Bitter fruit from seeds of hate
By Charley Reese
Commentary
Published in The Orlando Sentinel on November 26, 2000
Most Americans don't realize how heinous our own
government has been in its foreign policy.
The Sunday Herald, a Scottish newspaper, last
September reported that the United States and its allies
deliberately destroyed Iraq's water supply and in the
nine years since have deliberately prevented it from
being repaired by keeping out the equipment and
chemicals necessary.
A Georgetown University professor has obtained a
seven-page document, prepared by the Defense
Intelligence Agency, that pointed out the vulnerability of
the water system, its dependence on imported
equipment and chemicals, and the likely consequences
of its destruction.
The report was dead accurate. The United States and its
allies destroyed the system. The Sunday Herald
reported that eight multipurpose dams were repeatedly
bombed, smashing the infrastructure for flood control,
municipal and industrial water storage, irrigation and
hydroelectric power. Four of Iraq's seven major
pumping stations were destroyed, as were 31 municipal
water and sewage facilities.
The result: Water-borne diseases -- typhoid, dysentery,
hepatitis, cholera and polio -- have killed thousands of
civilians in Iraq. There is always a rough justice in the
universe, however. The Sunday Times has reported that
tens of thousands of American and British troops are
suffering from radiation poisoning from the depleted
uranium shells fired during the Gulf War. No wonder
both governments are trying to deny that Gulf War
Syndrome even exists.
The water-supply system, which we attacked, had
absolutely nothing to do with supplying or supporting the
Iraqi troops in Kuwait. It was a deliberate,
cold-blooded attack, intended to kill and sicken Iraqi
civilians. It was a war crime.
People who like to yap about the rule of law should see
to it that their own government obeys the law.
The new president of Yugoslavia has our number when
it comes to the rule of law. He said, "Washington
introduced into the rule of law everything that is opposed
to the rule of law: voluntarianism, insecurity and
arbitrariness."
It's one thing to knock out communications towers,
bridges and ammunition dumps, but a city's sewer and
water system has nothing to do with the military. Taking
those out seems more malicious than any American
would be capable of -- unless you've met some of the
unthinking automatons and some of the heartless sharks
who infect the Beltway. They flit around like wraiths,
whispering their poisonous malice into the ears of the
office holders.
It would be comforting to imagine that one day the
American people will elect to public office men and
women who make clear to the world that we do not
make war on women and children.
Unfortunately, I fear that the cruelty and disregard for
human life and human rights is a reflection of the
American people's own attitudes. So long as the victims
are "the others" -- foreigners -- most Americans don't
seem to give a flip what is done to them.
One hates to keep returning to the universal wisdom of
religion, but what one sows one reaps. Our government
has, in our name, been sowing hate, and one day we will
reap the fruit of that hate. It will be bitter fruit.
It will not be much consolation, if one day someone
poisons our water supply, to know that that person got
the idea from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.
We need a new, more benign emperor in our Rome on
the Potomac.
