For ten years now, Bert Sacks of Seattle has been fighting an effort to fine him $10,000 for bringing food and medicine to Iraqi children during the period of sanctions in the 1990s. -- Sacks is scheduled to make an appearance in federal court in Seattle on Sept. 19 on a charge that should have been dropped years ago, a charge that should never have been filed in the first place. -- To further understanding of the case, the heroic Sacks will be posting a series of brief articles on the 11th of each month. -- The first is posted below,[1] along with some articles about his case.[2,3,4] -- Sign up for Bert's mailing list at the first link below....
1.
FINED FOR HELPING IRAQI KIDS
By Bert Sacks
IraqiKids.org
January 2011
http://www.iraqikids.org/media
Terrorism is endlessly in our news. But three areas of U.S. involvement with terrorism are almost never mentioned -- from 20 years ago, 10 years ago, and today. They need to be known and discussed. On the 11th of each month, starting in January and continuing through September 11, 2011, I’ll post a brief article about each. Please follow by adding your email address at the the signup list on the right for a once-a-month email. [see original link]
I begin with the story of a U.S. fine against me for not asking permission to bring medicine to Iraq. I will explain why I did not ask for a license and why I refused to pay the $10,000 fine. I’m being sued for my 1997 violation of U.S. sanctions. The U.S. restriction of medicines is part of this first story on terrorism. I do not want money but your help telling these stories.
THE STORY AS TOLD IN THE MEDIA
Read Bruce Ramsey’s op-ed published in the Seattle Times on Jan. 4, 2011, [#2 below] or watch the interview on Democracy Now! from Jan. 23, 2007, [#3 below] and in the Seattle P-I on June 17, 2002. [#4 below]
CHAPTER 1: MY STORY OF THE FINE AND LAWSUIT (JANUARY)
I have images in my mind which tell a lot about the 12 years of U.S./UN sanctions on Iraq.
Early one morning in Baghdad I was walking along the Tigris River when I smelled a terrible odor: raw sewage was pouring from a large pipe directly into the river. I knew it would become the drinking water of people downstream. Many people would become sick.
The second image comes from the diarrhea clinic in Basra, the large city downstream of Baghad. The clinic was filled with mothers holding their infant and very young children. I knew that water-borne diseases were the prime killer of Iraqi children under five.
What is the relation of these images with my refusal to pay a fine and with terrorism?
Right after the 1991 Gulf War, I learned why raw sewage would be flowing into the Tigris. A Pentagon bombing planner explained why the U.S. bombed and destroyed virtually all of Iraq’s electrical-generating plants:
“People say, ‘You didn’t recognize that it was going to have an effect on water or sewage,’” said the planning officer. “Well, what were we trying to do with [United Nations-approved economic] sanctions -- help out the Iraqi people? No. What we were doing with the attacks on infrastructure was to accelerate the effect of sanctions.” (emphasis added)
The economic sanctions prevented Iraq from repairing its electrical plants, and water and sewage infrastructure.
U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III explained to Congress the purpose of these sanctions: “[W]e will never normalize relations with Iraq so long as Saddam Hussein remains in power. That means maintaining U.N. sanctions in place so long as Saddam remains in power.” (emphasis added) The official U.S. goal of sanctions -- stated publicly in May 1991, but never authorized by the U.N. -- was to overthrow the Iraqi government.
AT WHAT PRICE?
I learned the price Iraqis were paying from the New England Journal of Medicine: “These results provide strong evidence that the Gulf War and trade sanctions caused a threefold increase in mortality among Iraqi children under five years of age. We estimate that an excess of more that 46,900 children died between January and August 1991.” (emphasis added)
But for U.S. planners the price was cheap: no Americans would die in an invasion.
Some might point out that the U.N. authorized sanctions. But U.N. sanctions never included medicine -- U.S. sanctions always did. We made a Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA) asking how many licenses for medicine were denied by the responsible agency (OFAC) and for what reason. Their reply came back after seven years: If I sent them $79,718.10 they would answer this request! (I didn’t pay but I would still like to know.)
The Oil-for-Food program began six years after the end of the 1991 Gulf War. It supplied food, safe water, medicine, electricity, transportation, education -- with an allowance of about 50 cents per Iraqi per day. “Woefully inadequate,” I was told, by Hans von Sponeck, one of the two U.N. Assistant Secretaries General who headed the program and resigned to protest this U.S.-enforced limit. Fifty cents a day for each Iraqi -- from their own oil wealth -- that is the real Oil-for-Food scandal!
In her new book Invisible War: the United States and Iraq Sanctions, Professor Joy Gordon writes: “What is clear is that, left to its own, there was simply no limit to how much harm the U.S. government was willing to do to Iraq.” After 200 pages of devastating documentation, Joy Gordon has earned the right to make this accusation!
The U.K. journalist Robert Fisk wrote: “In other words, the United States and Britain and other members of the Security Council were well aware that the principal result of the bombing campaign -- and of sanctions -- would be the physical degradation and sickening and deaths of Iraqi civilians. Biological warfare might prove to be a better description. The ultimate nature of the 1991 Gulf War for Iraqi civilians now became clear. Bomb now: die later.”
The New England Journal of Medicine called it “a war against the public health” -- with many children dying from water-borne diseases. One could also call it a war on the rule of law.
Bombing Iraq’s civilian infrastructure and using sanctions to prevent rebuilding or supplying basic human needs -- for the stated purpose of overthrowing the Iraqi government -- constitute a crime according to U.S. law. Title 18 U. S. Code Section 2331 defines terrorism as “acts dangerous to human life” when those acts are intended to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population or to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.”
I understood this before the 1997 trip I’m being sued for, so I could not, in conscience or in law, cooperate with an agency participating in an act of terrorism against the Iraqis.
And, for the same reason, I can not pay the fine that has been imposed on me: that would be contributing money to an organization which has engaged in terrorism.
This is indeed difficult to think about; it was for me. It contradicts much of what I had wanted to believe about my country. But only by holding to truth -- and going into this heart of darkness -- can we hope to create the America that needs to be.
Langston Hughes once wrote a poem which in essence said: “America that has never been, America that needs to be.” Only by holding to and speaking truth, can we help create the America that needs to be. ["O, let America be America again -- / The land that never has been yet -- / And yet must be," in "Let America Be America Again"]
Gandhi called this truth force satyagraha. It was the nonviolent means he used to get the most powerful empire in the world then, the British Raj, to leave India . . . and to leave as friends. If we wish to positively affect the most powerful empire in the world today, we must hold to and share this truth: no empire can engage in terrorism for a decade against Iraqi children -- UNICEF reported 500,000 Iraqi children had died -- and then credibly condemn terrorism and claim to wage a war against it.
* * *
There is much more to be said: I encourage you to follow the hyperlinks, see our various pages, or leave a comment. The pages References and Common Myths might be particularly useful. The link to a legal decision related to my case on genocide is very shocking!
Also, I would strongly encourage you to sign up for a monthly email. The upcoming email next month will discuss our media and our courts -- and the month after, what we can do. [See original link.]
2.
Op-Ed
BERT SACKS vs. THE U.S. -- WHY AN ACTIVIST STILL FIGHTS FOR THE IRAQI PEOPLE
By Bruce Ramsey
** The case of activist Bert Sacks, who violated the economic sanctions on Saddam Hussein's Iraq by donating medicine to hospitals facing a humanitarian disaster **
Seattle Times
January 4, 2011
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2013843744_bruce05.html
For most Americans the sanctions imposed on Iraq during the George H.W. Bush years are an old story. Not for Seattle resident Bert Sacks. Sacks, 68, is scheduled to be in federal court in Seattle Sept. 19 because he publicly violated them.
In 1997, during the Clinton years, Sacks and three others carried satchels of medicine for donation to Iraqi hospitals. They did it in full view of the U.S. media, publicly arguing that the sanctions had created a humanitarian disaster in Iraq.
In 2002, the Bush administration went after Sacks, fining him $10,000 for trade with the enemy. The "trade" was not the medicines, but his travel expenses. They were making a federal case of his restaurant meals and taxi rides.
Sacks refused to pay. In 2004, he sued the government, arguing that the blockade of Iraq violated international treaties on human rights. The courts ruled the treaties were not binding.
Now comes the Obama administration, following in the same spirit as the Bush administration. The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control is suing Sacks to collect its $10,000, plus late-payment penalties.
The government almost always wins cases like this. Sacks knows that; his main hope is to have a public forum to question the morality of sanctions. And he has a strong argument.
You can read his arguments at www.iraqikids.org; for a book-length treatment, see Joy Gordon's Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions (Harvard, 2010). The gist of it is this: Iraq is an oil state that imports almost all the equipment needed for public health. In the 1991 Gulf War, U.S. forces bombed Iraq's drinking-water-treatment, sewage-treatment, and electricity-generating plants. Then came sanctions, which blocked the replacement parts. Wrecking the infrastructure of public health was done purposefully, to put pressure on Saddam Hussein -- but the real pressure was on the people.
For 12 years, Iraqis had bacteria-infected water. The result was cholera, typhoid, and gastroenteritis. Add malnutrition and a shortage of common medicines. The problem was known; in 1992, the New England Journal of Medicine raised the alarm about it. By the late 1990s, UNICEF estimated that an extra half a million Iraqi children had died because of war and sanctions.
Three U.S. administrations, Republican and Democrat alike, "denied the severity of the situation and denied U.S. responsibility for any part of it," Gordon writes.
The political line was that any hardship in Iraq was Saddam Hussein's fault, because he wasn't obeying the United Nations and he had spent money on palaces. In other words, he was putting his political needs above the Iraqi people's.
But so was Bill Clinton. In the sanctions regime, which was effectively controlled by the U.S. government, Gordon writes, "any security concern, however slight or speculative, overrode any humanitarian concern, however extensive and certain."
None of the leaders put the Iraqi people first. All used state power for political ends and labeled their acts with words that conceal.
Economic sanctions. It sounds so . . . administrative. But coupled with war, sanctions can be a matter of life and death.
Then again, it is 2011. The blockade of Iraq is over. Why fight about it now?
"Because if we don't understand it," Sacks says, "we'll do it again."
--Bruce Ramsey's column appears regularly on editorial pages of the Times. His e-mail address is
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
3.
[Video (9:08)]
Democracy Now!
January 23, 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxmBQBDlBWU
* * *
[Transcript]
PEACE ACTIVIST BERT SACKS CHALLENGES U.S. FINE FOR BRINGING HUMANITARIAN AID TO IRAQ IN 1997
Democracy Now!
January 23, 2007
http://www.democracynow.org/2007/1/23/peace_activist_bert_sacks_challenges_u
Bert Sacks was fined $10,000 for going to Iraq to bring humanitarian aid. In 1997, Bert Sacks brought medicine to Iraqi civilians in defiance of the U.S. sanctions. Sacks is now petitioning the Supreme Court to take up his case.
he U.S. government fined him $10,000 but Sacks has refused to pay. He has argued that the actual crime was not his humanitarian efforts but the U.S. sanctions. It has been estimated that the sanctions led to the death of 500,000 Iraqi children. His petition questions whether it was legal for the US to have knowingly caused the deaths of Iraqis through sanctions. Bert Sacks joins me now from Seattle.
We called the Treasury Department to invite them on the program. Molly Millerwise, a spokesperson at the Office of Foreign Assets Control, declined to be on.
AMY GOODMAN: Bert Sacks also joins us from the studio in Seattle. We called the Treasury Department to invite them on the program. Molly Millerwise, a spokesperson of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, declined to be on. Bert Sacks, can you explain your case? What are you taking to the Supreme Court?
BERT SACKS: Yes. Thank you, Amy . I think the first thing to understand is that the deaths in Iraq were not caused simply by the sanctions, but by the deliberate actions of the U.S. military during the 1991 Gulf War. When you bomb a country’s electrical generating plants, taking out almost all of them, you are making it impossible for a country to process water, process sewage. And so, I’ve been to Baghdad and seen the awful scenes where raw sewage flows through a big pipe into the Tigris River, and I’ve been downstream to Basra, where you see the hospitals and the clinics filled with children that are drinking this water. And it creates a cycle of illness, water-borne disease, that has led to, *New England Journal of Medicine* told us, 47,000 children dying in less than a year. And you compare that with the carnage we’re hearing about now, you begin to have an understanding. One hundred ninety-five children a day were dying in ’91, and we knew it.
And we continued that policy through twelve years, as a tool of coercion. And it was a lethal tool of coercion. Well, when you do that for twelve years and contribute to the deaths of something like 500,000 children, and you maintain that policy, you’re guilty of a number of different crimes. And we’re asking the Supreme Court to hear the case and to hear whether or not we have, in fact, violated significantly international law by doing this.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, today is the deadline for you to pay $10,000 for violating economic sanctions against Iraq, for taking in $40,000 worth of medicine to Iraq. What are you going to do?
BERT SACKS: I think there’s a mistake, Amy. The deadline was in 2002, and I came to Washington, D.C., to have a news conference to announce that I wouldn’t pay then. And I submitted what -- I’ve recently reread -- what I consider a very good letter, explaining all my reasons with a lot of attachments. People can read that at http://www.scn.org/ccpi/ofac/. And that refusal actually garnered a significant amount of media attention. It was a lead story in the Seattle Hearst newspaper, the *Post-Intelligencer*, and on Common Dreams. And lawyers from the law firm, Garvey Schubert Barer, came to me and offered me pro bono advice. I thought about it for about fifteen seconds, and I said yes. And they have been with me ever since, through the district court, the appeals court, and now to the Supreme Court.
And if I could follow up on the issue that I think is so central to the case, it’s the issue of international law. We have argued that our actions, the actions of the United States government, violated the rights of the child, the Convention of the Rights of the Child, the Genocide Convention, the Geneva Convention and customary international law. And the judge in District Court gave a ruling that’s really stunning, particularly on the most powerful of those, the Genocide Convention. He didn’t say that this was not genocide. He hadn’t even heard the evidence, so he had to accept that what we had done, in fact, was genocide. And he ruled in a sentence that stays with me so clearly, that in enacting the Genocide Convention, we created the condition that it would create no substantive or enforceable rights for any party in any proceeding **. That is, as I understand it, the government of United States may prosecute people for genocide, but no one can prosecute the government for genocide. As well as -- excuse me, go ahead.
AMY GOODMAN: Bert, I wanted to ask you about comments made by Madeleine Albright, the Secretary of State under President Clinton. In 1996, "60 Minutes" aired an interview with her. Albright at the time was Clinton’s UN ambassador. Correspondent Lesley Stahl asked her about the sanctions the U.S. had imposed. Stahl said, "We have heard that a half million children have died. That’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price is worth it?" Madeleine Albright replied, "I think this is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it."
Well, two-and-a-half years ago, I caught up with Madeleine Albright outside the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston and asked her about her statement:
"AMY GOODMAN: The question I’ve always wanted to ask: do you regret having said, when asked do you think the price was worth it, the killing of children in Iraq --
"MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: I have said 5,000 times that I regret it. It was a stupid statement. I never should have made it. And if everybody else that has ever made a statement they regret would stand up, there would be a lot of people standing. I have many, many times said it, and I wish the people would report that I have said it. I wrote it in my book that it was a stupid statement.
"AMY GOODMAN: Do you think it laid the groundwork for later being able to target Iraq and make it more acceptable on the part of the Bush administration?
"MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: What? You’ve got to be kidding.
"AMY GOODMAN: Well, the sanctions against Iraq.
"MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: The sanctions against Iraq were put on because Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait. But there never were sanctions against food and medicine. And you people need to know there never were sanctions against food and medicine, and I was responsible for getting food in there and getting Saddam Hussein to pump oil."
AMY GOODMAN: Madeleine Albright, saying there were never sanctions on Iraq against food and medicine. Bert Sacks, your response?
BERT SACKS: I have long wanted to get this into a court of law, where rules of evidence govern, and so you can ask somebody: well, if there never were sanctions on medicine, why is there a fine on Mr. Sacks and other people?
There are a number of other things actually that are quite remarkable in Ms. Albright’s statement. In her memoirs -- I think it’s page 275 -- where she discusses just this statement, she also says nobody would die in Iraq if Saddam just complied. Well, on that same page down below, she explains, we were continuing the policy that James Baker III initiated in May of '91, right after the end of the Gulf War, saying that we're going to use sanctions to depose Saddam Hussein; we’ll keep the sanctions forever, until Saddam is gone. Now, that’s a violation of the U.N. Security Council resolutions. That’s A. And B, it meant there was no incentive for Iraq or Saddam to disarm, because the sanctions would be there forever.
It also sealed the fate of hundreds of thousands of children in an act that was lethal coercion of children to get something from the government. That’s terrorism *.
Now, those are strong words, but I think that those are the issues I really hope the Supreme Court would be prepared to deal with on the basis, not only of U.S. law, but international overarching law that’s called jus cogens, laws that can’t be violated by any country, no matter what laws they themselves pass domestically.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Bert Sacks, I want to thank you very much for being with us, peace activist petitioning the Supreme Court to take up his case. In 1997, he brought medicine to Iraqi civilians, in defiance of U.S. sanctions. The government fined him $10,000. He has refused to pay. Thank you for being with us and joining us from Seattle.
4.
THE U.S. vs. BERT SACKS' PRINCIPLES ON IRAQ
By Charles Pope
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
June 17, 2001
http://www.seattlepi.com/national/74924_sacks17.shtml
WASHINGTON -- Bert Sacks looks like he could be anybody's favorite grandfather.
Wafer-thin with unruly white hair, a gentle manner and soft spoken, the 60-year-old Seattle resident professes a love of children and a steely desire to live by principle.
Yet those two traits have brought federal prosecutors to his doorstep threatening to put him in jail for up to 12 years for aiding an enemy of the United States. Sacks, a retired engineer, admits it's a strange position for someone who embraces non-violence and it's why he has come to Washington, D.C.
Today is the deadline for Sacks to pay a $10,000 fine for violating economic sanctions against Iraq. The violation is connected to a 1997 trip Sacks took to Iraq in which he has acknowledged taking $40,000 worth of medicine.
While the government is pursuing him on that single event, Sacks has made eight trips to Iraq over the last six years, taking medicine, including antibiotics and vitamins, each time in an attempt to ease what he believes is untenable suffering for Iraqi children and to draw attention to what he claims are illegal sanctions.
He has accompanied and/or helped arrange trips to Iraq for several groups, including the Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility and Voices in the Wilderness, a Chicago-based organization.
Mild-mannered as he is, Sacks is steadfast in his opposition to the sanctions that have been in place for 12 years. He refuses to pay the fine and is willing to face the consequences.
"We should speak in clear English," he says. "It's killing 5,000 children a month. It's not honest; it's not accurate to say it penalizes the Iraqi people. It kills them. I've been to Auschwitz, I'm Jewish. Nobody would say Auschwitz created hardships for the Jewish people. We need to be honest."
So Sacks and a rapidly growing number of supporters and other groups across the country continue to go to Iraq. And he has come to Washington with other activists in an attempt to persuade the government to rethink its position.
"It is very clear that U.S. policy of bombing civilian infrastructure and 11 years of sanctions is knowingly causing suffering and death, deliberately causing suffering and death of Iraqi civilians in order to coerce the government of Iraq. And that's wrong.
"If you're doing something very wrong . . . you need to stop doing what's wrong. So we need to stop the economic sanctions and let the country rebuild," Sacks says.
A spokesman for the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which is responsible for enforcing the economic provisions, refused to comment about Sacks' case. But he reiterated the U.S. government's determination to maintain the sanctions.
Sacks' mission is one that few in America have noticed. Polls show a combination of indifference for foreign affairs and support for toppling Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. The desire to depose Saddam has grown strong since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Sacks, however, presses on, sustained by the belief that if American people understood what the sanctions were doing in Iraq there would be strong public pressure to change the policy.
"If that truth gets out, then there's a chance for change," he says.
And along with trying to educate the public, Sacks goes to Iraq to help -- in a small way -- relieve the suffering of children.
The sanctions, combined with destruction of Iraq's water systems, electrical grid and other infrastructure during the Gulf War, causes more than 5,000 children to die each month, Sacks says in explaining why he is risking jail.
"I go to Iraq; I've been warned, and I keep doing it because kids keep dying. We can't figure out what better to do. There's no better course," he said.
"We've put into place a policy that we know is deadly. We're doing it to coerce, and that's a crime even on our books."
Sacks doesn't object to all sanctions. He says he supports a military embargo of Iraq and even economic sanctions if they are carefully crafted. But the current sanctions, he says, are not achieving the goal of destabilizing Saddam or stopping the development of weapons of mass destruction.
"People who put the policies in place say we're being tough on Saddam. It's not true. We're killing children," he says. "They are keeping medicine out of the hands of people and if I were to go request permission from a law that I view is immoral and illegal, then I'm complicit in the crime. And this is a crime."
Despite Sacks' persistence, the sanctions aren't likely to end soon.
The United States remains firmly committed to the blockade, believing that sanctions are the best way to force political change in Iraq. That position has held strong through three presidents.
The United Nations imposed the economic sanctions on Iraq on Aug. 6, 1990, in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
The United States government also has imposed sanctions on Iraq. Under those sanctions, it is illegal to take any aid into Iraq without government approval, a violation punishable by stiff fines and jail time.
The U.S. government says the sanctions must remain in place until Iraq has proven that it has given up its weapons of mass destruction. Other countries, including France, Russia and China, oppose the sanctions.
U.S. officials say Iraq's refusal to comply is to blame for the country's economic collapse, which has degraded health and education in Iraq and left many of its citizens dependent on U.N. food rations.
However, U.S. officials agree that some changes are needed to help relieve suffering of Iraqi citizens. Last month, for example, the U.S. agreed to a proposal by the U.N. Security Council to loosen the embargo to allow Iraq to trade oil for food and medicine.
The resolution adopted by the council extended the U.N. oil-for-food program for 180 days -- until Nov. 25. The resolution allows the free flow of most civilian goods into Iraq while simultaneously using a 332-page checklist to address concerns by the United States and other council members that Iraq diverts civilian goods to military use.
Critics say that the sanctions have crippled Iraq's people while doing nothing to weaken Saddam's power. They cite a 1999 report by the United Nations Children's Fund that the sanctions caused the deaths of as many as 500,000 Iraqi children under age 5 from 1991 to 1998.
They also cite a study by the Harvard University School of Public Health: Two months after the war, representatives from the school found that the destruction of the country's power plants had halted its entire system of water purification and distribution, leading to epidemics of cholera and typhoid fever, among other diseases.
Sacks admits he isn't sure what will happen with his case, though he is certain that the American government will one day realize the sanctions must be changed.
"There is some part of me that has fear; that I can find myself in this situation by continuing to challenge my government," he said. "I can get thrown in jail for 12 years.
"There's another part of me that feels very good, that I'm finally walking a certain walk."
--P-I special report on Iraq: www.seattlepi.com/iraq P-I Washington correspondent Charles Pope can be reached at 202-943-9229 or
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