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Dear Nicholas, When posting the story on this list I gave as source: " ... http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/23/1053585696870.html Doctors tell how children's deaths became propaganda By Matthew McAllester in Baghdad May 24 2003 ..." Another 'sighting' similiar in content was made in the Toronto Star. See article below. Best Andreas ---------- http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?GXHC_gx_session_id_=dff378848 baaf9fc&pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1052251641833&ca ll_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724 May. 24, 2003. 01:00 AM MDs now blame Saddam, not sanctions, in babies' deaths Doctors forced to refrigerate the dead Tiny corpses saved for propaganda MATTHEW MCALLESTER SPECIAL TO THE STAR BAGHDAD—Throughout the 13 years of U.N. sanctions on Iraq that were ended Thursday, Iraqi doctors told the world that the sanctions were the sole cause for the rocketing mortality rate among Iraqi children. "It is one of the results of the embargo," Dr. Ghassam Rashid Al-Baya told Newsday on May 9, 2001, at Baghdad's Ibn Al-Baladi hospital, just after a dehydrated baby named Ali Hussein died on his treatment table. "This is a crime on Iraq." It was a scene repeated in hundreds of newspaper articles by reporters who were required to be escorted by minders from Saddam Hussein's information ministry. Now free to speak, the doctors at two Baghdad hospitals, including Ibn Al-Baladi, tell a very different story. Along with parents of dead children, they said in interviews this week that Saddam turned the children's deaths into propaganda, notably by forcing hospitals to save babies' corpses to have them publicly paraded. All the evidence shows the spike in children's deaths was tragically real — roughly, a doubling of the mortality rate during the '90s, humanitarian organizations say. But the reason has been fiercely argued, and the new accounts by Iraqi doctors and parents alter the debate. Under the sanctions regime, "We had the ability to get all the drugs we needed," said Ibn Al-Baladi's chief resident, Dr. Hussein Shihab. "Instead of that, Saddam Hussein spent all the money on his military force and put all the fault on the U.S.A. Yes, of course the sanctions hurt — but not too much, because we are a rich country and we have the ability to get everything we can by money. But instead, he spent it on his palaces." The U.S. government and others long have blamed Saddam's spending habits for the poor health of Iraqis and their children. For years, the Iraqi government, some Western officials and a vocal anti-sanctions movement said U.N. restrictions on Iraqi imports and exports were at fault. "Saddam Hussein, he's the murderer, not the U.N.," said Dr. Azhar Abdul Khadem, a resident at the Al-Alwiya maternity hospital in Baghdad. Doctors said they were forced to refrigerate dead babies in hospital morgues until the authorities were ready to gather the little corpses for monthly parades in small coffins on the roofs of taxis for the benefit of Iraqi TV and visiting reporters. The parents were ordered to wail with grief — no matter how many weeks had passed since their babies had died — and to shout to the cameras that the sanctions had killed their children, the doctors said. Afterward, the parents would be rewarded with food or money. The propaganda campaign was organized by the ministries of health and information and by the Iraqi intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, said the doctors and a former agent in another of Iraq's security agencies, the General Security Service. "The Mukhabarat would go all over Iraq gathering the dead bodies, put them in coffins, make a whole line, put them on top of taxis and make big propaganda out of it," said the former agent, who asked that only his first name, Walid, be published. NEWSDAY ----- Original Message ----- From: "N. Martin" <nm313@cam.ac.uk> To: "CASI Discuss" <casi-discuss@lists.casi.org.uk> Sent: Montag, 26. Mai 2003 20:37 Subject: [casi] where did the baby-parades story originate? Dear Discuss List, does anyone know where the Baby-Parade-A-Farce/Sanction-Suffering-was-Saddam's-Fault story originated and where it has appeared? it has been around for a good half week or week now, long before the telegraph "revealed" anything. CASI is preparing a press release on the matter, and this information could be useful. THanks, Nicholas _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk