COLORADO CAMPAIGN FOR MIDDLE EAST PEACE
CCMEP Picks the Top Most Censored stories NOT in the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News (1999 - 2000)*
1. DEPLETED
URANIUM. 11/14/00, “Iraqis and Former Gis to sue in U.S.
over depleted uranium.” “A decade after Operation
Desert Storm, lawyers believe there is enough evidence to link
the massive rise in cancer in Iraq and the effect on British and
American soldiers to almost 950,000 DU missiles and shells fired.”(The
London Independent, 11/14/00); October 4 1999,
“Danger that Divides Medical Opinion.” “After
the Gulf War, an estimated 300 tons of depleted uranium was left
on the battlefields, mostly in the form of radioactive dust. Dr
Siegwart-Horst Gunther, a German professor, believes that the
depleted uranium dust has had severe effects on the immune
systems of affected Iraqi people, which led to a rise in the
prevalence of many infectious diseases in the area, including
herpes.” (The Independent, 10/4/99)
Post: Did not cover most recent story of law-suit. Excellent story as part of Bruce Finley’s series on CCMEP’s first delegation to Iraq (2/13/00).
News: No story, though there was an excellent related letter to the editor published on 12/8/98.
2. U.S. DOES NOT CONDEMN ARMENIAN GENOCIDE. October 20, 2000, “Hastert Withdraws ‘Genocide’ Resolution, Clinton Plea, Ties With Turkey Cited.” “The withdrawal of the resolution was likely to avert a diplomatic crisis with Turkey, which is a NATO member, a key U.S. ally in the battle against Islamic fundamentalism, and a base for U.S. and British jets that patrol the skies over northern Iraq.” (Washington Post, 10/20/00)
Post: no story
News: no story
3. U.S. VETERANS GO TO IRAQ TO REBUILD U.S. BOMBED WATER-TREATMENT FACILITIES. September 25, 2000, “St. Paul Vet Heads to Iraq. Anti-War Group Planning to Rebuild Water Plants.” “’I was just so outraged that people were dying every day because of these sanctions,’” [Persian Gulf Veteran] Riesch said. “’There have been estimates as high as 250 a day dying because of the sanctions.’” (The Saint Paul Pioneer Press, 9/25/00)
Post: no story
News: no story
4. DECLASSIFIED DOCUMENT PROVES U.S. KNEW SUFFERING CAUSED BY BOMBING WATER PLANTS. September 17, 2000. “U.S. intentionally destroyed Iraq’s water system.” “The U.S.-led allied forces deliberately destroyed Iraq’s water supply during the Gulf War – flagrantly breaking the Geneva Convention and causing thousands of civilian deaths.” – Sunday Herald, Scotland, 9/17/00).
Post: no story
News: no story
5. U.S. BACKS OFF OF IRAQ. August 31, 2000. “U.S. to U.N.: Do not send in inspectors.” “To avoid a confrontation with Baghdad at an inopportune time, the United States and other permanent members of the Security Council have persuaded the chairman of a new U.N. arms agency to cancel his planned announcement that weapons inspectors are ready to return to Iraq.” (Washington Post, 8/31/00)
Post: no story
News: no story
6. FORMER UNSCOM DIRECTOR DOES NOT SUPPORT SANCTIONS. June 4, 2000, BBC Interview. “Former UNSCOM Director, Richard Butler, said the sanctions harmed the Iraqi people and had not realized their declared aim of stripping Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. ‘I deeply believe that sanctions as now applied to Iraq have been utterly counterproductive for this disarmament purpose.’” (BBC Talking Point On Air, 6/4/00)
Post: no story
News: no story
7. FOUR AMERICANS IN IRAQ. July
12-Sept. 12, 2000. “Americans Protest Sanctions
on Iraq” “Four American demonstrators have
set up a tent across from the U.N. compound in Baghdad,
saying they won't eat for three days to protest the effects
of 10 years of crippling international sanctions on Iraq…[Four]
Americans are spending two months in Iraq, mostly
in the southern city of Basra, living on the same food
rations as Iraqis.” (Washington Post, 8/7/00)
Post: no story
News: no story
8. NATIONAL DEMONSTRATION IN D.C. August
6, 2000. “Protesters Deride U.N.
Sanctions 10-Year-Old Rules Against Iraq Are
Hurting Children, Not Saddam, They Argue” “The soggiest
people in Washington yesterday were also some of the most
devoted: hundreds of protesters marching from the
Lincoln Memorial to the White House to rally in the
driving rain for an end to the economic sanctions
imposed on Iraq.” (Washington Post, 8/7/00)
“Chanting ‘Stop the sanctions now!’
and carrying loaves of bread, a few hundred people
demonstrated outside the White House yesterday morning, and 104
were arrested when they sat on the sidewalk and refused to move.”
(Washington Post, 8/8/00)
Post: no story
News: no story
9. FIRST MEMBER OF CONGRESS TRAVELS TO IRAQ. March 18, 2000. “Legislator views desperation at Iraqi children’s hospital.” “Rep. Tony hall, making an unprecedented visit to evaluate the impact of sanctions on Iraq, visited a Baghdad children’s hospital and met Health Minister Umid Medhat Mubarak on Monday. ‘We saw malnourished kids, we saw children who have leukemia. There is no question about a drugs shortage in the pharmacy we saw,’ Hall, an Ohio Democrat, told reporters after a visit to Saddam Hospital. (USA Today, 4/18/00)
Post: no story
News: no story
10. 70 MEMBERS OF CONGRESS CALL FOR END OF ECONOMIC SANCTIONS AGAINST IRAQ. February 16, 2000. “Iraq Lifting Economic Sanctions Would Be Humane Step.” President Bill Clinton should heed the call of about 70 members of Congress who are asking him to de-link economic and military sanctions. Ending economic sanctions against Iraq without clear concessions from Hussein may seem weak to some. But after inflicting suffering for nine years, the punitive policy can no longer be considered a tool of ethical diplomacy.” (Detroit Free Press, 2/16/00, Editorial) “Rep. David Bonior (Michigan), who initiated the letter, said that the U.S. led sanctions are ‘infancticide masquerading as policy.’ (Chicago Tribune, 3/19/00).
Post: As part of the two-day series of articles, Bruce Finley reported this. (2/14/00)
News: no story
12. FORMER UNSCOM INSPECTOR: IRAQ IS QUALITATIVELY DISARMNED. March 7, 2000, “Scott Ritter on Iraq.” “Former UNSCOM weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, said that by 1997, ‘Iraq had been qualitatively disarmed. On any meaningful benchmark – in terms of defining Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction on capability; in terms of assessing whether or not Iraq posed a threat, not only to its immediate neighbors, but the region and the world as a whole – Iraq had been eliminated as such a threat….’” (Cape Cod Times, 3/7/00) * This story also appeared before March, 2000.
Post: no story
News: no story
13. PROTESTORS ARRESTED AT IOWA AIR NAT’L GUARD BASE. March 4, 2000. “22 arrested in protest” “Des Moines police arrested 22 protestors Saturday outside the Iowa Air National base. The protestors oppose Iowa troops’ involvement in enforcing the no-fly zone over northern Iraq and they oppose the United States’ nine-year economic embargo against Iraq.…’Symbolically today, we offer this food to the people of Iraq,’ said Chuck Quilty. He said food and medical supplies would help Iraqi citizens more than bombing.” (Des Moines Register, 3/5/00)
Post: no story
News: no story
14. HIGH-LEVEL U.N. OFFICIALS RESIGN IN PROTEST. February 12, 2000. “U.N.’s Iraq Food Program Chief Quits.” Hons Von Sponek and Jutta Burghardt, both high-level U.N. directors in Baghdad, both quit in protest of the sanctions. “As a U.N. official, I should not be expected to be silent to that which I recognize as a true human tragedy that needs to be ended,” Von Sponek said at the time (BBC News, 2/8/00; AP, 2/15/00).
Post: As part of the two-day series of articles on CCMEP’s delegation to Iraq, Bruce Finley reported Von Sponek’s resignation.
News: While this was reported in an excellent Holger Jensen column on 4/23/00, that was more than two months after the protest resignations.
15. U.S. STOPS IRAQ FROM IMPORTING HUMANITARIAN SUPPLIES. March 14, 2000. “U.N. Chief Faults U.S., Britain for Iraqi Supply Delays.” “In the draft of a report to be delivered to the U.N. Security Council this week, Secretary General Kofi Annan chides the United States and Britain for holding up more than $1.5 billion of humanitarian supplies for Iraq…” (Washington Post, 3/14/00) In February, 2000, the U.N. director of the Iraq Program claimed: “There is currently a backlog of around 800 humanitarian & oil sector applications – my colleagues and I believe this is unacceptable.” (Education for Peace In Iraq, Press Release, Feb. 2000)
Post: no story
News: no story
16. U.S. CONGRESSIONAL AIDES TRAVEL TO IRAQ. August 30, 1999. “A controversial U.S. congressional delegation, in Iraq to evaluate the impact of crippling U.N. sanctions, met with a health ministry official on Monday, the official Iraqi News Agency said.” (Agence France Presse, 8/30/99)
Post: no story
News: no story
17. MAJOR MEDIA
& U.S. GOV’T CENSOR STORY. March/April,1999.
“Withholding the News: The Washington Post and the
UNSCOM Spying Scandal” “On January 6, the Washington
Post’s Barton Gellman revealed in a front-page article,
sourced to "advisors" and "confidants" of
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, that Annan had "obtained
what he regards as convincing evidence that United Nations arms
inspectors helped collect eavesdropping intelligence used in
American efforts to undermine the Iraqi regime…. But
Gellman, who had produced some of the best and most enterprising
coverage of UNSCOM during the past year, had known about the
UNSCOM-spying story for months--all the way down to its
"operational details," such as the brand names of
surveillance equipment used in eavesdropping operations--and was
in a position to publish what he knew by early October 1998. But
at the behest of a senior U.S. government official, he and the Washington
Post’s top management chose not to reveal the extent of U.S.
intelligence’s links to (and possible abuse of) UNSCOM, for
reasons of "national security." (EXTRA, March/April,
1999)
Post: no story
News: no story
18. FORMER U.N. ASSISTANT SECRETARY
GENERAL IN DENVER. March 3, 1999, “Americans called to
speak out against Iraq sanctions.” “Economic
sanctions against Iraq are a form of warfare and if Americans
knew the death and devastation sanctions are causing innocent
children, they would stop them, said former United Nations
humanitarian Dennis Halliday in Denver Feb. 20.” (Denver
Catholic Register, 3/3/99)
Post:
no story
News:
no story
19. COLORADANS ILLEGALY SEND ASPIRIN TO IRAQ. January 30, 1999. Two dozen members of the Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace marched and then descended upon the Terminal Annex Post Office downtown. Each person taking their turn, each mailed an envelope of aspirin to the Director of the Iraqi Red Crescent. According to the U.S. Treasury it is illegal to send anything of value to Iraq, unless a permit is obtained. (KGNU radio covered this event.)
Post: no story
News: no story
20. U.S. USED UNSCOM AS SPY FRONT. January 6, 1999. “U.S. Says it Collected Iraq Intelligence Via UNSCOM.” “U.S. officials confirmed the monitoring operation in an effort to rebut allegations that the United States had inappropriately used UNSCOM as a tool to penetrate Saddam Hussein’s security and promote his downfall. Until yesterday, U.S. officials had denied using intelligence gathered in connection with UNSCOM for U.S. purposes.” (Washington Post, 1/8/99). “United States intelligence services infiltrated agents and espionage equipment for three years into United Nations arms control teams in Iraq to eavesdrop on the Iraqi military without the knowledge of the U.N. agency that it used to disguise its work, according to U.S. Government employees and documents describing the classified operation.” (Washington Post, 3/2/99)
Post: A decent story appeared 1/6/99.
News:
A 3/11/99 editorialized: “First, any
espionage was justified precisely because the
Iraqis defied and evaded their
own commitment to destroy their mass
destruction weapons capability. “ While
not exposing the whole story, this editorial appeared over two
months after the story finally broke.
21. UNSCOM PULLED UNSCOM OUT OF IRAQ. 12/18/98 Top Inspector Denies Aiding U.S. War Aims Russia, China Question Motives of UNSCOM's Butler.” “Among the circumstances cited by those who suspect Butler of coordinating with Washington on a rationale for war, three stand out:…The third is that Butler ordered his inspectors to evacuate Baghdad, in anticipation of a military attack, on Tuesday night -- at a time when most members of the Security Council had yet to receive his report.” (Washington Post, 12/18/98)
Post:
News: In 6/24/99 A.P. story it was correctly reported that UNSCOM Director Richard Butler pulled UNSCOM out before the December 1998 bombings. In two columns by Holger Jensen (11/11/99, 12/21/99) he inaccurately wrote that UNSCOM was expelled and kicked out by Iraq.
22. TURKEY INVADES NORTHERN IRAQ; BOMBS KURDS. 1991 – Present: “America wants to help Turkey. That’s not so easy when the rest of the world recoils at the war against the Kurds…The [Turkish] army has proven effective at capturing, killing, crushing and destroying, so much so that the P.K.K. is now in terrible disarray…And by refusing to consult or even notify [Turkey’s] Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz in advance, it showed how far Turkey is from civilian control of the military, a principle the West considers a pillar of democracy.” (The New York Times, 5/3/98) The northern “no-fly zone” is set up ostensibly to protect the Kurdish population. Yet Turkey has invaded northern Iraq hundreds of times with full U.S. support.
Post: A very small mention in a 11/26/99 story; previous to that was a 4/14/95 op-ed.
News: A 2/18/99 Holger Jensen column mentions this, though does not elaborate.
23. SANCTIONS. 8/90 – Present: U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq have led to the deaths of over 500,000 infants and a million more Iraqis over the age of five. UNICEF and WHO studies have all proved these startling statistics. When 60 Minutes asked Sec. of State Madeline Albright if U.S. foreign policy was worth the deaths of a half-million children, she replied: “It is a difficult choice…but we think the price is worth it.” Former State Department spokesperson, James Rubin, disputes the half-million number while he is reminded they are U.N. statistics (“Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq,” film by John Pilger).
Post: Two stories that deserve merit: 1) Bruce Finley’s February series on CCMEP’s delegation; 2) 2/19/99 story, “Littlest Iraqis pay cost of war.”
News: Besides Holger Jensen’s 4/23/00 column, there has been precious little reporting on this.
24. U.S. BOMBS IRAQ EVERY 2-3 DAYS. 1/99 – Present: According to the United Nations, the U.S. and Britain bomb Iraq at a rate of more than twice a week. Since the mass U.S. terror bombing of December, 1998, the U.S. has bombed residential neighborhoods, monasteries, sheep, food warehouses, schools and more. Over 300 Iraqis have been killed by these bombings.
Post: Bruce Finley’s two-day series accurately covered this story, though….
News:
* This report was part of an extensive Fall, 2000 CCMEP investigation of local newspaper coverage of the U.S. war against Iraq. We invite questions and comments about this report: ccmep@hotmail.com