- "I pray to God to hit America with a massive strike
because a strike from God is much stronger than from a human being...I
want them to suffer like we're suffering. They are the reason for our misery."
-
- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - If President
George W. Bush believes that ordinary Iraqis will welcome U.S. troops with
open arms he may be in for a rude surprise.
-
- However much they fear to say what they think under the
ruthless rule of President Saddam Hussein, their feelings of deep-seated
hatred towards Bush are only too clear.
-
- They see the United States as primarily responsible for
the sanctions that have destroyed their economy and the social fabric of
their once-prosperous lives, as well as leaving an estimated 1.6 million
children dead and many more stunted.
-
- As much as the deprivation, they resent the humiliation
of having been driven back into an almost pre-industrial age.
-
- Nowhere are these sentiments more in evidence than at
the Mansour Hospital for Children, where youngsters with cancer lie dying
from what doctors believe are the effects of the 1991 Gulf War.
-
- "Look! These are the children of Iraq," said
Nouhad Abdel-Amir pointing at the cancer ward packed with frail children
with no hair, many lying unconscious with drips strapped to their bodies.
-
- She herself was holding her one-year-old baby who had
his arm amputated to stop the progress of cancer in the absence of injections
doctors say are banned by the sanctions committee which claims they have
dual use.
-
- "This is what the Americans did to us. This is the
effect of all the bombs they fired at us. It is showing now. It is all
America's fault that our children are dying," said Najate Salem, whose
son Mohammed, five, has stomach cancer.
-
- International medical surveys have reported a dramatic
jump in cancer cases, genetic deformities and abnormalities in children
born after 1991, especially in the south where depleted uranium munitions
were fired by U.S. and British troops as they drove Iraqi forces out of
Kuwait.
-
- "The Gulf War is the only indicator for the increase
of cancer in Iraq. The rate of cancer has risen five to seven fold more
than before 1991," said Loua'i Latif Kasha, a pathologist and director
of the 300-bed Mansour hospital.
-
- He said U.S. bombings of water treatment plants, the
collapse of the health and sanitation systems as well as a stringent embargo
that made it difficult to import medicine has led to the sharp increase
in cancer among Iraqis, mainly children.
-
- "Apart from these factors, radiation pollution from
depleted uranium bombs by itself causes cancer like leukaemia and thyroid,"
Kasha, who trained at the Whitechapel Hospital in London, told Reuters.
-
- At Mansour hospital, desperate and broken parents sit
by their children's bedside praying for a miracle. Without a miracle, many
will die because the appropriate medicines are not all available and are
beyond the parents' means.
-
- Humanitarian supplies under the U.N. oil-for-food programme
are intended to alleviate the impact of 12 years of sanctions but cannot
meet the massive need.
-
- Many parents, originally from poor southern provinces,
have sold household goods and furniture to buy expensive medicine.
-
- "We've sold everything we own to get him medicine.
We have nothing left except our mattresses and he's dying," said Camila
Mohammed, whose son Ali, six, has kidney cancer.
-
- Sleeping on soiled and bare mattresses in stomach-churning
smelly rooms, the children with no hair, yellow faces and sad eyes listen
to their parents venting their rage at America.
-
- "I pray to God to hit America with a massive strike
because a strike from God is much stronger than from a human being...I
want them to suffer like we're suffering. They are the reason for our misery,"
said Kazema Tshaloub, 30.
-
- Whether they like or loathe Saddam, their rage and hatred
are mainly directed at the U.S. administration.
-
- Most, who come from areas that witnessed an anti-Saddam
uprising after the Gulf War, distrust the declared intentions of Bush to
end Saddam's 23-year-old rule.
-
- Bush's father, then President George Bush, encouraged
Shi'ites in the south and Kurds in the north to rise up against Saddam
after the Gulf War but did little to help them.
-
- "Bush still wants to hurt us more. What more does
he want? Is there anything he hasn't done...All the destruction, sanctions
and diseases aren't enough? What have we done to him, we haven't hurt him
or attacked him," said another mother Ghaziya Rasheed.
-
- Even if Iraq is about to change for the better, for many
people this change will come too late. Nothing will bring back their loved
ones.
-
- "They fought us with all their means. Our children
are stunted, malnourished and illiterate," said Sahera Khalil whose
son Ahmed, four, has leukaemia.
-
- "In six weeks at the hospital I've seen eight children
die," she said. "The Americans have no mercy in their hearts.
This is what they have done to the future generation of Iraq."
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