The Chatterbox, Volume 81, Issue 1, Oct. 15, 2002

Saddam needs to go

The Iraqi government is a greater threat to its own people than to Americans

Imagine a boy. Now imagine this boy relentlessly abused by his stepfather, prevented from attending school, knowing only a peasant’s life.

Follow this boy to his uncle’s home in Baghdad, a place totally different from his small village near the Tigris -- a place where the rushing modern world meets the rough, trouble country of Iraq. He tries to enter the Baghdad Military Academy but is rejected.

This boy is now a young man, finding action and purpose in revolution. He makes his first assassination at 20 as a member of the Baath Party, takes part in another two years later, and then flees to Egypt.

When he returns after a military coup gives power to the Baath Party, this teen is now a man. He earns a job as interrogator and torturer at the Palace of the End, the royal palace turned torture house.

Now, this abused boy/troubled teenager/ruthless man is locked-up somewhere, receiving visits from a psychiatrist, right? This guy sees nothing but the blue-gray of the prison and the trampled grass of the exercise yard, occasionally discussing the chances of the national football team with his friend from cell block D, right?

Wrong. This man is Saddam Hussein. He is the sovereign leader of Iraq, an oil-rich nation of millions. Instead of learning to control his anger with 30-minute sessions, he is controlling Mesopotamia, the cradle of human civilization.

Saddam needs to go. There is no way this man should be in power, and the U.S. is justified in seeking this purpose. However, it would be wrong for the U.S. to bypass the United Nations and jump immediately into invasion, and the Bush administration seems to realize this by their eagerness to work through the Security Council. In turn, the U.N. needs to do its job. As an organization for world peace and human rights, it must see the need for the removal of Saddam Hussein from power.

First of all, he cares nothing for his own people. He is more of a danger to the Iraqi people than he is any American.While he claimed that the U.N. sanctions were starving his people, for five years he refused the U.N.’s attempts at an oil-for-food program. And, after he finally succumbed to international pressure and accepted the program, he has done his best to obstruct the travel of food and supplies and has tried to sneak materials through that can be used to make biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.

In the oil-for-food program set up by the U.N., Iraq is allowed to sell a certain amount of oil, and the profits, managed by the U.N., are to be used for food, medical supplies and other needs of the Iraqi people. Saddam seems to do his best to keep this from happening.

There have been reports large food exports coming from Iraq that had been recently imported into Iraq to feed the starving people. Baby food that was sent to Iraq has been found all over the Middle East. Instead if distributing these supplies to the people of Iraq, he is selling them for personal gain.

According to the U.N., there are $200 million worth of undistributed medical supplies and medicines sitting around in warehouses. In a 1999 UNICEF report on child health, in the northern section of Iraq, where the U.N. is able to distribute child medical supplies and nutritional supplements, the child mortality rate has declined slowly. However, in the central and southern sections of Iraq, where the government distributes these supplies, the rate risen has from about 60 deaths (from birth to age five) in 1,000 live births to around 120 deaths, more than one in 10.

And what about the people he doesn’t like? In the 1970s and ‘80s Saddam destroyed about 3,000 Kurdish villages. In the 1988-89 Anfal campaign, he used chemical weapons on Kurdish communities in the north. In one of those towns, Halabja, he killed 5,000.

In 1999, the Shi’a people of Ruthmaitha and Khudur complained about faulty distribution of food and medicine to the Shi’a’s detriment. So, on June 26 of that year, instead of getting fair distribution, they got Saddam’s tanks.

But, not everyone is living in poverty and fear -- well at least not poverty. All of Saddam’s buddies are lounging around in extensive palaces. He has built 48 since the Gulf War. He has included waterfalls, man-made lakes and large gardens, many times in places where the citizens would kill to have all that water. And, there is no telling what else he has in those "palaces."

Where does he get all this money? He routinely smuggles out oil -- the same oil that is supposed to be feeding all the citizens.

Add all this to the fact that he supports international terrorism, and it shows that Saddam is a threat to just about everyone. Saddam Hussein’s rule needs to end.