Quotes from A Different Kind of War, by Hans von Sponeck

- ‘At the time of their Government’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, followed by Gulf War II in early 1991, the Iraqi population had already been significantly weakened from eight years of war with Iran (1980-88) and an increasingly disabling internal dictatorship.’ (4)

- ‘The size of the WMD program was fairly well known since Western and Eastern governments and multinational companies had actively participated in its development.’ (4)

- ‘The price for the Iraqi population was high. No country had ever been subjected to more comprehensive economic sanctions by the United Nations than Iraq. The years following the 1991 Gulf War were, therefore, catastrophic for Iraqis. Existing UN and other documentation provides extensive and credible evidence that in the first half of the 1990s malnutrition and morbidity escalated rapidly. Communicable diseases in the 1980s nor considered public health hazards, such as measles, polio, cholera, typhoid, marasmus and kwashiorkor, reappeared on epidemic scales.’ (5)
- ‘After years of frustrating negotiations and the concurrent worsening of Iraqi conditions of life, Deputy Prime Minister Tariz Aziz and UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in early 1996 finally agreed to work out practical arrangements for the implementation of what became known as the ‘Oil-for-Food Program,’ the humanitarian exemption for Iraqi under sanctions. The legal framework for this program had been laid down in UN Security Council Resolution 986 of 14 April 1995.’ (7)

- ‘Throughout the lifespan of the Oil-for-Food Program, from 10 December 1996 to 21 November 2003, the source of funding was entirely Iraqi. This is a fact which is frequently overlooked. The reference to ‘humanitarian assistance’ reinforces the false perception that external financial support was involved.’ (11)

- ‘Some Iraqis additionally observed that not only was it their money we used, but had they control over their resource, they would have used it more efficiently.’ (11)

- ‘Iraq under sanctions was prohibited, during these and subsequent phases, from free trading with its neighbors or anyone else…Iraq was only allowed to sell limited quantities of oil in the international market under UN supervision. Humanitarian supplies had to be imported under tight UN Security Council controls. No local products, including food, could be purchased under the Oil-for-Food Program, even though the source of funding was Iraqi oil revenue. The oil industry and private Iraqi enterprises were ravaged by war and neglect, yet not allowed to be rehabilitated beyond repairs and some replacements. Iraq’s central bank had to surrender its functions to the Treasury of the United Nations. Oil income had to be deposited into the so-called Iraq ‘Oil Account’ at the Banque Nationale de Paris. Fees and interest rates for the Iraqi deposits in the BNP account were negotiated by the United Nations on behalf of Iraq. The Iraqi authorities had no access to foreign exchange and certainly not to Iraqi tax income since there were no tax payers in such a mothballed economy. Their overseas assets, including those of individual Iraqi citizens, were frozen. Iraq as a nation and Iraqis as individual citizens were dependent upon the UN Security Council for survival, particularly in the initial years of sanctions. These conditions encouraged the growth of an influential economic mafia linked to the Iraqi regime. Over time this prompted more and more attempted by the Government of Iraq to circumvent trade and oil export regulations. Illegal exports of oil via the Gulf, Turkey and Jordan and, in the late 1990s also to Syria, not surprisingly began to mushroom.’ (13)

- ’30 percent of the $2 billion was allocated to the UN Compensation Commission in Geneva to pay for claims made by individuals, commercial companies and governments for losses they allegedly had incurred as a result of Iraq’s invasion into Kuwait in August 1990. The amount available for the Oil-for-Food Program was further reduced by 4 percent which the United Nations deducted to pay for the administration of the humanitarian program (2.2 percent), the disarmament operations (0.8 percent) and a reserve fund for unexpected expenditures (1.0 percent). The actual (net) amount for helping the Iraqi population to survive was therefore only 66 percent of $1.32 billion of the allowable (gross) allocation of $2 billion for each of the three phases. This means that during this period the Government of Iraq was permitted to purchase biannually food, medicines and other essential goods worth $1.3 billion for a population, estimated at that time, of 22 million.’ (14)

- ‘The US and UK governments insisted that the blame for the inability to utilize allocated funds lay entirely with the Government of Iraq. This is a serious misrepresentation of facts since there were no willful delays in the ordering of humanitarian supplies on the part of the Iraqi government.’ (15)

- ‘What constituted the major cause for delays and under-utilization of available resources, however, was the complicated procurement process and the permanent or temporary blocking of ordered supplies. These are facts which cannot be dismissed by using references to the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein and the ruthlessness of his treatment of the Iraqi people.’ (16)

- ‘There had been no resources allocated for the training of teachers, technicians, managers and other categories of civil servants. There were no plans for institutional improvements of ministries and other government offices, let alone any effort to carry out national planning or to define national priorities. International policy and national apathy had reduced Iraq to a nation compelled to take ad hoc day-to-day measures for basic survival.’ (17)

- ‘The distribution plan for this phase, as in earlier phases, contained an allocation for food as the single largest expenditure item. This would remain as such throughout the entire sanctions period. I was surprised by the absence of funding for housing, telecommunications and infrastructure repair. The oil industry had been significantly destroyed during the 1991 war and, therefore, funding for repair and maintenance of both the upstream and downstream oil industry was needed. This necessary funding was never allocated. The budget for phase IV reflected a serious lack of concern for Iraq’s youth: the education budget allocation for this period was a mere $100 million. It remained inadequate throughout the years of sanctions.’ (17)

- ‘UN staff had ready access to latest model vehicles which were paid for with Iraqi oil revenue, yet no vehicles were available to the [sic] Iraqi counterparts.’ (22)

- ‘Baghdad had become a conglomerate of dilapidated buildings, a city of open sewerage and broken water mains, with pavements clogged with mounds of uncollected rubbish and rubble from unfinished roadworks. Tree stumps lined the roads where once flamboyants, acacia and palms had been.’ (24)

- ‘The picture of Baghdad in 1998 would not be accurately described without reference to the ‘islands of glitter,’ the palaces of Saddam Hussein and the beautiful mosques.’ (25)

- ‘…the omnipresence of the Iraqi leader in the form of statues, observing the misery facing his people. Not a week passed without evidence of a new portrayal of ‘the President of all Battles’ along the road.’ (25)

- ‘The Iraqi government required all UN staff on humanitarian or disarmament assignments to stay in eighteen specified hotels. The Muchabarat, Iraq’s intelligence agencies, wanted to keep track of us.’ (25)

- ‘Lifting the present restriction of purchasing food locally would be one [improvement]. It would save a lot of money. Refurbishing local medium- and small-scale industries in order to produce within Iraqi items needed by the Oil-for-Food Program would be another. Such measures would reduce cost and generate employment. There was no acceptable reason why, for example, school furniture, general medicines and some spare parts could not be made in Iraq. However, rehabilitating the economy was strongly opposed by the US and UK Governments in the UN Security Council with the argument that many products, e.g., in the pharmaceutical industry, were of dual use and could be diverted to the military for the production of weapons of mass destruction.’ (27)

- ‘In 1998, the Samara Drug Industry was practically defunct. Partial rehabilitation to produce some general prescription drugs would have been possible. The UN could have without difficulty monitored production and distribution.’ (27)

- ‘Many Iraqis, not only those in government, criticized the UN’s use of Iraqi money for high salaries while they were starving.’ (28)

- ‘Why did the Security Council exclude such sectors as transport and telecommunications and even housing when the civilian population badly needed them?’ (29)

- ‘Each Iraqi received a food allocation worth $49 for the six-month period or 27 cents per day!’ (34)

- ‘The Distribution Plan for phase V identifies 55,864 ‘food ration agents’ in Iraq. The Government of Iraq had already introduced a food rationing system in September 1990, in response to the UN embargo. These agents were authorized by the Government of Iraq to hand out to ‘every Iraqi citizen, Arab and foreigner’ the monthly food ration in return for coupons which were included with the individual ration cards. The food basket included wheat flour, rice, sugar, tea, cooking oil, milk powder, dried whole milk cheese, fortified weaning cereals, pulses and iodized salt. Soaps and detergents were also distributed. These ration cards had to be renewed annually and were valid only in the location of permanent residence.’ (35)
- ‘A particularly contentious issue concerned the de-mining dogs which the UN had brought from South Africa. I had to repeatedly face the accusation that the UN was more humane with its dogs than with the Iraqi people: ‘For each dog you are spending $160 of our money for food, yet, the value of a monthly food basket for our people is a fraction of this.’ ’ (38)

- ‘The food basket, in its content, was unbalanced. Its caloric value, while over time quantitatively improving, at no time was qualitatively of an acceptable standard since it lacked animal protein, fresh fruits and vegetables. Iraqi agriculture assumed an important role as a supplementary source of essential foods such as meat, vegetables, fruit and also rice and wheat for both urban and rural dwellers. However, the average Iraqi could not afford these ‘luxuries.’ ’ (40)

- ‘Holds, protracted delays, due to the complex procurement process, the sector’s seasonal nature, the UN restrictions of aerial spraying for crop protection on the farms located in the two no-fly zones and the emerging three-year drought constituted the main factors that explain why domestic agriculture could not play a supplementary role to ameliorate the nutritional conditions in Iraq under sanctions.’ (40-41)

- ‘The FAO representative in Baghdad, Dr. Amir Khalil, did everything he could to accelerate the agricultural procurement program [sic] He tried to convince the UN Sanctions Committee in New York that pumps, generators, pesticides, sprinkler systems, sprayers and agro-chemicals would be used for Iraq’s agriculture and not for the manufacture of biological and chemical substances for a weapons of mass destruction program.’ (41)

- ‘The health budget proposed for phase V amounted to $240 million. This came to $10.70 for six months per person for an estimated population of 22.5 million. The inadequacy of such an amount is obvious, especially when one remembers that the medical infrastructure had been hard hit by the 1991 war, by years of neglect and by the severe restrictions the UN Security Council had put on the import of medical supplies. These restrictions involved laboratory and diagnostic equipment, chemicals and vaccines. Apart from a shortage of funds, there were many other serious impediments facing the health sector, such as limited warehousing and, particularly, cold storage for medicines and health materials. Transport, refrigerated trucks in particular, was often not available. Modern management tools, especially computers, were in short supply – much needed items for which the UN Security Council refused clearance. The representatives of the US and the UK were exclusively responsible for the uncompromising posture of the UN Sanctions Committee. In addition, health officials and the medical faculties in Iraq’s universities lacked knowledge of up-to-date treatment methods because the import of scientific and professional publications was also prohibited.’ (43-44)

- ‘It should be noted that while $10.70 had been budgeted, only $5.80 worth of medical supplies actually arrived.’ (44)

- ‘The doctor showing me around pointed out that the ratio of those who were fortunate enough to get medicines as against those who did not was one to fifty.’ (44)

- ‘One was never far from high heaps of organic waste. Uncollected household rubbish added to the all-pervasive stench characteristic of many parts of Baghdad [sic] This was especially noticeable in the summer when temperatures were consistently above 35^oC. This was not surprising. In 1990 there had been 800 refuse collection vehicles countrywide. At the time of phase V, in early 1999, only 80 vehicles remained.’ (46-47)

- ‘Almost 100 percent of all items put on hold by the Sanctions Committee of the UN Security Council during the Oil-for-Food Program period (1996-2003) was due to the US and UK Governments.’ (47)

- ‘IN 1989, the year before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the country had an electricity grid connecting all eighteen governorates with an installed capacity of 9,295 megawatts. The power plants, and the grid as a whole, suffered extensive damage during the Gulf War. Out of a total of 120 generating units in the twenty-four power plants, not more than fifty were operational at the end of the war in early 1991 and were capable of supplying only 2,325 megawatts. This represented a 75 percent loss of Iraq’s pre-war generating capacity. Ten years later, in 1999, when phase V of the Oil-for-Food Program was ongoing and some electrical equipment and spare parts had arrived, the generating capacity had still only risen to around 4,364 megawatts.’ (50)

- ‘A vivid reminder of the Kurdish determination to become self-reliant was the hundreds of destroyed pylons along the road to Suleimaniyah, many with pieces of transmission lines still attached. As soon as one had crossed the line of control dividing Baghdad-held areas from territory under Kurdish control one could not help but notice these fallen witnesses of a more unified past. PKK sabotage, I was told, had destroyed these transmission lines and cut the supply links controlled by Baghdad. Much of whatever could be salvaged found itself smuggled across the border into Iran.’ (52)

- ‘The electricity situation was catastrophic for the country as a whole. Power cuts in Central and Southern Iraq during November 1998 to May 1999 involved an average of ten to twelve hours. Across Iraqi Kurdistan it was worse. To conserve electricity, the local authorities there had initially issued a directive that each household could use 2 amps of electricity, enough for three bulbs and one TV. This later became 4 amps, enabling the addition of one refrigerator. Only the ingenuity of Iraqi engineers and technicians explains how the electricity system did not collapse.’ (55)

- ‘As a result of the sanctions, many small roadside workshops had sprung up where artisans were manually manufacturing spare parts with minimal standardization and quality control supplying civilian and even military sectors.’ (55)

- ‘In Baghdad, the world of the UN staff did not face these difficulties, at least not in the offices from which we administered the Oil-for-Food Program. Equipped with powerful generators, as well as standby equipment, there was a guarantee of uninterrupted power supply for lights, cooling in the summer, heating in the winter and for running the latest model computers. All expenses were paid for out of Iraq oil revenue. None of this was available for ordinary Iraqis, not even for Iraqi civil servants.’ (56)

- ‘The UN had no resource constraints. His had been decided by the UN Security Council. Iraq was not consulted. The deductions from Iraq’s oil income were not negotiable.’ (56)

- ‘The UN’s privileged position became blatantly obvious during the many electricity outages in the evenings when suddenly entire neighborhoods around the UN Canal Hotel offices became clusters of darkness. The UN premises retained their brightness as did the nearby offices of Al Am Al Amn, Iraq’s feared internal security agency, the palaces of President Saddam Hussein, homes of members of the leadership and embassies.’ (56)

- ‘Electronic tagging to keep track of items would have been an option in the electricity and other sectors. This would have been the possible alternative to the UN Sanctions Committee’s act of putting such important items on hold.’ (57)

- ’23.7 percent of Iraq’s primary school age children in 1998/99 according to UNICEF were not in school.’ (58)

- ‘There was no political and certainly no moral justification for including children in the implementation of comprehensive and economic sanctions.’ (60)

- ‘US and British postal regulations prohibited the sending of educational materials to Iraq. This, amazingly, included sheet music!’ (62)

- ‘In the 1980s and before, [Baghdad] [U]niversity, together with others in Baghdad, Mosul and Basrah, had been among the best in the Middle East and attracted thousands of foreign students. All Iraqi and foreign students alike had been on scholarships. Iraqi students were, furthermore, encouraged by [sic] Government to accept generous grants to study abroad.’ (62)

- ‘Iraq still has a pool of well trained professionals. In a few years time, once this educated group is no longer active the permanent damage that sanctions have done to Iraqi society, particularly its youth, will be revealed.’ (64)

- ‘The literacy gains of the 1970s and 1980s were quickly lost in the 1990s. UNESCO points out that Iraq received international recognition for the success of its literacy campaigns. In just ten years these campaigns had raised literacy from 52 percent in 1977 to 80 percent in 1987. This was not a mean achievement: Iraq’s literacy level had become comparable to those of Hong Kong, Singapore and Panama. In 1995 Iraq’s literacy rate had deteriorated to an estimated 58 percent. In November 1998, UNESCO and UNICEF concluded that no more than 50 percent of Iraq’s adult population were literate.’ (64)

- ‘No reliable recent unemployment figures were available during the time of my stay in Baghdad. In 1999 a rough estimate of 60 to 75 percent was used by the international community.’ (65)

- ‘We came across large numbers of people who are highly trained and working as taxi drivers or selling in shops. To highlight just one case, not long ago I was served ice cream by a qualified medical doctor.’ (65)

- ‘On 16 December 1998, US President Clinton, as his country’s military Commander in Chief, authorized what became known as ‘Operation Desert Fox.’ During 16-19 December 1998 Baghdad, Basra and other strategic centers in Iraq were subjected to four nights of intensive and targeted bombardment of military and intelligence installations. This included residential facilities of the Republican and Special Republican Guards, who were the backbone for the protection of Saddam Hussein and his regime.’ (68)

- ‘Apart from the procurement of three to four hundred thousand tons of food every month, which worked reasonably well, the procurement of humanitarian supplies constituted a nightmare, certainly not only, but also, because of the complexity of this process. It should not come as a surprise, therefore, that it would often take a year, sometimes longer, for humanitarian supplies to reach Iraq from the time a contract was negotiated.’ (72)

- ‘The US/UK members of the UN Sanctions Committee did not manage, if they ever attempted, to convince their Foreign Offices in Washington and London to end their allegations that the Iraqi Government was purposely withholding humanitarian supplies from the civilian population. In fact, UN stock report after stock report showed precisely the opposite picture. The distribution of humanitarian supplies was working well. The UN stock reports identified the reasons for the occasional distribution difficulties. These had nothing to do with ‘refusal to distribute:’ they had much to do with the policy of the US/UK Governments and connivance by the UN Security Council.’ (74-75)

- ‘During the thirteen phases of the Oil-for-Food Program (1996-2003), the Iraqi people could have had access to $43.1 billion or $284 per person/year. Delays in arrival of humanitarian supplies due to the indicated factors reduced this amount to $28.1 billion or $185 per person/year.’ (75-76)

- ‘In early 1999, there were forty-three countries with embassies in Baghdad. Four were from Africa, ten from North Africa and the Middle East, fifteen from Asia, twelve from Europe and two from Latin America. Egypt, France, Italy and the United States maintained interests sections in the Embassies of India, Romania, Hungary and Poland respectively. Iraq was slowly moving out of its isolation.’ (79)

- ‘My office recorded air strikes on fifty-six days up to 3 May 1999. This was on average one air strike every three days.’ (81)

- ‘This made the UN Security Council entirely accountable for the human misery which these factors created in Iraq. It has been argued that the UN Security Council did not violate international law as there was no deliberate act of withholding humanitarian supplies such as food and medicines. This is not correct as far as medicines are concerned: There are examples where the UN Security Council did withhold medicines. More generally, the UN Security Council’s adoption of rules and regulations for the import of humanitarian supplies including medical supplies into Iraq had to lead to under-utilization of already inadequate resources and inordinate delays in the arrival of goods essential for life and health.’ (83-84)

- ‘The food sector, which for obvious reasons had to perform better than the other sectors, did no during all phases. During phase V it delivered 95 percent of the planned caloric requirement of 2,200 kcal to the population in central and southern Iraq as well as in Iraqi Kurdistan.’ (84)

- ‘One problem the UN did not face during my tenure, contrary to US/UK allegations and reports by the UN Human Rights Reporter, was that food was deliberately withhold from the population by the Government of Iraq.’ (84)

- ‘The same holds true for the accusation that Government was selling large quantities of food at exorbitant prices in and outside of Iraq. WFP did not minor quantities of food for sale on the open market. The amounts were so small that they gave no cause for concern. The food was, however, sold not by Government but by private individuals mainly because they were short of cash or they did not like specific items of the imported food, such as foreign lentils.’ (85)

- ‘In the health sector, the arrival of medicines and medical equipment was nowhere near the rate for the food sector: $240 million had been included for the health sector, or five cents per person per day.’ (86)

- ‘According to UNICEF, 20.4 percent of Iraqi children under five were chronically malnourished in 1999.’ (87)

- ‘As UNICEF stated repeatedly, malnutrition, an inadequate supply of medicines and polluted water were the three major causes of the high rate of child mortality in Iraq. There is no denying that sanctions were mainly responsible for the existence of these factors.’ (87)

- ‘The water and sanitation sector did not fare any better: on the contrary, the UN Security Council put large amounts of equipment and supplies, particularly chemicals, on hold for various spurious technical and alleged dual-use reasons. The UN Security Council, not the Government of Iraq, therefore, largely bears the responsibility for the very poor delivery situation during phase V.’ (88)

- ‘There existed a deliberate effort to derail the UN Oil-for-Food Program: it simply was not meant to run well.’ (88)

- ‘The delivery for Iraqi Kurdistan was 70 percent of their budget of $22 million in the water sector, for Central and Southern Iraq 15 percent of the $12 million – a significant difference. It was good that the Kurdish areas fared better in terms of clean water and sanitation and were spared the delivery obstacles which the rest of the country suffered. When the US and UK Governments used the better implementation in Iraqi Kurdistan as ‘evidence that the Government of Saddam Hussein did not care for its people,’ they chose to ignore the fact that it was they who were largely responsible for creating these differences in the first place. Iraqi Kurdistan on a per capita basis did get a larger slice of funds, was allowed to break sanctions, especially through the use of a cash component, and was not subjected to the perennial blocking of supplies by the US and UK.’ (89)

- ‘Close to 50,000 food agents alone ensured that every Iraqi in the eighteen governorates of the country would be connected to the lifeline ‘food basket.’ ’ (98)

- ‘To help the Iraqi people graduate out of their misery could be seen as an indirect way of strengthening the Iraqi regime and confirming it as a force that had successfully stood up against global powers. The Governments of the Untied States and the United Kingdom were not willing to uphold the provisions of international law for such a price.’ (100)

- ‘The Government of Iraq could and should have done more to devote a larger share of the income they earned from sanction-breaking oil sales outside the UN mechanism to the direct benefit of the Iraqi people. Contrary to repeated US/UK claims, the Iraqi Government did not have large amounts that would have bridged the divide between ill being and wellbeing. The estimated $1.0 to $1.5 billion of ‘extra’ income would have made a difference, however.’ (100)

- ‘Never had a single issue such as the Iraqi sanctions brought so many people in so many countries on to the streets. The public conscience, or the emerging second ‘superpower,’ as some optimistically called it, certainly rose to the occasion and encouraged us in the UN in Iraq.’ (128)

- ‘The Oil-for-Food Program could and should have been equipped by the UN Security Council to indeed ‘exempt’ the civilian population from lack of medicines, absence of diagnostic equipment, education materials, etc. The fact that the UN Security Council had the options to do so but chose not to leads again to the issue of ‘intent’ and confirms that inadequacy of humanitarian supplies under sanctions also constituted violation of international humanitarian law. The correctness of this assertion is not called into question by the fact that inadequacy of humanitarian supplies at times was also due to the improper handling of imports by the Government of Iraq. Even the full utilization of revenue as permitted under sanctions by the UN Security Council would not have led to adequate protection of the civilian population in Iraq, especially not in the initial six phases (1996-9) of the Oil-for-Food Program. The conclusion that, inter alia, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Genocide Convention, the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights was violated by the UN Security Council from the beginning of the Oil-for-Food Program in 1996 by, for example, severe limitations of rights of children to health, development of their personalities and education is therefore sound.’ (171)

- ‘The beginning of the Oil-for-Food Program in December 1996 was also the start of payments into the Compensation Fund managed by the UNCC. Initially, at the recommendation of the UN Secretary-General, 30 percent of each oil dollar earned by Iraq was transferred into the UNCC accounts.’ (175)

- ‘The total of 2.6 million claims submitted to the UNCC with a value of $340 billion constitutes an immense amount, even for the largest economies. For Iraq, a potentially rich country with the second biggest known oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia, it would, even under normal circumstances, still be an unmanageable compensation burden for decades to come.’ (179)

- ‘In the course of the thirteen phases of the Oil-for-Food Program (1996-2003), the UNCC received a total of $17.9 billion from Iraq’s oil revenue, an amount that corresponded to more than half the value of $28.1 billion of humanitarian supplies that actually arrived in Iraq during the same period.’ (180)

- ‘Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 resulted in many Kuwaiti casualties. Property was destroyed in Kuwait and the environment, including both the waters of the Western Gulf and large tracts of land were damaged. A big foreign workforce in Iraq and Kuwait lost their jobs and often their savings.’ (180)

- ‘The British Foreign Office refers to ‘1000 Kuwaiti Muslims’ that were killed.’ (180)

- ‘The compensation process reminds one of the harsh measures included in the Treaty of Versailles.’ (181)

- ‘Iraq should have been allowed to attend claims meetings and been given sufficient time to prepare responses to specific claim reports which often involved billions of dollars of Iraqi money. ‘Due process’ without adequate legal defense is hardly possible, especially when the cases involved were often of a highly technical nature. Iraq should have had this opportunity and should have been allowed to use its own resources for such purposes.’ (186)

- ‘Whether the UN Security Council had the right under international law to define compensation amounts and determine the timing of deductions is the subject of continuing debate among jurists. I would argue that the Council, given existing UN Charter law and international humanitarian law, did not have the right to go beyond general pronouncements of the rights of aggrieved parties to seek compensation for damages and losses resulting from Iraq’s invasion into Kuwait.’ (186)

- ‘The most humane option would have been to recognize a grace period for the payment of compensations until such time as the Iraqi people had been given a minimum of support for their survival.’ (187)

- ‘ ‘Operation Desert Fox,’ as it was called, lasted for four days during which about two hundred civilians lost their lives and seventy regime buildings in Baghdad were wholly or partially destroyed. This included the Ba’ath Party headquarters, the Iraqi intelligence services building, state radio and television, the biological research center at Baghdad University, the Ibn Al Haytham Missle R&D Center, the Director of General Security…, the Special Security Organization headquarters, the Special Republican Guards headquarters and the SSO Communication and Computing Center. No one knows the number of military personnel who perished in this attack.’ (191)

- ‘Apart from signaling a more aggressive Iraq policy, ‘Operation Desert Fox’ had achieved little in Iraq, except to add a further dose of trauma to the Iraqi people.’ (200)

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