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Saturday Morning News

Conscience International Brings Humanitarian Aid to Iraq

Aired February 24, 2001 - 8:44 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Focusing now on the Middle East, it's been 10 years since the Gulf War and for U.S. military personnel, it was a success. It defused the threat of Saddam Hussein, maintained control over oil in the Middle East and protected the lives of dedicated soldiers.

But for thousands of families still living in Iraq, that war has left them living in unimaginable desperation. U.N. sanctions limit the availability of medicine and food to its people and according to the Compassion Iraq Coalition, 750,000 children below the age of five have died from starvation, malnutrition and diseases.

Dr. Jim Jennings just returned from Iraq. He was among the first group of Americans to bring medicine and doctors into Baghdad, a humanitarian airlift that he and members of his organization, Conscience International, hope will breathe some signs of life into a country in crisis.

Good morning, Dr. Jennings.

JIM JENNINGS, CONSCIENCE INTERNATIONAL: Good morning.

PHILLIPS: Well, why don't we begin by the conditions that you went into. Describe to me what you saw and how you felt and basically what you had to go into.

JENNINGS: In five years of making dozens of visits to hospitals throughout Iraq in Baghdad, Basrah (ph) and Mosso (ph), I always see the same things and that is wards, the pediatric wards crowded with scores of children who are literally dying. And the doctors are throwing up their hands in frustration and really desperate for the medicine that they need to cure or heal these children.

And when I go to the hospitals, the parents meet me at the gate and sometimes follow me through the hallways, clutching at my clothes, begging for medicine or for respiratory therapy equipment or for some equipment to infuse their children because sometimes those little things like the pediatric needles are not available and the children are dying. They can't eat. They have to be infused with transfusions, but sometimes they don't have the I.V. material to do it.

And I've seen many cases like this and it's extremely tragic. It arouses a deep anger when you see that because of international policies at a very high level at the U.N. and especially because of the responsibility of the United States, this has been going on for 10 years.

And what we see, our teams have documented communicable disease rising, escalating and skyrocketing in some cases, typhoid, malaria, but they were able to abate that somewhat, calaazar (ph), which is a parasitic disease, a very serious one, and in addition to the death rates which have been documented very well by U.N. agencies and others, the death rates have doubled, tripled, quadrupled, there are about 5,000 children a month who die under this terrible sanctions regime and there hasn't been any real attention paid to it until now.

I'm very pleased to hear your previous guest say that the Bush administration...

PHILLIPS: Smart sanctions...

JENNINGS: ... is considering changing the policy. Now, what will that policy be? We don't know yet.

PHILLIPS: Well, what do you think about the smart sanctions idea? That's what Powell is talking about.

JENNINGS: Well, I think that to lift the sanctions totally is the only answer. As long as that, what they call smart sanctions really focuses on the 661 committee and the U.N. has a Resolution 661 which enables them to look at every single thing that goes into Iraq to see whether it has dual use or not, and some pretty silly things have come out of that. For example, beef broth cannot be imported to the hospital laboratories because that might potentially be dangerous or something. And it gets silly.

Two hundred fifty ambulances are waiting right now and have been waiting for about three years to be sent into Iraq because the suction bottles on the ambulance somebody said could be used for wrong use. But still, the woman who is pregnant will die if they hit a bump and she throws up and they can't suction her in those ambulances.

Right now $215 million worth of health care products, 141 contracts from the U.N. are being withheld by the United States and the United Kingdom on these silly pretexts. And basically, if they talk about smart sanctions and they don't abolish the 661 committee, nothing will change. The people will still be suffering in Iraq.

And I want to tell you that the death rates not only have escalated, but in Basrah, the rate of stillborns is about five percent and birth anomalies or birth defects, congenital anomalies are 10 percent to the babies of some kind. Some of them are pretty horrible and I've seen some of those, babies born without heads and the things that are related in some expert opinion to the depleted uranium.

We need to investigate that more thoroughly.

PHILLIPS: Quickly before we let you go, unfortunately we're out of time. Your ultimate hope as an alternative to sanctions? JENNINGS: Well, the alternative would be to stop shooting and start talking. Three hundred and seventeen civilians have been killed. I went to the home of a child, a 13-year-old boy who was killed, a shepherd boy, by a U.S. missile out in the field. There wasn't anything military around there.

PHILLIPS: Saddam Hussein is not known, though, for talking real rationally.

JENNINGS: Well, at least we won't talk to Iraq. If we would talk to Iraq, we might give peace a chance. But otherwise we're going to be locked into not a 42 day campaign, which some people say was a victory. I say we did not win the Gulf War, but in the Middle East, if you know the 5,000 year history of the Middle East, it takes maybe a century to affect change.

So let's look at a new policy that won't destroy a nation and destroy vast numbers of innocent civilians.

PHILLIPS: Dr. Jim Jennings, your group is Conscience International, heroic efforts. Thanks for being with us this morning.

JENNINGS: Thank you.

PHILLIPS: All right.

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