RAMSEY CLARK'S LETTER TO U.N.
SECURITY AND U.N. GENERAL ASSEMBLY
CONCERNING THE SANCTIONS AGAINST IRAQ
(sent out by the International Action Center)
On December 11, 2001 the following letter was sent from
former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark to the ambassador
and foreign minister of each member of the UN Security
Council and the UN General Assembly.
International Action Center
39 West 14th St, #206
NY, NY 10011
212-633-6646 fax: 212-633-2889
www.iacenter.org iacenter@iacentr.org
December 11, 2001
Dear Ambassador,
The Security Council must direct the United States that it
may not attack Iraq and must cease threatening to do so. Nor
can it train, aid, or finance other forces seeking the
violent overthrow of the Iraqi government. Any such acts
would violate the obligations of nations under the Charter
of the United Nations and constitute crimes under
international law.
U.S. military and economic assaults on Iraq in the past
dozen years are a continuing crime against peace and
humanity. They violate the Genocide Convention.
The Pentagon admits it conducted 110,000 aerial sorties
against a defenseless Iraq dropping 88,500 tons of bombs
equivalent to 7 1/2 Hiroshima bombs in 42 days from January
17 to February 28, 1991. The bombs targeted every type of
structure and facility necessary to support civilian
life. Family dwellings, water and food systems and supplies,
industry, commerce, business, education, religion all across
Iraq were the direct object of U.S. bombs punishing a whole
population.
More than 150,000 thousands defenseless people died in Iraq
as a result of this military assault, which included
thousands of individual war crimes.
From August 6, 1990 to date the most severe economic
sanctions and forced impoverishment have deliberately
inflicted hunger, malnourishment, sickness and death
generously among the people of Iraq killing and crippling
infants, children, the elderly, pregnant women, nursing
mothers, persons with chronic illnesses, and emergency
medical cases fist and most frequently.
More than 1 1/2 million people have died as a direct result
of these sanctions. More than half have been children under
five years of age. The sanctions, coerced from the Security
Council by the U.S., have violated the Genocide Convention
because they have deliberately created conditions of life
intended to destroy the Iraqi population in whole, or in
part, because of the nationality, race, religion and ethnic
origin of its people. The sanctions have had their intended
effect.
Every U.N. agency dealing with food, health and children has
confirmed the human horror of the sanctions. They include
the FAO, UNICEF, WFP, WHO. The most courageous and honorable
of the U.N. employee's directly involved with enforcement of
the sanctions and inspections under them have resigned their
positions and publicly protested the sanctions and
inspections policies. The food for oil program approved only
in late 1996, and used thereafter primarily as a devise for
delay, frustration and accusation, was initiated only when
international protest against the savagery of the sanctions
overwhelmed the fear in which Security Council members held
the threat of U.S. reprisal if they did not support
U.S. policies.
The U.S. has bombed Iraq whenever it chose to do so at any
time for the past twelve years. Missiles and bombs have
targeted Saddam Hussin for assassination. Many hundreds have
been killed, including as an illustration of the meaning of
such bombing, Leila al Attar, the internationally famous
artist, museum director, wife, mother, human being. The
sound of U.S. jets over Iraq is omnipresent, keeping
constant the terrifying memory of the continuous aerial and
missile assault of February-March 1991 which averaged an
aerial sortie every 30 seconds.
In the face of these staggering crimes against Iraq, the
U.S. has conducted a constant campaign of vilification in
the international media it controls. While claims Saddam
Hussein is the evil it seeks to destroy its broad brush
paints all of Iraq as a symbol of evil. The U.S. propaganda
is racist, anti Muslim, hate engendering and false.
The U.S. has corrupted and seriously compromised the United
Nations by appearing to act in its name, tragically
diminishing humanities best hope for peace, dignity and
decent conditions of life for all by its decade of brutish
and criminal assaults on the people of Iraq. Though coerced,
the Security Council is complicit in these crimes against
peace and humanity, war crimes and genocide because it has
at the least allowed its name and moral authority to be
usurped by the United States.
The United States time and time again has acted on the
advice of Plato's Athenian Stranger, who fearing the
judgment of history remains anonymous by waging "...war for
the sake of peace". Consider how victims of U.S. wars,
surrogate and direct, since World War II have fared: Korea,
Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, the Domenican Republic, the
Philippines, Liberia, Cuba, Guatemala, Grenada, Palestine,
Lebanon, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Haiti, El Salvador, Honduras,
Angola, Croatia, Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone,
Iran, Indonesia, Afghanistan. Yet where is the promised
peace?
Consider the havoc direct U.S. military violence has wreaked
in the past decade on the people of Iraq, all the Republics
of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia created to make
peace possible in the Balkans, Nicaragua, Haiti, Somalia,
Sudan, North Korea, Kosovo, Afghanistan. And who will be
next? The media reports daily on the candidates.
Is there anything Iraq has done in the past decade which
threatened peace, endangered life, or caused violence that
could possibly compare with the violence and calumny the
U.S. has visited on Iraq. There is no legal basis, or moral
justification for a U.S. attack on Iraq, or for U.S.
financing and assisting in the overthrow of its
government. For the U.S. to do so is an international crime
and prohibited by the Constitution and laws of the United
States. Prevailing power in the U.S. and its government
intends to attack Iraq when the current assault of
Afghanistan has accomplished its purpose to consolidate
U.S. domination over the Middle East, the Gulf region and
central Asia.
Act immediately to end the shame of the Security Councils
abject failure to assert the independence and sovereignty of
the United Nations under its Charter and to end this
scourage of war. Prohibit the United States from attacking
Iraq.
Sincerely,
Ramsey Clark
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