Humanitarian Issues in Post-War Iraq: Motion by Senator David Norris. 11th June 2003

Humanitarian Issues in Post-War Iraq:
11th June 2003
Mr. Norris: I move motion No. 29:
That Seanad Eireann calls on the Minister
for Foreign Affairs to use his good offices to
ensure that the United States and the United
Kingdom Governments meet their absolute
moral obligation, as well as their legal obligation,
under the Fourth Geneva Convention
to provide the finest medical care and rehabilitative
treatment for all the civilian casualties of
their recent war in Iraq as a matter of the greatest
urgency.
This has been agreed by this House, despite the
interventions of the Department of Foreign
Affairs, which came to light this morning in discussions
on the Order of Business. I found it
interesting that it is still not prepared to face the
truth about this war. Apparently, officials in the
Department of Foreign Affairs objected to the
motion they thought I was putting down —
No. 28 — on the basis of one word ‘‘occupation’’.
I ask the Minister of State to find out from his
adviser who wrote this stuff what he has against
the use of the word ‘‘occupation’’. What on earth
does he think it is, if it is not an occupation? This
is a nonsense. Let us tell the truth in this House
and let us have truth from the Department of
Foreign Affairs on this issue.
The coalition forces bombed the blazes out of
Iraq, they went in illegally, they pretended there
were weapons of mass destruction. Now, we cannot
use the word ‘‘occupation’’ because Iveagh
House is frightened of alienating the Yanks. Tell
truth and shame the devil. It is a disgrace that we
are not allowed tell the Irish people the truth and
the word ‘‘occupation’’ is unusable. Why is that
the case?
I deliberately chose motion No. 29 because it
was passed unanimously by the Joint Committee
on Foreign Affairs. I strongly deprecate this
resistance to the use of the word ‘‘occupation’’.
That was what happened. It was said in this
House by two Members on the Government benches.
I was also told privately that it was objected
to by Iveagh House. We must get our act in order
on this issue.
Dr. Mansergh: On a point of order, a Leas-Chathaoirligh,
I am not arguing with the substan-tive
point about occupation but it is not in order
to attack civil servants in the course of a debate.
A Government Department——
Mr. Norris: I am attacking an institution and I
am going to continue to do it as much as I like.
It is not up to the Senator to reprove me.
Dr. Mansergh: If Senator Norris is entitled to
make a point of order, I am too.
Mr. T. Kitt: I may be able to clarify this.
Senator Norris is wrong in what he is saying. At
the end of the day it is the Minister for Foreign
Affairs who is responsible for what is said here.
Mr. Norris: In that case the House has been
misinformed.
Mr. T. Kitt: I refer the Senator to my speech in
which I used the terms ‘‘occupying powers’’ and
‘‘coalition provisional authority’’ which is actually
part of the UN Resolution.
Mr. Norris: Fine. Why was there an objection?
In that case the House was misinformed this
morning.
Mr. T. Kitt: I have never intervened in this
House before and it may be wrong of me.
However, I do not want the Senator to go off at a
tangent. He is going down the wrong route here.
Mr. Norris: I am glad of that correction,
because certainly the Official Report will show
that was what we were told this morning.
Mr. T. Kitt: I accept responsibility for that.
Mr. Norris: I am very glad for that clarification
and I accept it.
There were a whole series of issues that were
put down in our names, such as the use of Shannon.
We were told the reason was weapons of
mass destruction. Iraq has the highest rate for the
agglomeration of cluster bombs in the world.
That is certainly worrying.
With regard to the position of the United
States and of this Government on the war in Iraq,
I wish to cite the following statements:
Simply stated there is no doubt that Saddam
Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction
— Dick Cheney, 26 August 2002.
Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving
facilities that were used for the production of
biological weapons. — George Bush, 12 September
2002.
If he declares he has none, then we will know
that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading
the world. — Ari Fleischer, 2 December 2002.
Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam
Hussein had the materials to produce as
much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX
nerve agent. — George Bush, 28 January 2003.
We know that Saddam Hussein is determined
to keep his weapons of mass destruction,
is determined to make more. — Colin Powell,
5 February 2003.
We have sources who tell us that Saddam
Hussein recently authorised Iraqi field commanders
to use chemical weapons — the very
weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.
— George Bush, 8 February 2003.
So has the strategic decision been made to
disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction
by the leadership in Baghdad? I think our
judgment has to be clearly not. —Colin Powell,
8 March 2003.
Intelligence gathered by this and other
governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq
regime continues to possess and conceal some
of the most lethal weapons ever devised. —
George Bush, 17 March 2003.
Well, there is no question that we have evidence
and information that Iraq has weapons
of mass destruction, biological and chemical
particularly ...allthis will be made clear in the
course of the operation for whatever duration
it takes. — Ari Fleischer, 21 March 2003.
There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam
Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction.
— US General Tommy Franks, 22 March
2003.
We know where they are. They are in the
area around Tikrit and Baghdad. — Donald
Rumsfeld, 30 March 2003.
The former UK Foreign Secretary, Mr. Robin
Cook, said in the last week:
We were told Saddam [Hussein] had weapons
ready for use within 45 minutes. It is now
45 days since the war has finished and we have
still not found anything.
It is plain that he did not have that capacity
to threaten us, possibly did not have the
capacity to threaten even his neighbours, and
that is profoundly important. We were, after
all, told that those who opposed the resolution
that would provide the basis for military action
were in the wrong. Perhaps we should now
admit that they were in the right.
The motion that I put down, with all-party support,
deals in a very bland way with the use by the
Minister for Foreign Affairs of his good offices to
persuade the US and UK Governments to live up
to their obligations to the civilian population of
Iraq. This was strongly supported by our distinguished
former Minister for Foreign Affairs,
David Andrews. When he took up that office, this
measure was passed unanimously. It is important
that we pass this motion.
We are all familiar with the pictures of little
Ali who lost both his arms and whose family was
wiped out. As a result of an intensive international
campaign, he was transferred to Kuwait
where certain rehabilitative procedures were
engaged in, but what about all the rest of the
people? What about the morality of the situation
which we all witnessed live on television where,
on foot of rumours that Saddam Hussein was in a
particular restaurant, a couple of thousand pound
bombs were dropped on a civilian house and an
entire family wiped out for no good reason? We
condemned on the Order of Business the murder
by the Israelis today of a Palestinian activist, but
what about these people and what about the situation
they face?
There are points in the Minister of State’s
speech which I very much welcome such as his
congratulations to the various aid agencies, the
Red Cross, UNICEF, the WFP, Concern, GOAL
and Tro´ caire. He also indicates the catastrophic
fall in the human development index of Iraq.
That is all very important and it is important it
should be said. He also pays tribute to the heroic
work of the mainly Iraqi personnel of these
organisations — the fact that they certainly saved
lives. I am very glad he said that.
However, I cannot believe that Afghanistan
and East Timor are being cited. Those are classic
hit and run operations — certainly Afghanistan
is. They went in, they walloped that country for
their own reasons, they have now skited off and
the world’s attention has moved away from that
country. Hamid Karzai controls about seven
miles around Kabul and the Taliban and warlords
are in control of most of the rest of the area.
Poppy production in that country has quadrupled.
What are we talking about? That is not
satisfactory.
The Minister of State and our Government
played an important supportive role in East
Timor. That was marvellous, but again world
attention has shifted. The place is devastated.
There is no infrastructure and the Minister of
State knows that well.
Dr. Mansergh: We have a development office
there.
Mr. Norris: I know that. I am talking about the
situation there. Senator Mansergh need not be so
neurotic——
Dr. Mansergh: I am not neurotic.
Mr. Norris: ——that he makes a knee-jerk
reaction to everything I say. I know something
about the situation in East Timor. If Senator
Mansergh thinks it is satisfactory, he should go
there and take a look at it.
Dr. Mansergh: I have been there. Has the
Senator?
Mr. Norris: Then the Senator should go back
there.
Dr. Mansergh: Has the Senator been there?
Mr. Norris: I was arrested on the way in
because my comments were not so bland as to
please the Indonesia administration.
With regard to the incidence of disease, while
diarrhoea is a simple disease to treat, large number
of children are dying from it in Iraq. Some
70% of all child deaths recently in Iraq have been
diarrhoea related. Dysentery and typhoid are also
becoming a significant problem and this is partly
due to the bombing of the water and electricity
supply infrastructure.
In a recent UNICEF newsletter there is a picture
of a young girl, Ayat, picking grains of rice
out of sewer in front of her house and washing
them so that they can be sold in order to supplement
the family income because they are
starving. That is a classic method of transmitting
disease.
I did not get into East Timor because I was
arrested. I am honoured to have been arrested
and not to have been allowed in. However, I have
been to Baghdad and I have been to the children’s
hospital. I would like to tell Members what
Maura Quinn has to say in her report about the
situation there. She wrote:
I visited the main paediatric hospital in Basrah.
The doctor brought me around the over crowded
wards in which up to three mothers
and their babies shared the same bed. We visited
each mother and children to hear their
story. Eventually we came to a very ill baby,
attached to a drip. He was seven month old
Mohammed, the first child of his 20-year-old
mother Nabila. He weighted 3.5 kg, less than
half his target weight. He was also suffering
from pneumonia and diarrhoea. The doctor
told me there was nothing further he could do.
I sat with Nabila and we watched her beautiful
son die. I raged at the waste of his life, while
she, in a dignified way, appeared to accept his
death as inevitable. News of Mohammed’s
death spread quickly. Many of the other
mothers came to her bedside. Again, the
unnatural acceptance of this baby’s death. One
of them asked me, the foreigner, ‘‘How many
more of our children have to die?’’
That is the question we should be addressing
today. How many more of these children have to
die? Can we not exert pressure on the people who
helped create this situation to engage in some
remedial action?
I know that Saddam Hussein was a monster
because I was one of the people who said it over
the past 20 years and protested at Halabja when
the west was supplying him with the gas and the
Government was supplying him with meat for his
army. I was more or less a lone voice protesting
at that time, so nobody need question my credentials
about this. I listen to the media and I hear
the media in Iraq now saying, Saddam Hussein
was bad but this is worse, and it is not over yet.
It is oil that is at the back of this entire matter.
There are also outbreaks of cholera. In Basra,
there are 66 confirmed cases of cholera, with
three people having died from the disease. Of the
66 cases, 79% are children under five years old
and 59% of the victims are girls. There are also
clinically confirmed cases of cholera in Nassariya
and Missan, but these cases have yet to be confirmed
through laboratory tests. This is due to a
serious lack of the required medical equipment in
the south and throughout Iraq as a whole. Dysentery
and typhoid are also becoming a real problem
for children. Dysentery is spread through
contaminated water and food. The bacteria lodge
in the intestines of a child and erode the intestinal
wall, leading to bloody diarrhoea. Typhoid, which
is also spread by contaminated food, is being seen
throughout the capital as well. The current worry
is that prior to the war and the collapse of the
health system there was rigorous surveillance of
typhoid, but now there is none. There is no
reporting and no surveillance.
I wish to raise the education system in Iraq
which is referred to in the UNICEF newsletter. I
listen with interest and compassion to what we
are told about some of our students who have to
use an outside lavatory. I will outline the current
situation in Iraq. The newsletter states:
The collapsed education system in an
example of how far Iraq has fallen. In a country
which values education highly, and had the
highest primary school enrolment in the
Middle East for both girls and boys, this hurts.
The 8,000 primary schools are in a dreadful
condition — no windows or roofs, school yards
under water, awash with raw sewage, rat infested
and in some cases without electricity,
sanitation or water.
Yet we bellyache about students in Ireland in one
or two cases having to use outside lavatories.
What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
We should certainly attempt to address this
problem.
I wish to refer to the problem of landmines.
During three weeks in the past month there were
500 injuries and 80 deaths of which we know. This
is the subject of one of the earlier motions I
tabled. The spokesperson for the coalition said
that cluster bombs are not illegal — they are of
course but that does not matter, they can still lie
as much as they like. They are effective weapons.
There was equipment in and around built up
areas and accordingly the bombs were used to
take out the threat, knowing that these cluster
bombs primarily affect children and are illegal
under the Geneva Convention. There is no question
they are illegal but they are still used. They
are still there and they have not been taken away.
My colleague, Senator Lydon, in a most
interesting speech, said that our overseas aid
should not go towards the rebuilding of the infrastructure
because many other groups are involved
in that. We know them, they are the friends of
George Bush — Bechtell and Haliburton, these
people who incited the war, planned and conspired
to bring it about. It was not the intelligence
service. Let us put a stop to that myth. It was
not the intelligence services who lied; it was the
massaging, manipulation and misuse of intelligence
information by political leaders that led to
the situation where even the intelligence services
in the United States and the United Kingdom
could not stomach it and they started leaking
information. That is how we know what the truth
is.
This was a shameful war. I opposed Saddam
Hussein from the beginning. While I am glad he
is gone, I fear for the people in Iraq because it
will be another hit and run exercise, just like
Afghanistan. The media victory was won and
American citizens were persuaded that right was
on their side and so on. I pity those left behind
when the media move on. For that reason, it is
terribly important that this House continues to
monitor the situation for ordinary Iraqi citizens.