Most Americans don't realize how heinous our own government has been in its foreign policy

Commentary by Charley Reese, Orlando Sentinel, 26 November 2000

The Sunday Herald, a Scottish newspaper, last September reported that the United States and its allies deliberately destroyed Iraq's water supply and in the nine years since have deliberately prevented it from being repaired by keeping out the equipment and chemicals necessary.

A Georgetown University professor has obtained a seven-page document, prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency, that pointed out the vulnerability of the water system, its dependence on imported equipment and chemicals, and the likely consequences of its destruction.

The report was dead accurate. The United States and its allies destroyed the system. The Sunday Herald reported that eight multipurpose dams were repeatedly bombed, smashing the infrastructure for flood control, municipal and industrial water storage, irrigation and hydroelectric power. Four of Iraq's seven major pumping stations were destroyed, as were 31 municipal water and sewage facilities.

The result: Water-borne diseases—typhoid, dysentery, hepatitis, cholera and polio—have killed thousands of civilians in Iraq. There is always a rough justice in the universe, however. The Sunday Times has reported that tens of thousands of American and British troops are suffering from radiation poisoning from the depleted uranium shells fired during the Gulf War. No wonder both governments are trying to deny that Gulf War Syndrome even exists.

The water-supply system, which we attacked, had absolutely nothing to do with supplying or supporting the Iraqi troops in Kuwait. It was a deliberate, cold-blooded attack, intended to kill and sicken Iraqi civilians. It was a war crime.

People who like to yap about the rule of law should see to it that their own government obeys the law.

The new president of Yugoslavia has our number when it comes to the rule of law. He said, Washington introduced into the rule of law everything that is opposed to the rule of law: voluntarianism, insecurity and arbitrariness.

It's one thing to knock out communications towers, bridges and ammunition dumps, but a city's sewer and water system has nothing to do with the military. Taking those out seems more malicious than any American would be capable of—unless you've met some of the unthinking automatons and some of the heartless sharks who infect the Beltway. They flit around like wraiths, whispering their poisonous malice into the ears of the office holders.

It would be comforting to imagine that one day the American people will elect to public office men and women who make clear to the world that we do not make war on women and children.

Unfortunately, I fear that the cruelty and disregard for human life and human rights is a reflection of the American people's own attitudes. So long as the victims are the others—foreigners— most Americans don't seem to give a flip what is done to them.

One hates to keep returning to the universal wisdom of religion, but what one sows one reaps. Our government has, in our name, been sowing hate, and one day we will reap the fruit of that hate. It will be bitter fruit.

It will not be much consolation, if one day someone poisons our water supply, to know that that person got the idea from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.

We need a new, more benign emperor in our Rome on the Potomac.