Denis Halliday, Former UN Official, in Iraq

The government is drilling water wells. I can find no preventive arrangements for healthcare of young children after the expected collapse of electricity, water and sewage treatment as happened in 1991. No shots for cholera, typhoid, and other various waterborne diseases that will likely break out if the U.S. bombs electrical and water facilities as it did in 1991.”

Halliday added: “There are some 30 air raid shelters around Baghdad, but given the U.S. bombing of the Al-Amiriya shelter in 1991, people do not want to use them. Most Iraqi homes do not have basements; they will be in their homes and quite vulnerable…. There’s little awareness of the health effects of the U.S. potentially using depleted uranium in a city of five million…. There’s a desperation regarding the economic sanctions. Some Iraqis even hope that war will bring an end to the sanctions; not that they want war, but they are desperate after 12 years of suffocating sanctions…. Iraqis do not expect serious assistance from Arab neighbors or from Europe; no one who has power will protect them. The majority of Iraqis don’t understand what they could possibly have done to deserve the military aggression of the United States. There’s a sense that if the American people really want to prevent the massacre of civilians, then they have to stand up and do so…. Regular people here do not believe that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. The idea that Iraq is a threat to the U.S. is widely regarded as just laughable. They see three reasons for Bush’s militaristic stance: U.S. imperialistic ambition, control of Iraqi oil and support for Israeli expansion.”