Can you imagine the bitterness from all of this?
Roger Kimball and Mark Steyn get "the situation in Iraq" exactly wrong, again, as usual, while Denis Halliday, former UN Assistant Secretary-General and UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator in Iraq, and nominee for the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize, gets it spot on.
"The reason the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad were bombed is because the UN has been taken over by the US and turned into a dark joke and a malignant force.
The West sees the UN as a benign organization, but the sad reality in much of the world is that the UN is not seen as benign.
In Iraq, the UN imposed sustained sanctions that probably killed up to one million people. Children were dying of malnutrition and water-borne diseases. The US and UK bombed the infrastructure in 1991, destroying power, water and sewage systems against the Geneva Convention. It was a great crime against Iraq.
Thirteen years of sanctions made it impossible for Iraq to repair the damage. That is why we have such tremendous resentment and anger against the UN in Iraq. There is a sense that the UN humiliated the Iraqi people and society. I would use the term genocide to define the use of sanctions against Iraq. Several million Iraqis are suffering cancers because of the use of depleted uranium shells. That's an atrocity. Can you imagine the bitterness from all of this?"
Kimball and Steyn can only imagine "the terrorists" watching CNN and the BBC. Maybe they're angry because none of what Halliday says gets reported - or maybe that's just missing the point?
