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February 19th:
National network formed to end 'war' on Iraq, Colorado
Daily (Boulder), By Michael A. de Yoanna
DENVER -- It was coincidental that a national two-day conference on Iraq was held in Colorado just after the U.S. and Britain launched airstrikes on radar sites in Baghdad, Iraq.
About 100 community leaders representing more than 60 organizations from around the country gathered at the Auraria campus over the weekend for the National Organizing Conference on Iraq -- a conference for activists dedicated to ending the economic sanctions against Iraq.
The result on Sunday was the formation of a network called the National Network to End the War against Iraq (NNEWAI). The group's goal is to create a unified national voice and course of action meant to address a growing humanitarian crisis for which members said the U.S. has shirked its moral responsibility. Members of the network point to statistics, such as those gathered by the U.N. in 1999, which linked sanctions against Iraq to the deaths of some 500,000 Iraqi children since 1990.
Under NNEWAI, local groups such as the Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace (CCMEP) will band together with larger groups, such as the New York-based International Action Center (IAC), founded by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark.
The IAC, in an effort that received national media coverage last month, led a delegation to Baghdad and towns south of the Iraqi capitol to deliver medical supplies to hospitals. The delegation examined Iraq infrastructure damaged by bombings or in bad repair because of sanctions and scanned former battlegrounds for radiation.
Members of the delegation, including Boulder resident Dan Winter, a member of CCMEP, reported that hospitals were inundated by cancer cases and frequently unable to treat curable diseases. In examinations of destroyed Iraq tanks bombed by allied forces in 1991, the delegation said NATO likely used depleted uranium shells during the Gulf War. Sites contaminated by depleted uranium can create environmental problems that linger for millions of years.
Winters attended the NNEWAI conference on Sunday.
"This is an important step in unifying grass-roots pressure to end the war," Winters said. "It's really a war that's been underway for 10 years now."
Network members voted to create a national coordinating committee to oversee several working groups. Denver resident Stephanie Phibbs, a member of CCMEP, was voted onto the 15-member committee.
Conference-goers said support for ending the economic embargo against Iraq is mounting and that the U.S. and British governments are increasingly alone in their stance against Iraq.
According to the U.S. Defense Department, five sites capable of tracking NATO aircraft were eliminated in Friday's air strike. Aircraft have patrolled no-fly zones in the south and north of Iraq since the end of the Gulf War in 1991, conducting discretionary bombings of what allied forces claim are military targets.
Though President George W. Bush said the attack was routine, the scope of the attack and a signed presidential order were new. According to United Press International, Friday's air strikes near Baghdad were the biggest in more than two years.
Twenty-four jets -- 16 U.S. and eight British -- took part in the first raids this close to the Baghdad since Operation Desert Fox in 1998.
NATO members France and Turkey immediately condemned the bombings, as did U.N. Security Council members, Russia and China. France additionally sits on the Security Council.
India and Pakistan issued strong statements against the action, while much of the Arab world called the air strikes unjustified as thousands gathered in Baghdad on Sunday to take part in demonstrations.
Meanwhile, Israel, looking forward to the visit later this week of Secretary of State Colin Powell, expressed support for the U.S.-British military operation.
In Colorado, Sen. Wayne Allard -- a staunch supporter of sanctions, who sits on a Senate intelligence committee that frequently receives confidential information -- said the air strikes were justified because Iraq is a looming regional threat, capable of devising weapons of mass destruction. Meanwhile, two dozen activists protesting for an end to the economic sanctions gathered in Denver at Colfax Avenue and Broadway during evening rush-hour for a protest that briefly stopped traffic. No one was arrested.
By Sunday, conference-goers were reflecting on U.S. policy.
"What happened in Iraq this weekend is not really different from what's has been happening," said Bob Choflet, a spokesman for CCMEP. "Clinton enacted the same policies."
However, Choflet and others said the air strikes brought attention to the issue and illustrated the challenges the network is likely to face during the four years Bush is in office.
"The bombings show that international support is crumbling," Choflet said. "There is an outcry against it internationally and nationally. We still have to convince those in charge that it is time to change."
NNEWAI is expected to exert pressure on Democrats in Congress and focus a campaign on the White House.
According to organizers, the network recognizes the differences between economic and military sanctions and will ask that the former be dropped. They said that the network will also oppose many discretionary air strikes on the basis that civilians have been hit in Iraq. The network will also ask that issues surrounding depleted uranium be addressed and said the country's ailing infrastructure and failing medical system cannot be ignored for moral reasons.
Bert Sacks, a Seattle activist in town for the meeting, said Americans must become more cognizant of what the U.S. is doing in Iraq.
"People must know what is happening there," Sacks said. "Millions are dead as a result of our policies."
He said U.S. intentions in Iraq became apparent 10 years ago on the second day of the Gulf War.
"We bombed water treatment facilities there knowing full well that it would cause a health crisis," Sacks said. "We supported drinking water shortages to cause turmoil. And the Oil-for-Food program has been a disaster because we insisted on a limit. That limit is preventing people from getting food, water, electricity and shelter."
Activists launch campaign to end
Iraq sanctions, Colorado Daily
(Boulder), By Terje Langeland
Activists opposed to the U.S.-backed economic sanctions against Iraq plan to
gather in Denver this weekend to forge a "powerful, nationally coordinated
campaign" against the sanctions and against continued bombing of the
country.
More than 50 organizations from across the United States plan to participate in the National Organizing Conference on Iraq, taking place Saturday and Sunday on the Auraria campus.
Each of the groups has worked for years to end the sanctions against Iraq, which were imposed by the United Nations after the 1991 Gulf War -- ostensibly to force Iraqi leaders to comply with weapons inspections aimed at making sure the country doesn't possess weapons of mass destruction.
Critics argue that the real weapon of mass destruction in Iraq is in fact the sanctions regime. According to UNICEF, the sanctions have directly caused the deaths of 1 million Iraqis, half of them children under 5 years of age. Meanwhile, the sanctions have failed to accomplish their official objectives, as the Iraqi government continues to thumb its nose at U.N. demands.
Two top U.N. officials who have worked in Iraq, Denis Halliday and Hans Von Sponeck, have resigned in recent years in protest of the sanctions, which Halliday has called "genocidal."
The purpose of this weekend's gathering is for various U.S. grassroots groups to come up with a joint strategy to end the sanctions, said Dan Winters, a local organizer.
"The objective really is to see if, as a coalition, we can formulate some collective action," Winters said.
Tactics agreed upon by participants will likely focus on pressuring elected officials and might include confronting politicians at public functions, picketing their offices, engaging in civil resistance, and launching petition drives, call-ins and letter-writing campaigns, he said.
Winters, a member of the Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace and the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, recently participated in a trip to Iraq organized by the International Action Center, a group founded by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark. The group purposely violated the sanctions by bringing medical supplies to Iraqis.
While in the country, Winters said he witnessed deplorable conditions in the children's wards of hospitals, where doctors lacked adequate equipment and medicine.
Support for the Iraqi sanctions is waning in many countries, but the new U.S. administration under George W. Bush has said it wants to "reinvigorate" the sanctions.
The United States and the United Kingdom also continue to periodically bomb Iraq as they seek to enforce "no-fly zones" over the country, which have not been authorized by the United Nations. Those bombings have killed numerous civilians, observers have reported.
"The American people have to understand that the war against Iraq has never ended," said Paul George, director of the Peninsula Peace and Justice Center in Palo Alto, Calif., who is helping organize the Denver conference.
Winters said it's important for Americans to lead the fight against economic sanctions, because the U.S. government is the primary backer of the policy.
"We're going to keep fighting the battle here, because it is our country that is primarily causing the heartache, hardship and death," Winters said.
People interested in attending the conference may call Winters at 303-444-8405.
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