Originally posted by Toad
Dead, point is that there was MORE THAN ENOUGH money available to do good things for the common people. Sanctions didn't change that fact.
Maybe there was more than enough money - but if those folks in the 661 committee won't let you buy spare parts or medicine or what all because the US & UK delegates block them, then HAVING MORE THAN ENOUGH MONEY IS OF NO USE WHATSOEVER. Sanctions did change how much money there was, and they also changed what you could buy with the money.
You can't have it both ways. The sanctions couldn't really damage a piss-poor system very much, infrastructure or health.
My contention is that bombing made it a piss-poor infrastructure. Eg this from the US DoE:
"Around 85%-90% of Iraq's national power grid (and 20 power stations) was damaged or destroyed in the Gulf War."The sanctions just prevented them from fixing the bomb damage with anything more than kludges and from dealing with any wear and tear afterwards. The sanctions also meant the Iraqi currency collapsed, which further added to the problems.
And the sanction process made even applying to trade food or medicine with Iraq expensive and exasperating:
"One small British company that sold medical supplies described the process: First, to talk to an Iraqi buyer, public or private, a seller had to apply for a license to negotiate, which could take three to four weeks. Once buyer and seller came to an agreement, the seller had to apply for a supply license, which could take up to twenty weeks. In the meantime, Iraq's currency would have devalued substantially, so the buyer might not be able to afford the same quantity of goods or might need more time to raise the additional hard currency. But that would require a change in the terms of the application, and any change in the application meant the whole process began again." - according to an article in The Nation.
The Washington Post of Friday, February 25, 2000 pointed out that
"Mostly as a result of U.S. objections, for example, the U.N. sanctions committee has held up $601 million in contracts for repairing Iraq's power grid, 48 percent of all the contracts in that sector.
Similarly, the sanctions committee has placed "holds" on the import of $297 million in spare parts--or 38 percent of the total--intended for Iraq's oil industry, according to U.N. data. Iraq uses its oil revenue to pay for humanitarian imports under the U.N.-sponsored "oil-for-food" program."Here's what Denis Halliday, the UN Co-ordinator of Humanitarian Relief to Iraq and administrator of the Oil-for-food program said about the sanctions: "I had been instructed to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide: a deliberate policy that has killed well over a million individuals, children and adults. We all know that the regime, Saddam Hussein, is not paying the price for economic sanctions; on the contrary he has been strengthened by them. It is the little people who are losing their children or their parents for lack of untreated water."
He resigned from the post to protest the situation. His successor Hans Von Sponeck reckoned oil-for-food allowed $100 per person per year. He said "It is simply not possible to live on such an amount. Set that pittance against the lack of clean water, the fact that the electricity fails for up to twenty-two hours a day, and the majority of sick people can't afford treatment, and the sheer trauma of trying to get from day to day and you have a glimpse of the nightmare. And make no mistake, this is deliberate. I have not in the past wanted to use the word genocide, but it is now unavoidable."
He resigned too.
This all started with you carping about what's been done there since the end of the war. Yeah, electric's back up to 75% of what a crappy system did prior to the war. You call that sort of statement "sad and obvious propaganda".
I believe if you read the post again the thing I was carping about as sad and obvious propaganda was the phrase "damaged ... by years of disrepair and neglect under Saddam" - rather than the whole truth that it was damaged by US & UK bombing and suffered years of disrepair and neglect mostly due to UN sanctions (led by the US & UK). And I also recall carping about the phrase "compared to $16 million in the final six months of Saddam's regime". I singularly failed, however, to carp about the electrical grids status being at 75% of the pre-war levels. Still, I'll carp about it a little further down just to please you.
It's simply the truth. And the big difference? It's going to get much better and will eventually far surpass the pre-war system. Further, entire neighborhoods won't have their electricity turned off as punishment to some enemy of the regime or on the whim of a dictator.
Well 75% is actually a lie - it was 72% in your quote, but I'll let you off. It might be the truth, but not the whole truth and it's disingenuously put. Which is to say it's definitely not
simply the truth. As is the tone of your statement that it will surpass the "pre-war" system (which war?) - one should hope it does, given that Iraq is now allowed to buy spare parts, and that the US & UK aren't going to bomb it every so often. And whilst ABC were flaunting the 72% of the prewar peak, on the same day, AFP came up with:
"Iraq's current power production capacity is 3,200 megawatts compared with 4,000 megawatts before the start of the war in March, according to a coalition official.
Iraq's maximum potential capacity is 6,000 megawatts, according to the same source." The CIA rated Iraq's capacity as 9,902 megawatts in 1989 and the DOE states the Iraqis got back 75% of the grid in 92 - which would be 6,750 megawatts (the CIA gave a figure of 7,300 MW in 1992 which is the highest estimate for '92 I have seen). So 72% of 6,750 would be 4,860 - or if we use the CIA figures 5,256 - which is a tad higher than the current 3,200 (according to AFP). So maybe ABC is using the U.N. Iraq Program estimation of November 2002 that generating capacity was 4,300-4,400 MW. But if we take both US-Iraq wars into account, the grid is currently at 32% of the pre-US bombing level.
Same is true for the health system. You counter your own implication that without sanctions health spending would have been much higher by admitting that Saddam didn't really give a spoiled fig and probably wouldn't have funded it. Can't have it both ways.
Well health spending may not have been slashed as much as the - again rather disingenuous - US dollar figures would have us believe: The Iraqi Dinar was worth US$3.20 before the sanctions. The US dollar peaked at 3000 Iraqi dinars in 1996, then went back down to 450 in 1997 but by 2002 it was back up to 1,900 Dinars. So US$16mil would be 30.4 billion dinars in 2002, 6.4 billion in '97, 48 billion in '96, but only 0.05 billion (50 million) in 1990. But of course the huge change in exchange rate would have nothing to do with sanctions...
However with sanctions in place, he could have allocated billions and it would still be fairly useless. Medicine was continually blocked as dual use: diptheria & yellow fever vaccines, radiotherapy equipment, chemotherapy drugs, painkillers, X-ray stuff, Nitrous oxide to name but a few.
You appear to be engaged in the kind of double standards you accuse me of here: deploring the fact that Hussein was too evil to buy enough medical supplies and at the same time ignoring the fact that the US & UK not only precipitated huge health crises in Iraq but also wouldn't let Iraq buy the medical supplies to deal with said crises.
And, again, point is that the health system is only going to get better. Better than it ever was before, better than that of its neighbors.
When this is over, the common people of Iraq will no longer live in a 3rd world country. They'll have modern medicine, open and uncensored schools, a free market, modern utilities... and some sort of democracy.
One should hope so, because pre 1991 the Iraqi welfare state was among the most comprehsive an generous in the Arab world according to
The Economist's Intelligence Unit.
The biggest reason the Iraqis live in a horrible mess at the moment is because the US & the UK made it a horrible mess. Up until the bombing and sanctions they had modern medicine, modern utilities, 93% of the population had free health care - Adult literacy was at 95% one of the highest in the world - sure, they had the evil dictator, but it's a feature they have in common with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait - but Iraqi society was pro-western, secular, women were allowed education and jobs, and - for the Arab world - relatively open. As the US Assitant Secretary of State said to Hussein in 1989: "You are a force for moderation in the region" 
.
Whether the US effort will succeed or not to bring all these promises in to reality remains to be seen. Certainly, Afghanistan's example does not bode well for the people of Iraq, but we shall see.
Now, you want to talk about destablizing the Middle East? THAT'S when things are going to get shaky in a lot of countries neighboring Iraq.
Of course, some folks view that as a good thing.
I'm one of those.
I'd be in favour of a democratic Iraq, but with Afghanistan as a yardstick of democracy imposed by the US - I'm not holding my breath. As to your new "domino theory" - I would urge more than just a little of the famous US business-speak "cautious optimism" on your part - not only has the US got into trouble over a domino theory before, but also it would appear to be flawed reasoning from the outset: living right next to some sort of muslim democracy with open markets and all mod cons certainly appeared to have absolutely no effect on Hussein's regime.
