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Former ambassador says U.S. barking up wrong tree with Iraq
By RAY WESTBROOK AVALANCHE-JOURNAL
The American public is savagely misinformed on the situation in Iraq, according to a former ambassador to Iraq.
Edward L. Peck, ambassador to Iraq under the Carter administration, was in Lubbock Thursday to speak at the International Cultural Center about "Doing it All Wrong in the Middle East:Iraq."
Iraq President Saddam Hussein is relatively harmless, Peck says.
"He would like to develop nuclear weapons, but you cannot hide a nuclear weapons development program," Peck explained.
"And if you are going to build nuclear weapons, the only time they become dangerous is when you have a delivery system, and you can't hide that either."
The ambassador considers the overflights done by the United States and Britain illegitimate.
"They are illegal," he contended.
"There is no justification in any form for doing that.
We do it because we can, period.
And from the overflights, whenever we feel like it, we drop bombs on a totally prostrate defenseless nation --Iraq."
According to Peck, America likes the Kurds and the Turks, but not the Iraqis.
"Why don't we like the Iraqis?"
he asked.
"Because Saddam Hussein fired missiles into Israel."
He added, "I think Saddam would like to be harmful, but we have fixed it so he isn't right now.
"Why I feel less than safe is because what we have been doing to the Iraqi people for the last 11 years makes an awful lot of people angry at us, angry enough to try to find some way to make us sorry we are doing it," Peck said.
He said Iraq's sewage treatment plants were destroyed by the U.S. Air Force in violation of the Geneva Convention, and that the United States has refused to let Iraq rebuild them.
"The sewage from the cities goes directly into the Tigress River raw, untreated.
Water supplies for the cities come from the Tigress and go into the water treatment plants for purification, which we also have destroyed and will not let the Iraqis repair.
So, the population suffers from massive pervasive gastro diseases from contaminated water."
Children have been the most frequent victims, he said.
Peck charges that Madeleine Albright, while ambassador to the United Nations, said, "It's a very hard choice, but the death of a half-million Iraqi children was worth it."
Peck considers the Israelis occupiers of Palestinian land.
He said the Palestinians look on the suicide bombers as freedom fighters.
"When I was a boy, all of the people in Europe who were fighting against the German occupiers were called freedom fighters.
In Palestine, they are called terrorists."
Peck draws a parallel between the Palestinian fighters and the French resistance.
"They were heroes fighting against the Germans.
Somehow the Palestinians are not.
I personally think part of that is the fault of the American media as well."
He said:
"The suicide bombers, what a horror.
But look at the concept embodied in American history:
We had our first person executed as a spy who said, 'My only regret is that I have but one life to give for my country.'
Patrick Henry said, 'Give me liberty or give me death.'
"So, this is not all that unusual," Peck said.
When reminded that Nathan Hale and Patrick Henry could not be compared with the bombers who murdered 28 Jewish civilians during a March 27 Passover suicide bombing in Netanya, Peck replied, "Absolutely not, and yet the idea is, you see, if I cannot be free I will die."
While Iraqis live under a dictatorship, Peck thinks they will not rise up against Saddam Hussein.
"First, they can't -- this is not a fuzzy-puppy government.
Marches on the palace in Baghdad are very short and you are only around for one.
"Secondly, they don't want to."
http://www.lubbockonline.com/stories/041902/loc_041902034.shtml
題名には必ず「阿修羅さんへ」と記述してください。