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Our Own Weapon of Mass Destruction

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Posted on Jan 23, 2007
suffering infant

This disturbing documentary by former “60 Minutes” producer Barry Lando chronicles the horror that 13 years of U.S.-backed sanctions wrought on Iraq, including the deaths of hundreds of thousands—many of them children.


Watch it (warning—contains graphic images):

From BarryLando.com:

Between 1990 and 2003 hundreds of thousands of Iraqis—particularly children—were killed by another weapon of mass destruction—the U.N. embargo, pushed principally by the U.S and Britain. Its disastrous impact is still felt throughout Iraq. Most Americans never understood the horrific effect of that act. Our leaders and our media—for the most part—did nothing to bring the message home.

The embargo was part of a documentary I did with Michel Despratx for Canal + in France in 2004, and which I have included in my new book Web of Deceit-The History of Western Complicity in Iraq from Churchill, to Kennedy to George W. Bush.”

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By Abdul, January 31, 2007 at 7:16 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Bush, his regime and his cronies have invented lies such as the non-existent Iraqi WMDs as a pretext to attack, invade, occupy and plunder Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia etc and terrorize, torture, rape and massacre the innocent people of the conquered nations.

The illegal American invasion of Iraq that is based on the non-existent WMDs has made the USA a legitimate military target for the US government has so many WMDs. The UN inspectors etc had confirmed that Iraq had no WMDs but Bush and his cronies are the blood-thirsty warmongers who terrorize Iraqi people by attacking, bombing, firebombing and bombarding Iraqi villages, towns and cities!Please remember that German leaders and their soldiers were tried and executed or hanged to death for attacking and occupying foreign nations so Bush, his cronies and the generals of the US Armed Forces should be tried and hanged to death for committing war crimes! Are you the Americans brave enough to try them? Why don’t you condemn them?

Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the Iraq war http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7371253996117 324045 ............The crimes of Bush and his Zionist-Nazi cronies are exposed by the American very important persons (VIPs) themselves!

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By Solomon O, January 26, 2007 at 2:00 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

I hope productions/publications like this one serve as eye-openers for a lot of uninformed people in North America.  God bless courageous people like Barry Lando…

I do, however, disgree with the title of this production.  This is certainly not our “weapon of mass destruction”!  Please look up the meaning of “terrorism” and decide for yourself what a more appropriate title would be.

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By Luis Cayetano, January 26, 2007 at 3:49 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

“Perhaps God in person has decreed that his name be removed from this nation of thieves, liars and kill crazy politicians.”

And yet, his fiercest activists are in power now, continuing the carnage. We need more reason and less religion. It’s a good thing that God is being challenged; the world can’t take much more of his most dedicated supporters’ madness.

That said, I think that human nature (and yes, it does exist; our brains are not infinitely malleable plasticine, and as members of the animal kingdom, we share many of the same neurobiological, behavioural and evolutionary bases as other animals) has elements of both good and bad. We are endowed with the capacity for altruism and kindness but also for great cruelty. The goal should be to minimise and disrupt the bad side from gaining too much leverage, and to do that we need to alleviate/eliminate the underlying causes of social problems that makes the ugly side come to the fore. People like Bush and his gang shouldn’t be allowed to get hold of anything more powerful than a lawnmower, but they aren’t really the biggest problem. The problem is an exploitative system that glorifies selfishness, status, celebrity and material wealth, to the detriment of the environment and peoples in other countries. Another major problem is the pandering to ignorance and superstition, that helps make the enterprise of war so depressingly familiar. If people don’t question their religious upbringing, then they will be far less likely to question leaders who invoke this upbringing when trying to justify their crimes.

I don’t believe we’ll ever get to utopia; that really is a hopelessly naive dream, because human beings have too many inherent conflicts of interest, and to try to stamp them out through social engineering or whatever you want to call it will itself cause more misery and resentment than it’s worth. This is what it means to be human: we can step back and analyse why we are the way we are, but perhaps we’ll never get to stop being that way. But that doesn’t mean that there will always be wars, racism and sexism, however “natural” these might seem to some pundits (and even if true, that is itself no reason to see them as acceptable, let alone “good”); we really can do better than our ancestors, largely because we are free from many of their misconceptions and prejudices.

Finally, I think that what the United States government did to Iraq was horrendous. It is no small leap to imagine how terrorism can be fostered by the hatred and desperation that inevitably accompany such atrocities, with religion fanning the flames.

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By Rich, January 25, 2007 at 7:51 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

The crimes against humanity that our government has indulged in since 1990 absolutely make me sick.
Out and out murder of thousands of men, women and children who have no idea what’s going on is an unforgiveable sin and though Bush and his NeoCon gang are directly responsible one cannot forget that our congress supports their ongoing murderous crime spree.
When the name of God cannot be spoken in our courts or schools one wonders. Perhaps God in person has decreed that his name be removed from this nation of thieves, liars and kill crazy politicians.

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By Lisa W, January 24, 2007 at 5:46 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Frank - even if that is true (competition is an inherent aspect of survival), how is it that an ‘intelligent’ species cannot learn from our historical mistakes?  This article doesn’t say much about our policies (to put it kindly!) nor does it say much about the human animal.

Is altruism simply a psychological fantasy?  Can humanity learn to overcome our inherent selfish evils and cohabitate peacefully with holitistic economic equilibrium and without environmental degredation?  An indication of future behavior is past behavior, which implies that we cannot.

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By Bryan Morton, January 24, 2007 at 1:19 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Capitalism is economics in its natural state.  It is what you get when you allow individuals to trade peacefully and voluntarily.  What most people see as Capitalism is actually Mercantilism, the nasty bastard child which is spawned when individuals seek government privilege, and coercive force is applied in order to violate the negative rights of one side of the transaction in favor of the other.

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By Fadel Abdallah, January 24, 2007 at 2:56 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Indeed this is just one sad and ugly historical episode of the criminality of the U.S. and British policies and politics in the Middle East, and a prelude for the quagmire the Iraqis are living today.

Thanks to the civilizing and democratizing mission of evil American and British political establishments, both democtates and republicans, both conservative and liberals, along with taxpayers’ money; all allied to to kill half million helpless children! What a great achievement! What a great victory for the civilized West! And the question persists to which petty-minded Americans still fail to face its straight forward answer: Why do they hate us so much?!! It’s called reciprocity, stupid!

Did you hear that f—-n bloody whore Albright?!

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By Nicholas, January 23, 2007 at 9:54 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

I’m sorry Frank, I have to disagree with you there, capitalism is in its infancy and has yet to be proved as a worthy and sustainable economic model. Besides, the life blood of capitalism is the production and consumption of crude oil, a finite resource, so you could argue that capitalism, in and of itself, is a finite system. Once you accept that, then you begin the understand why America has consistently had blood on its hands within the Middle East, and begin to realize that our way of life comes at a cost, a cost to innocent others.

However, I will not disagree with your observation of human neuropsychology of self-interest and competitive nature. We’re a pitiful species of animal really, wouldn’t you agree?

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By Frank, January 23, 2007 at 7:20 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Spinoza, you must be utterly naive if you actually believe what you just wrote. Self-interest and competition in humans is a hardwired biological imperative resulting from millions of years of primate evolution, not a consequence of capitalism.  Humans have been asking “how can I/we benefit” since the dawn of the human species roughly 200,000 years ago.

Capitalism is the only economic system that is in step with basic human nature, which is why it is so successful. If you want a ‘revolution’ to bring about another system that works better, you’d better start your revolution at the genetic level by so you can change human nature.

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By Jon B, January 23, 2007 at 6:44 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

It is clear that Albright and other cold blooded politicians knew the fact that iraqi children and civilians are no threat to the US but went ahead to punish them all. Is this what civilization and christian value stand for?

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By Spinoza, January 23, 2007 at 4:21 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Imperialism/Capitalism is an ugly ideology.  It makes the motivation of ALL transactions: How can I benefit? Inevitably this leads to a practice of greed as the sole motivating force.  Only by overthrowing capitalist ideology can we humans live a better life. 

When do we start the revolution?

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By michel, January 23, 2007 at 4:05 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

As Americans we tend to not care about anything unless it directly affects us. And we have the nerve to call ourselves a ‘christian nation’? we are anything but.

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By Quy Tran, January 23, 2007 at 3:51 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

That’s why the whole civilized world looked at us as a huge monster with support from other devils that we called “allies”.

We have been pushed into a grave that we digged for ourself. Where’re all the hypocrite ?

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By Don Knutsen, January 23, 2007 at 1:52 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Another splendid example of why we in the west are viewed as targets for the terrorists. Our media has done us a terrible disservice in not informing our nation what our policies have brought about in the middle east. If we are not informed, if we don’t have the truth in front of us, how can our democracy function. Well, it dosen’t, it hasn’t for along time. If we were spending 1/10th of the money we spend bombing them into democracy instead building hospitals and schools we could finally be in a position to turn around this tide of terrorism. If we continue to turn a blind eye to the plight of those in these countries who feel hopeless desperation then the threat of terrorism will only continue to grow and will reach our shores. Its an idealogy born of hatred, and untill we as a country admit that that hatred has its roots in our own wrong-headed policies in the region, and become convinced to make a 180 degree change in our behavior, the future will continue to sppiral out of our control. Bush’s first public statement after 9-11 described our coming response as a crusade…any 10th grade student of history couldv’e told you how that would be persieved in the middle east. Its time we all ask ourselves, borrowing a line from “Saint Reagan” ...are we better off now then before George Bush ? If you are a part of the wealtiest in our country then the answer is an easy one to make. But if you are a part of the rest in this country then what is your response ?

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