By David Hilfiker, Pacific News Service
January 2, 2003

I have just returned home from a three-week trip to Iraq organized by the peace group Voices in the Wilderness. I toured the country's cities, suburbs and rural areas, meeting everyone from housewives to teachers to government officials. I feel now as I felt a generation ago during the Vietnam War: We are destroying an innocent people in the name of geopolitical "realities" that, ultimately, make no sense.


President Bush says that the danger to the United States of "weapons of mass destruction" justifies the devastation caused by a 12-year American-led campaign of bombing and sanctions. The idea would be laughable if it were not taken so seriously by so many in America. Iraq was a third-rate military power before the first Gulf War and the sanctions. The former U.S. Marine heading the previous U.N. inspection teams says 90 to 95 percent of Saddam Hussein's remaining weapons of mass destruction were found and destroyed. Almost no one thinks Iraq possesses nuclear weapons or the capability to get a missile anywhere near the United States. Aside from Great Britain and Israel, virtually no other country perceives Iraq to be a danger worth the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

The remainder of this article may be found online at:

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14872

It gives a very interesting account of this journalist's recent visit to Iraq. As the Bush administration and the US mainstream media increases the volume and intensity of the war drums, eyewitness articles like this become increasingly important to our understanding of what is truly at stake for us, for the people of the region, and for the world.