[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 38 (Tuesday, April 12, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: April 12, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                     THE CONTINUING TRAGEDY IN IRAQ

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
February 11, 1994, and there being no designee of the minority leader, 
the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Bonior] is recognized for 60 minutes 
as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to talk about a place where 
120,000 children under the age of 5 have died since 1990.
  A place where 390,000 civilians have died in the past 4 years alone.
  They have not died as a result of civil war, or ethnic conflict, or 
ethnic cleansing.
  They have died because of malign neglect, because of brutal 
oppression at the hands of a dictator trying to bleed into extinction 
the very people he rules, and because of an international community 
that has turned a blind eye to their plight.
  Mr. Speaker, it is a place where parents hover over cribs, watching 
children go hungry for want of a few cents worth of powdered milk.
  A place where mothers see their babies scream in agony because 
operations must be performed without anesthesia.
  A place where diabetics lapse into comas because there is no insulin.
  It is a place where once-intact sewage and electrical systems remain 
in a shambles, and as a result, thousands of innocent people face 
outbreaks of typhoid and cholera, starvation, and death.
  It is a place where millions of people struggle every day just to 
find the basics of life: food, water, medicine, and fuel.
  And, as always, the ones who suffer the most are those who can afford 
it the least: the very young, the disabled, and the very old.
  Mr. Speaker, it is a human tragedy of unspeakable proportions, and it 
is happening in a place we all know very well.
  A place that was the focus of international attention 3 years ago, 
and a place we cannot turn a blind eye to today.
  If you have not guessed by now, Mr. Speaker, this place--this 
country--is the country of Iraq.
  And 3 years after our troops left the region.
  Three years after CNN and all the foreign correspondents turned their 
attention elsewhere.
  Three years after international sanctions on food and medicine were 
levied on the people of Iraq--the aftermath of the Gulf War for the 
people of Iraq in many ways is more tragic than the war itself.
  Mr. Speaker, I have met the brothers and sisters, relatives and 
friends of some of the people suffering in Iraq today; they are members 
of the Chaldean-American community in Michigan.
  The Chaldeans are Iraqi Christians--and the community in Michigan is 
the largest in the United States.
  The Chaldean community in Michigan has been tireless in its efforts 
to provide humanitarian relief, and it has been unmatched in its 
commitment to ending the suffering of the people of Iraq, and I think 
we can all draw inspiration from their ongoing efforts.
  But much, much more needs to be done.
  Not long ago, one member of this community, an Iraqi-American doctor 
named Dr. Nathima Atchoo--who still has relatives living in Iraq--told 
me about her two trips back to Iraq to help alleviate the suffering.
  She tells horror stories of hospitals where there is no medicine, and 
no cotton--where many children are sent home from hospital beds because 
the doctors can do nothing to treat them.
  She says that the greatest gift you can give to people in Iraq today 
is aspirin or Tylenol, because there is none to be found.
  Thousands of patients with heart conditions are dying today because 
the heart valves they ordered before the war are sitting in warehouses, 
because Iraqi assets meant to pay for them have been frozen since 1991.
  On her last trip, Dr. Atchoo saw an 8-year-old lying in a coma 
because there was no insulin. His father offered to sell the clothes 
off his back to get insulin to save his son.
  While she was at the hospital, the doctor offered a can of milk to a 
mother with a sick child in the hospital. But the mother would not give 
the milk to the child. She said that this child was going to die and 
she would give the milk to another child at home who had a chance of 
living.
  Mr. Speaker, no mother should be forced to decide which child she is 
going to save in a world rich enough to save both.
  But this is the reality in Iraq today.
  In many families in Iraq today, each child eats breakfast just 1 day 
a week, so the other children can eat breakfast other days of the week.
  The hospitals are full of children with leukemia who got sick during 
the war.
  Raw sewage flows into the Tigris River, but people still drink from 
it, because it's the only water they have.
  And in a country that once revered the young, today, young girls are 
forced to sell their bodies to feed their families.
  This is the sad reality in Iraq today.
  Mr. Speaker, during the gulf war, we were told time and time again 
that we did not wage war against the civilian population of Iraq; we 
were told we waged war against the Baghdad regime.
  And when we levied the international sanctions on food and medicine, 
we were told that it was to punish Saddam Hussein, not the people of 
Iraq.
  But 3 years later, Saddam Hussein is still living in the lap of 
luxury. He gets all the food and water he needs from other countries, 
and if family members of the Baghdad regime get sick, they are treated 
in the best hospitals in the world.
  But the civilian population in Iraq continues to starve, and bleed, 
and die--with no end in sight.
  It makes you wonder why the people of Iraq haven't risen up to 
overthrow Saddam. But as one doctor said to me not long ago: ``When you 
have to spend the whole day searching for food so your children don't 
starve, you don't have time to think about overthrowing the 
government.''
  The continuing tragedy in Iraq has reminded us once again that Saddam 
Hussein is one of the most barbaric and heinous dictators this world 
has ever seen.
  Saddam Hussein--and Saddam Hussein alone--must be held responsible 
for the continued suffering of his people.
  To its credit, the United Nations passed two resolutions to 
temporarily let the sale of oil go forward to allow Iraq to buy food, 
medicine, and other humanitarian items, under the watchful eye of the 
United Nations.
  But to his eternal shame, the Baghdad despot has refused to implement 
those resolutions, so the civilian population in Iraq continues to 
suffer.
  At this point, Mr. Speaker, we must ask ourselves one simple 
question: Do these two U.N. resolutions let us off the hook for the 
continued suffering of the people of Iraq?
  Do they allow us to throw up our hands, turn a blind eye, point a 
finger at Saddam, and say we tried?
  Or do we have a continuing responsibility as a compassionate nation 
to do all we can to provide humanitarian relief to the mothers and 
children who are starving and dying?
  Mr. Speaker, I understand that there are difficult diplomatic and 
strategic issues that must be taken into consideration.
  But when the people of Bosnia needed food, we sent in airdrops to 
feed them.
  When the people of Somalia were starving in the streets, we went in 
to provide humanitarian relief to feed the hungry.
  When the people of Russia were standing in bread lines, we did all we 
could to get them grain and other foodstuffs.
  And as Iraq continues to starve and bleed, I believe the 
international community has a continuing responsibility to help these 
people even when Saddam Hussein will not.
  Anything less is simply a cop-out.
  Ant the fact is, Mr. Speaker, we do not have to send in troops to do 
it.
  Right now, there are $1.2 billion in Iraqi assets frozen in United 
States banks--money from oil payments in Iraqi bank accounts when it 
invaded Kuwait.
  Mr. Speaker, as a first step, if we use just some of those frozen 
assets to provide medicine--or food--to the people of Iraq, it will 
make a world of difference.
  There are independent organizations in place right now--
nongovernmental organizations like UNICEF, and the World Health 
Organization, and the Chaldean community, and Red Crescent, as well as 
other Muslim relief organizations--who are administering some relief to 
the people of Iraq as we speak.
  But their combined efforts meet less than 5 percent of the needs of 
the Iraqi people.
  Changing U.S. policy to allow these frozen assets to purchase 
medicine --and food?--to be distributed by these organizations, would 
help reduce the horrible suffering today in Iraq.
  And what could be more galling to Saddam Hussein than the money he 
sees as his and for his use alone go to the people he continues to 
oppress.
  Mr. Speaker, what could be more in line with the point that President 
Bush made time and time again: that we did not wage war against the 
civilian population of Iraq.
  They were not our enemy.
  And now, there are concrete steps we can and must take to save the 
lives of people caught up in a war that was none of their doing, and 
which none of them wanted.
  Mr. Speaker, America is a compassionate country.
  The starving children whose fathers beg for food, the women who--as I 
stand here tonight--must undergo childbirth without anesthesia, those 
dying in hospitals because the pharmacies have run out of medicine that 
costs a few cents a dose, we cannot turn our backs on them.
  We have a moral imperative to act.
  And we must do all we can to help.
  Saddam Hussein may do nothing to help his own suffering people.
  But we are a better nation than that.
  And I don't believe that we, in good conscience, can stand by and do 
nothing.
  It is time to act, and act now.

                              {time}  1440

  Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BONIOR. I yield to my friend, the gentleman from Nevada.
  Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Speaker, I agree with what the gentleman stated and 
the fact is that the suffering of the Iraqi people is the direct result 
of the callousness of their dictator. We also have the problem in 
Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurdistan, where the embargo that we placed against 
Iraq is being enforced by the United Nations against the Iraqi Kurds, 
the people that are being protected by us north of the 36th parallel, 
and I think it is a shame that we do not lift the embargo to those 
people in that area that have certainly suffered the most along with 
the Shiites in the south from the oppression of this brutal regime.
  Mr. Speaker, even over the last decade, he has gassed with nerve gas 
and mustard gas huge portions of that population. The Kurds can be 
self-sustaining, they certainly are not asking for independence from 
Iraq, but they are certainly asking for the help that we give them, 
that we lift the embargo to allow them to sustain themselves during 
this time of crisis.
  Mr. Speaker, I commend the gentleman for bringing this to the 
President's attention and hopefully in the next bipartisan meeting, the 
gentleman will bring up the plight of the Kurds also who need 
desperately our help there in Iraq.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his contribution, 
and let me assure him that I will in fact discuss the issue in its 
totality. We will make the case for that, that for those who are 
suffering because of lack of medicine and other basic essentials, we 
find ways through the efforts of humanitarian and religious 
organizations to get them the aid so they can sustain themselves and so 
they can in fact have the wherewithal when and if the time arises, to 
take their political place in opposition to Saddam Hussein in a strong 
way.
  Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan.
  Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Nevada, and I 
yield back the balance of my time.

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