I dont think Saddam is living the life of luxury because his people didnt have medicine, my friend. As stated by FCNL letter to congress on 3/02:

End the inhumane economic sanctions immediately. The U.S.-led UN economic sanctions have violated both international humanitarian and U.S. law by harming civilians as a means to coerce action by a government. The sanctions have harshly punished the people of Iraq for the actions of an oppressive regime over which they have no control. Tens of thousands have died from curable and preventable diseases due to the lack of adequate nutrition, medical supplies, clean water, and sanitation. The end result of this eleven-year U.S.-led policy is a generation of civilians without hope.


The people of Iraq are denied BASIC things for daily lives. We're not talking about FOOD and medicine alone. Now I'm no expert on weapons inspections, economic sanctions, terror outfits or the ergonomics of public toilets. But when I see a list of all the things Iraq can't import on grounds that they might have a "dual use," my built-in bullshit detector gets kind of fidgety.

Take pencils. The schoolchildren in Iraq can't use pencils because some genius in Bush Senior's administration figured that pencils contain lead, and lead can be used in a nuclear weapons programme. My ass.

Someone needs to clear up what pencil lead actually is. It's not the element Lead (or plumbum), it's just finely-ground clay and graphite (an allotropic form of Carbon), mixed with water and pressed into thin rods at high temperatures. It's called lead because the Brits who first discovered graphite believed they'd found lead. Just like the Brits who first discovered Oasis believed they'd found the next Beatles. And see what came of that nuisance.

Last I checked, Lead was supposed to stop a nuclear reaction from getting out of hand, not accelerate it. That's why they use Lead plates as moderators in a nuclear reactor, and Lead suits to work in places with high levels of radiation. Using Lead in a nuclear weapons programme is like using blotting paper as a sexual lubricant (maybe there's an idea there).

Another reason given for banning pencils is that Hussein's henchmen could swoop down on classrooms across the country, filch the damn things (it's mine! no, shut up it's mine! no, you shut up!) and extract the Carbon from them and use it to coat their Soviet-era planes and make them invisible to radar. That's a stealth bomber for the cost of a pencil case, compared to the $1.5 billion that the U.S. spends on each B-2 bomber -- some of which have been known to get shot down over Yugoslavia by peasants with names like Zoltan Bercik. In these times of recession, I think that's a pretty strong case for buying unbranded goods.

More than 14 billion pencils are produced in the world every year, enough to circle this planet 62 times. Imagine the possibilities.

Okay, how about this? Chlorine, an essential ingredient of any half-assed water purification plant, is banned. It's banned because Hussein could use it in a chemical weapons programm. My ass.

Chlorine was last used in 1919 by the British, French and German forces (not Iraq), and by the end of WW1 over a million soldiers had choked on their own vomit, most of them dying because the breeze turned back on them instead of drifting at a leisurely 5mph towards the enemy.

This technology is 83 years old, more jaded than Maggie Thatcher, and we're expected to believe that Hussein is about to use it. Even if he does resort to such cutting-edge chemical warfare (instead of the stocks of sarin and tabun that were supplied to him by a succession of Western governments), the Ammonia in urine can neutralize the chemicals used in Chlorine gas. In plain English, that means you can neuter a cloud of Chlorine gas by pissing into a handkerchief and holding it to your face. We have seen the remedy, and it is us.

The same Western governments targeted Iraq's water-purification and sewage-treatment plants in 1991 and 1998. Over the past eleven years, an average of 200 children have died every day of what should be treatable diseases: simple diarrhoea, typhoid, dysentery and other water-borne illnesses. Lack of clean water might just have been the biggest killer in Iraq since the sanctions were imposed.

But Chlorine is still banned.

Next, we've got X-Ray machines. That's right, the same gizmos your friendly neighborhood clinic uses to locate cervical cancer and ovarian cysts.

The Security Council consistently blocks X-Ray machines, claiming their Cesium isotopes (as well as their on-board computers) could be used in a nuclear weapons programme. My ass.

Screw the Cesium and on-board computers, I'll tell you what you really need to build a nuclear bomb: weapons-grade Plutonium and enriched Uranium -- the first of which is just about as abundant as heterosexuals in a gay pride parade on Old Compton Street.

As for enriched Uranium, it's easy-peasy. In fact, as David Hahn (a 15-year-old boy scout from Michigan) discovered in 1995, it takes as little as an amalgam of Americium-241 (commonly found in smoke detectors), Thorium-232 (commonly found in gas lantern filaments), and Radium (commonly found in old alarm clocks), bombarded constantly with a home-made neutron gun, to produce enriched Uranium.

In other words, banning X-Ray machines in order to jeopardize Hussien's nuclear weapons programme is about as effective as banning cigarette lighters in order to get people to quit smoking.

Do I think Hussein could find a dual use for X-ray machines? I don't know, but as ABC's Mid-East correspondent Mark Willacy remarked after visiting one of the sites suspected of developing nuclear weapons, "there can't be nuclear scientists here because there were instructions in the bathroom on how to flush the toilet."

Iraq's geeks don't know how to flush the toilet. They're compelled to sell their books so they can buy food for the family. And they don't know how to extract enriched Uranium from a couple of smoke detectors, gas lanterns and alarm clocks.

Meanwhile, the 300 tonnes of depleted Uranium ammunition used against Iraq in 1991 still lies scattered across the country, contaminating the air, the earth, the water, the vegetation, the livestock. All of which causes leukaemia, lung cancer, bone cancer, respiratory diseases, and a breakdown of the immune system amongst thousands and thousands of Iraqi civilians. Stuff that could easily be traced on an X-Ray machine.

But X-Ray machines are banned because Western governments think these will be used to build nuclear weapons. My ass.

Since you're so versed in the way the modern ballot is counted then, I'm sure you're aware that it doesnt matter HOW many states you get, it matters WHICH states you get. I'm sure NY has more weight to it than VT for example?