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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the May 25, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
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‘What’s happening in Iraq is genocide’

Excerpts from a talk by University Medalist Fadia Rafeedie at UC-Berkeley May 13, following Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's address.

I was going to remind her [Madeleine Albright] and I was going to remind you that four years ago, I heard her on "60 Minutes" talking to a reporter who had just returned from Iraq. The reporter was describing that a million children died due to the sanctions that this country was imposing on the people of Iraq. And she told her, listen, "that's more children than have died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Do you think the price is worth it?"

[Albright] looked into the camera and she said, "The price is worth it."

And I was going to tell her, "Do you really think the price is worth it?"

I need to speak about Iraq because I think what's happening there is a genocide. It's another holocaust.

And I'm a history major, and sometimes I look back at history and I see things like the slave trade, the Holocaust you know, I see people dropping atomic bombs and not thinking what the ramifications are, and I don't want us to think about Iraq that way.

In Iraq, the hospitals, they clean the floors with gasoline because detergent
isn't even allowed in because of the
sanctions.

These are all United States policies.

And Secretary Albright--she's a symbol. ... In fact, she was introduced as the "greatest woman of our times." Now see, to me that's an insult.

United Nations inspectors found [again] that Iraq has no nuclear capabilities and yet we are bombing them every other day with depleted uranium. And what this does is it releases a gas that the people breathe. It's making them ill, and they're dying and they don't have medicine.

I'm speaking to a crowd that gave a standing ovation to the woman who typifies everything against which I stand, and I'm still telling you this because I think it's important to understand.

And I think that if I achieve nothing else, if this makes you think a little bit about Iraq, think a little bit about U.S. foreign policy, I've succeeded.

Thank you very much.

[Standing ovation]

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