Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Saddam's parades of dead babies are exposed as a cynical charade
The Sunday Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | 05/25/03 | Charlotte Edwardes

Posted on 05/24/2003 4:28:53 PM PDT by Pokey78

UN sanctions did not kill the hundreds of infants displayed over the years - it was neglect by the former regime, Iraqi doctors in Baghdad tell Charlotte Edwardes

The "baby parades" were a staple of Saddam Hussein's propaganda machine for a decade. Convoys of taxis, with the tiny coffins of dead infants strapped to their roofs - allegedly killed by United Nations sanctions - were driven through the streets of Baghdad, past crowds of women screaming anti-Western slogans.

The moving scenes were often filmed by visiting television crews and provided valuable ammunition to anti-sanctions activists such as George Galloway, the Labour MP, who blamed Western governments for the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children.

But The Telegraph can reveal that it was all a cynical charade. Iraqi doctors say they were told to collect dead babies who had died prematurely or from natural causes and to store them in cardboard boxes in refrigerated morgues for up to four weeks - until they had sufficient corpses for a parade.

Many of the children died, they say, as a result of the Iraqi government's own neglect as it lavished funds on military programmes and Saddam's palaces in the knowledge that it could blame sanctions for the lack of medicines and equipment in hospitals and clinics.

"We were not allowed to return the babies to their mothers for immediate burial, as is the Muslim tradition, but told they must be kept for what became known as 'the taxi parade'," said Dr Hussein al-Douri, the deputy director of the Ibn al-Baladi hospital in Saddam City, a Shia district in eastern Baghdad.

"The mothers would be hysterical and sometimes threaten to kill us, but we knew that the real threat was from the government."

Asked what would have happened if he had disobeyed the orders, Dr al-Douri replied: "They would have killed our families. This was an important event for the propaganda campaign."

Dr al-Douri, who has worked for 10 years as a paediatrician, said the parades were orchestrated by officials from the ministries of health, information and intelligence.

He said: "All 10 hospitals in Baghdad were involved in this and the quota for the parade was between 25 and 30 babies a month, which they would say had died in one day.

"We had to tell the babies' families that it was a government order and that they would be paid to keep quiet. The reward was sometimes in money, the equivalent of $10 per baby, or in food: rice, sugar and oil."

The government then ordered members of the Iraqi Women's Federation, an organisation funded by the regime, to line the streets of Baghdad and wail and beat themselves in mock grief.

"They portrayed an image of mothers in mourning for their recently dead children," he said. "It was too dangerous not to follow the orders. We were very afraid. The families were afraid, too."

Dr al-Douri showed The Telegraph the morgue where babies' bodies would be stored in cardboard boxes before being transferred to wooden coffins carrying their names and sometimes photographs.

Dr Amer Abdul al-Jalil, the deputy resident at the hospital, said: "Sanctions did not kill these children - Saddam killed them. The internal sanctions by the Saddam regime were very effective. Those who died prematurely usually died because their mothers lived in impoverished areas neglected by the government.

"The mortality rate was higher in areas such as Saddam City because there was no sewerage system. Infectious diseases were rampant.

"Over the past 10 years, the government in Iraq poured money into the military and the construction of palaces for Saddam to the detriment of the health sector. Those babies or small children who died because they could not access the right drugs, died because Saddam's government failed to distribute the drugs. The poorer areas were most vulnerable."

He added: "We feel terrible that this happened, but we were living under a regime and we had to keep silent. What could we do?"


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: babyparades; doctors; embargo; iraqifreedom; sanctions

1 posted on 05/24/2003 4:28:53 PM PDT by Pokey78
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Pokey78
I wonder if the Left will admit they were WRONG about this issue, too?

Sure...when it snows where the man with the pitchfork and horns conducts his business...

-Jay
2 posted on 05/24/2003 4:33:37 PM PDT by Jay D. Dyson (When the smoke cleared, the terrorist was over there...and over there...and over there...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78
This is just plan sick. I seem to remember a few bleeding heart liberals who repeated the mantra of the west killing iraqi babies. Now they read this article and see what useful idiots they really are.
3 posted on 05/24/2003 4:33:50 PM PDT by darkwing104
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78
Forward this to all the leftists who screamed "Sanctions Equal Dead Babies".

Then listen to the yawning silence.
4 posted on 05/24/2003 4:33:54 PM PDT by petuniasevan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: darkwing104
plan = plain
5 posted on 05/24/2003 4:34:28 PM PDT by darkwing104
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78
And here, we tried to defend the sanctions by saying it was Saddam just ignoring medicine, and buying guns and weapons instead of food..

This is even sicker.
6 posted on 05/24/2003 4:35:51 PM PDT by RaceBannon
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78
It was propaganda like this that led people like Osama bin Laden to believe that the West was cruelly oppressing the Muslim world, and drastic countermeasures had to be taken. The fallout of the Baby Parades was September 11.
7 posted on 05/24/2003 4:37:05 PM PDT by JoeSchem (Okay, now it works: Knight's Quest, at http://wwwgeocities.com/engineerzero)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: petuniasevan
...Forward this to all the leftists who screamed "Sanctions Equal Dead Babies".

Then listen to the yawning silence. ...


They are not capable of being silent, they will be busy making excuses and accusations showing the need for the charade
8 posted on 05/24/2003 4:37:14 PM PDT by rontorr (It's only my opinion, but I am RIGHT)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78
This should be shouted from the rooftops...or at least on TV.
9 posted on 05/24/2003 4:38:10 PM PDT by MEG33
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78
BBC will apologize for its involvement ... as soon as The New York Times does the same.
10 posted on 05/24/2003 4:51:38 PM PDT by aculeus
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78
Thanks, Pokey. The world needs to see this.
11 posted on 05/24/2003 5:27:49 PM PDT by solzhenitsyn ("Live Not By Lies")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: rontorr
they will be busy making excuses and accusations showing the need for the charade

I agree. Population control would be my guess for their choice of "need for the charade."

12 posted on 05/24/2003 5:50:15 PM PDT by cgk (It is liberal dogma that human life is an accident - Linda Bowles (r.i.p.))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78
He added: "We feel terrible that this happened, but we were living under a regime and we had to keep silent. What could we do?"

He is only confirming what many of us were saying while the libs were wailing about the sanctions.

There was a thread earlier in the week about Sadaam wanting to come back and reclaim his place as leader of Iraq. After folks have had a taste of freedom without him, I daresay, hell will freeze over before they let him back in to rule them!

13 posted on 05/24/2003 6:57:25 PM PDT by SuziQ
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Pokey78
the parades were orchestrated by officials from the ministries of health, information and intelligence

Perhaps that should have said "orchestrated by officials from the ministries of death, disinformation and stupidity." How sad. Saddam and his cronies are/were truly evil.

14 posted on 05/24/2003 7:01:11 PM PDT by arasina (Uh oh! I need a new tag line!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: arasina
Sick:
500,000 dead Iraqi children
Also Sick:
40,000,000 dead American children
15 posted on 05/24/2003 7:35:09 PM PDT by aiquile
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: JoeSchem
Yeah I'm sure that had everything to do with it.(insert sarcastic tone here)
16 posted on 05/24/2003 8:47:26 PM PDT by VivaVilla
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: SuziQ
Exactly. It was no secret to freepers that Saddam lied about the sanctions killing children, that he was spending literally billions of dollars on palaces and weapons to gratify his own ego, without ever lifting a single finger to feed Iraqi babies or provide them with adequate medical care.
17 posted on 05/24/2003 9:04:50 PM PDT by Luke Skyfreeper
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: VivaVilla
Yeah I'm sure that had everything to do with it.(insert sarcastic tone here)

Well, bin Laden in interviews prior to 9/11/01 said the reason he was fighting the US had to do with (a) the Israel-Palestine issue, (b) the US dominance of Saudi leadership, and (c) the deaths of 200,000 Iraqi children under UN sanctions promoted by the US.

Now, as far as (a) is concerned, the US is all for an even-handed solution to the Israel-Palestine issue. So bin Laden really didn't have an issue here against the US.

As far as (b), bin Laden is as much a product of the US-backed Saudi regime as anybody can be. So this is rather pretentious as well.

That leaves (c), that the US was starving to death 200,000 Iraqi children a year through sanctions. That was the only heavy-hitter that bin Laden could use as a propaganda argument in order to justify the slaughter of 3000 Americans on 9/11/01.

This is how the Dictator Game works. Saddam starves the Iraqi people, and blames their plight on the US, and the Arab world holds up Saddam as a hero.

And this is how the Freedom Game works. The US removes Saddam, and suddenly the Iraqi people aren't starving anymore, and the US is hailed as the liberator, and the Islamic radicals are left looking like a bunch of jerk-asses unable to accept their own moral failings.

By invading Iraq and bringing an end to the suffering of the Iraqi people, Bush has removed the one 'grand' excuse (read: pretense) that the Islamic radicals had in engaging in mass terrorism against the US. It's one thing to compare 200,000 dead Iraqi children to 3000 dead Americans and argue the gruesome mathematics of retribution. It's another thing when it turns out your own side was also responsible for those 200,000 dead Iraqi children.

The liberation of Iraq essentially means that Islamic terrorism is a spent moral and intellectual force that can no longer hide behind a facade of lies. Sure, there are the True Believers who'll linger around for a few more years -- but what of the next generation? How do you raise a new generation of True Believers, when the younger generation can easily see with their own eyes that it was the Islamic radicals themselves who were the abettors of oppression in Iraq?

18 posted on 05/25/2003 2:31:34 PM PDT by JoeSchem (Okay, now it works: Knight's Quest, at http://wwwgeocities.com/engineerzero)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson