Take the War on Iraq IQ
Test
Do you know enough to justify going to war with Iraq?
1. Q: What percentage of the world's
population does the U.S. have? A: 6%
2. Q: What percentage of the world's wealth does the U.S. have? A: 50%
3. Q: Which country has the largest oil reserves? A: Saudi Arabia
4. Q: Which country has the second largest oil reserves? A: Iraq
2. Q: What percentage of the world's wealth does the U.S. have? A: 50%
3. Q: Which country has the largest oil reserves? A: Saudi Arabia
4. Q: Which country has the second largest oil reserves? A: Iraq
5. Q: How much is spent on military
budgets a year worldwide? A: $900+ billion
6. Q: How much of this is spent by the U.S.? A:50%
6. Q: How much of this is spent by the U.S.? A:50%
7. Q: What percent of US military
spending would ensure the essentials of life to everyone in the
world, according the the UN? A: 10% (that's about$40 billion, the
amount of funding initially requested to fund our retaliatory attack
on Afghanistan).
8. Q: How many people have died in
wars since World War II? A: 86 million
9. Q: How long has Iraq had chemical
and biological weapons? A: Since the early 1980's.
10. Q: Did Iraq develop these
chemical & biological weapons on their own? A: No, the materials
and technology were supplied by the US government, along with Britain
and private corporations.
11. Q: Did the US government condemn
the Iraqi use of gas warfare against Iran? A: No
12. Q: How many people did Saddam
Hussein kill using gas in the Kurdish town of Halabja in
1988?
A: 5,000
13. Q: How many western countries condemned this action at the time? A:0
13. Q: How many western countries condemned this action at the time? A:0
14. Q: How many gallons of agent
Orange did America use in Vietnam? A: 17 million.
15. Q: Are there any proven links
between Iraq and September 11th terrorist attack? A: No
16. Q: What is the estimated number
of civilian casualties in the Gulf War? A: 35,000
17. Q: How many casualties did the
Iraqi military inflict on the western forces during the Gulf War? A:
0
18. Q: How many retreating Iraqi
soldiers were buried alive by U.S. tanks with ploughs mounted on the
front? A: 6,000
19. Q: How many tons of depleted
uranium were left in Iraq and Kuwait after the Gulf War? A: 40
tons
20. Q: What according to the UN was
the increase in cancer rates in Iraq between 1991 and 1994? A:
700%
21. Q: How much of Iraq's military
capacity did America claim it had destroyed in 1991? A:
80%
22. Q: Is there any proof that Iraq
plans to use its weapons for anything other than deterrence and self
defense? A: No
23. Q: Does Iraq present more of a
threat to world peace now than 10 years ago? A: No
24. Q: How many civilian deaths has
the Pentagon predicted in the event of an attack on Iraq in
2002/3?
A:
10,000
25. Q: What percentage of these will be children? A:Over 50%
25. Q: What percentage of these will be children? A:Over 50%
26. Q: How many years has the U.S.
engaged in air strikes on Iraq? A: 11 years
27. Q: Was the U.S and the UK at war
with Iraq between December 1998 and September 1999?A: No
28. Q: How many pounds of explosives
were dropped on Iraq between December 1998 and September
1999?
A: 20
million
29. Q: How many years ago was UN
Resolution 661 introduced, imposing strict sanctions on Iraq's
imports and exports? A: 12 years
30. Q: What was the child death rate
in Iraq in 1989 (per 1,000 births)? A: 38
31. Q: What was the estimated child
death rate in Iraq in 1999 (per 1,000 births)?
A: 131
(that's an increase of345%)
32. Q: How many Iraqis are estimated
to have died by October 1999 as a result of UN
sanctions?
A: 1.5
million
33. Q: How many Iraqi children are
estimated to have died due to sanctions since 1997? A: 750,000
34. Q: Did Saddam order the inspectors out of Iraq? A:No
34. Q: Did Saddam order the inspectors out of Iraq? A:No
35. Q: How many inspections were
there in November and December 1998? A:300
36. Q: How many of these inspections had problems? A:5
36. Q: How many of these inspections had problems? A:5
37. Q: Were the weapons inspectors
allowed entry to the Ba'ath Party HQ? A: Yes
38. Q: Who said that by December
1998, "Iraq had in fact, been disarmed to a level unprecedented
in modern history." A: Scott Ritter, UNSCOM chief.
39. Q: In 1998 how much of Iraq's
post 1991 capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction did the UN
weapons inspectors claim to have discovered and dismantled? A:
90%
40. Q: Is Iraq willing to allow the
weapons inspectors back in? A: Yes
41. Q: How many UN resolutions did Israel violate by 1992? A: Over 65
41. Q: How many UN resolutions did Israel violate by 1992? A: Over 65
42. Q: How many UN resolutions on
Israel did America veto between 1972 and 1990? A: 30+
44. Q: How many countries are known to have nuclear weapons? A: 8
45. Q:How many nuclear warheads has Iraq got? A: 0
46. Q: How many nuclear warheads has US got? A: over 10,000
47. Q: Which is the only country to use nuclear weapons? A: the US
44. Q: How many countries are known to have nuclear weapons? A: 8
45. Q:How many nuclear warheads has Iraq got? A: 0
46. Q: How many nuclear warheads has US got? A: over 10,000
47. Q: Which is the only country to use nuclear weapons? A: the US
48. Q: How many nuclear warheads does
Israel have? A: Over 400
50. Q: Who said, "Our lives
begin to end the day we become silent about things that
matter"?
A: Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr
Charles Sheketoff, Executive Director
Oregon Center for Public Policy
PO Box 7, Silverton, OR 97381
WAR CRIMES, OR AN ACT OF WAR? MIXING
OIL AND WATER
STEPHEN C. PELLETIERE, NEW YORK TIMES: It was no surprise
that President Bush, lacking smoking-gun evidence of Iraq's weapons
programs, used his State of the Union address to re-emphasize the
moral case for an invasion: "The dictator who is assembling the
world's most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole
villages, leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind or
disfigured."
The accusation that Iraq has used chemical weapons against its
citizens is a familiar part of the debate. The piece of hard evidence
most frequently brought up concerns the gassing of Iraqi Kurds at the
town of Halabja in March 1988, near the end of the eight-year
Iran-Iraq war. President Bush himself has cited Iraq's "gassing
its own people," specifically at Halabja, as a reason to topple
Saddam Hussein.
But the truth is, all we know for certain is that Kurds were
bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any
certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds. This is not
the only distortion in the Halabja story.
I am in a position to know because, as the Central Intelligence
Agency's senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq
war, and as a professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, I
was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through
Washington having to do with the Persian Gulf. In addition, I
headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the Iraqis would fight a
war against the United States; the classified version of the report
went into great detail on the Halabja affair.
This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it
came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians.
Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the
town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The
Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that
exchange. But they were not Iraq's main target.
And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the
United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a
classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence
community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was
Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas.
The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in
the battle around Halabja. The condition of the dead Kurds' bodies,
however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent --- that
is, a cyanide-based gas --- which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis,
who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known
to have possessed blood agents at the time.
These facts have long been in the public domain but,
extraordinarily, as often as the Halabja affair is cited, they are
rarely mentioned. A much-discussed article in The New Yorker last
March did not make reference to the Defense Intelligence Agency
report or consider that Iranian gas might have killed the Kurds. On
the rare occasions the report is brought up, there is usually
speculation, with no proof, that it was skewed out of American
political favoritism toward Iraq in its war against Iran.
I am not trying to rehabilitate the character of Saddam Hussein.
He has much to answer for in the area of human rights abuses. But
accusing him of gassing his own people at Halabja as an act of
genocide is not correct, because as far as the information we have
goes, all of the cases where gas was used involved battles. These
were tragedies of war. There may be justifications for invading Iraq,
but Halabja is not one of them.
In fact, those who really feel that the disaster at Halabja has
bearing on today might want to consider a different question: Why was
Iran so keen on taking the town? A closer look may shed light on
America's impetus to invade Iraq.
We are constantly reminded that Iraq has perhaps the world's
largest reserves of oil. But in a regional and perhaps even
geopolitical sense, it may be more important that Iraq has the most
extensive river system in the Middle East. In addition to the Tigris
and Euphrates, there are the Greater Zab and Lesser Zab rivers in the
north of the country. Iraq was covered with irrigation works by the
sixth century A.D., and was a granary for the region.
Before the Persian Gulf war, Iraq had built an impressive system
of dams and river control projects, the largest being the
Darbandikhan dam in the Kurdish area. And it was this dam the
Iranians were aiming to take control of when they seized Halabja. In
the 1990's there was much discussion over the construction of a
so-called Peace Pipeline that would bring the waters of the Tigris
and Euphrates south to the parched Gulf states and, by extension,
Israel. No progress has been made on this, largely because of Iraqi
intransigence. With Iraq in American hands, of course, all that could
change.
Thus America could alter the destiny of the Middle East in a way
that probably could not be challenged for decades --- not solely by
controlling Iraq's oil, but by controlling its water. Even if America
didn't occupy the country, once Mr. Hussein's Baath Party is driven
from power, many lucrative opportunities would open up for American
companies.
All that is needed to get us into war is one clear reason for
acting, one that would be generally persuasive. But efforts to link
the Iraqis directly to Osama bin Laden have proved inconclusive.
Assertions that Iraq threatens its neighbors have also failed to
create much resolve; in its present debilitated condition --- thanks
to United Nations sanctions --- Iraq's conventional forces threaten
no one.
Perhaps the strongest argument left for taking us to war quickly
is that Saddam Hussein has committed human rights atrocities against
his people. And the most dramatic case are the accusations about
Halabja.
Before we go to war over Halabja, the administration owes the
American people the full facts. And if it has other examples of
Saddam Hussein gassing Kurds, it must show that they were not
pro-Iranian Kurdish guerrillas who died fighting alongside Iranian
Revolutionary Guards. Until Washington gives us proof of Saddam
Hussein's supposed atrocities, why are we picking on Iraq on human
rights grounds, particularly when there are so many other repressive
regimes Washington supports?
Stephen C. Pelletiere is author of Iraq and the
International Oil System: Why America Went to War in the Persian
Gulf
--
--------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------
Drop Bush, Not Bombs!
--------------------------------------------------
"During times of universal deceit,
telling the truth becomes a revolutionary
act."
George Orwell
---------------------------------
END OF THE TRAIL SALOON
Live music, comedy, call-in radio-oke
Alternate Sundays, 6am GMT (10pm PDT)
http://www.kvmr.org
--------------------------------
"I uke, therefore I am." -- Cool Hand
Uke
"I log on, therefore I seem to be." -- Rodd
Gnawkin
Visit Cool Hand Uke's Lava Tube:
http://www.oro.net/~dscanlan
