-Caveat Lector-
Posted at 10:00 p.m. PST Wednesday, December 30, 1998
Bishop: Clinton, U.S. leaders `war criminals'
Toledo Blade
WASHINGTON -- Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit
declared yesterday that President Clinton and other top U.S. leaders
are ``war criminals'' who could be put on trial for imposing economic
sanctions against Iraq that have resulted in the death of more than 1
million people there.
At a news conference, Bishop Gumbleton urged Americans to demand that
Clinton end the 8-year-old embargo against Iraq.
He said the embargo has caused particularly severe suffering among
Iraq's children and elderly people, who are dying by the thousands
each month from a lack of food, medicine and proper sanitation.
``I think the leaders of our country could be put on trial for war
crimes,'' Bishop Gumbleton said. ``I don't like to say it -- it is my
country -- but I believe that the leaders of my country are war
criminals.''
Asked if he believes Iraqi President Saddam Hussein also should be
held responsible for the suffering of his people, Bishop Gumbleton
replied: ``None of these political leaders is perfect.
``But neither is President Hussein the demon that the United States
makes him out to be ... I don't think there's anything he can do. We
have made it our goal to topple his government. What could he possibly
do in the face of that?''
The bishop spent two weeks in Iraq in early December, returning just
days before the latest four-day spate of U.S. bombing there. The visit
was his third in two years, and was in concert with an effort by a
Chicago-based group, Voices in the Wilderness, to bring desperately
needed medicines and food -- as well as some toys -- to Iraqi
children.
Although the United States allows humanitarian relief efforts, the
embargo requires that organizations first obtain a license from the
Office of Foreign Assets Control in the U.S. Treasury Department.
Some humanitarian organizations have obtained the licenses, but the
leaders of Voices in the Wilderness refuse to do so, arguing in a
letter sent yesterday to the Treasury Department that ``the licensing
process is an obstruction of our right to ... do justice, to feed the
hungry and care for the sick.''
Getting a license ``would only be a pretense,'' Bishop Gumbleton
argued. ``There is no point in going along with their rules. It is
much more honest and much more moral to do it this way.''
Voices in the Wilderness and four of its members were warned by
Treasury officials in early December that they might be fined more
than $160,000 for taking medicine, food and toys to Iraq without
obtaining a license in 1996 and 1997.
A Treasury Department spokeswoman said she couldn't comment on the
case since it is ongoing.
Since January, 1996, Voices in the Wilderness has sent 19 groups to
Iraq, taking nearly $500,000 worth of donated goods with them -- a
``drop in the bucket in an ocean of need,'' according to Kathy Kelly,
one of the co-founders of the group.
Kelly said the group had no intention of paying the fines or stopping
its efforts, adding: ``With respect to the enforcement of this
embargo, we are conscientious objectors.''
Bishop Gumbleton compared the deaths of Iraqi children to the deaths
of Jewish newborn males during the time of King Herrod, shortly after
the birth of Jesus Christ.
``They are similar atrocities, similar murders,'' he said.
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