, and if they're hungry or they are not getting medicine, it is his own fault. AMY GOODMAN: The past two UN heads of the program in Iraq have quit, calling the US policy ... US/UN policy, genocidal. What is your response to that? PRESIDENT CLINTON: They're wrong! They think that we should reward ... Saddam Hussein says, I'm going to starve my kids unless you let me buy nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and biological weapons. If you let me do everything I want to do so I can get in a position to kill and intimidate people again, then I will stop starving my kids. And so we are supposed to assume responsibility for his misconduct. That's just not right! I know they ... you know, the truth is a lot of these people want to start doing business with Saddam Hussein again because they want his money. And, and, you know, they want his ... the money he earns from oil. But the ... it is an absolute fact that he has more money today than he did before the embargo. So if any child is without food or medicine, it is because he has made a deliberate decision to let them die, to try to build up pressure to lift the embargo so he can spend that money however he wants. He doesn't want to spend that money on his people. He wants to spend that money to become the military dictator of the Middle East again. Now, if people want to let him do it, that's one thing. But, you know, I have consistently supported changing and relaxing the embargo since I've been President, to make absolutely sure that he had enough money and enough freedom in the use of the money to rebuild the country economically, and to try to feed those children and get them medicine. There were a lot of problems with the embargo in the beginning. There were legitimate criticisms. But he now has more money with the absolute freedom to spend it on food and medicine and development, and medical care of all kinds, than he did before the embargo was put in. That's the fact. No one can dispute that. So nobody can figure out why there are problems among the children except that he won't spend the money on them. He spends the money on his own military, on his own crowd and he avoids spending it on a lot of kids who need it so he can blame us, so he can actually get total control over his money, so he can rebuild his apparatus. GONZALO ABURTO: Mr. President (Overlap) PRESIDENT CLINTON: And, you know, remember, this is the only guy, the only world leader today who has used chemical weapons on his own citizens. And the American people in my judgement should give him all the money he needs to take care of his kids. But should do everything we can, and even if we are alone, to try to stop him from being in a position of murdering his kids again, and murdering other children in the Middle East. That's what I believe. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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://www.casi.org.uk