Date: Sun, 15 Feb 1998 10:19:39 -0500 (EST)
From: Jonathan Haber <micropho-AT-equinox.shaysnet.com>
Subject: AUT: U.S./IRAQ CRISIS


Re: Endorsement of Letter to President Clinton, originally drafted by the
International Physicians for Peace and the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). 
Posted from Alerts Page http://www.nonviolence.org/noflyby/ref/iraq.htm

To Members of Congress, Delegates of the United Nations and concerned citizens:

Please consider endorsing and forwarding below letter to help prevent the
U.S. threatened attack on Iraq.
  
1) the attack would indiscriminately kill and harm many innocent people and
other living beings;

2) it could create an environmental catastrophe, spreading dangerous nuclear
and chemical materials;

3) it would support, not hinder, the development and use of weapons of mass
destruction, engaging terrorist organizations to respond in the coming years
and decades;

4) the attack would weaken the disarmament interests and other programs of
the United Nations.


President William Clinton
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
USA
Fax: 001-202-456 2461
E-Mail: president-AT-whitehouse.gov

February, 1998


Dear Mr President,

Please consider what you are threatening to do.

You are threatening the lives of thousands of innocent people, including
women and children, to punish one man - a dictator. You are threatening to
destroy Iraq's chemical and biological arsenals by bombing them and
therefore releasing their poisonous contents into the atmosphere to be
breathed in by those people and the people of other Countries. You have not
even excluded the ultimate threat: the use of nuclear weapons on people.

Will this threat secure the right to inspect all Saddam's facilities? Even if it
did, biological weapons can be kept in a two-bedroom flat or a farm or
anywhere. The inspections in themselves will not stop Saddam if he wants to
develop these weapons. Nor will threats to bomb his people, who either
support him and are prepared to die, or don't support him and he would
prefer to see dead. The only solution is a political solution.

88,500 tons of bombs dropped on Iraq in 1991 did not solve the problem., Nor
has the deprivation of food and medicine through sanctions helped to change
the minds of the people of Iraq. It has only served to make them believe
Saddam even more. Over a million have died, more than half of whom were
children, as a result of these sanctions. 4,500 children under the age of 5
are dying every month from starvation and treatable diseases.

And now you want to bomb them again.

What day and age are we living in, when the United States cannot find other
solutions to conflicts than killing? What double standards are in play when
Mordechai Vanunu is held nearly 12 years in solitary confinement for telling
the world that Israel secretly has developed nuclear weapons, while the
Iraqi people must be annihilated because Saddam tried to do the same thing?

Mr President, I beg you to see reason. Do not bomb Iraq.

Signed by:

International Action Center
email: iacenter-AT-iacenter.org

Global Resource Action Center for the Environment(GRACE)
aslater-AT-igc.apc.org

Grandmothers for Peace International
Wiednerb-AT-aol.com

The Action Site to Stop Cassini Earth Flyby
noflyby-AT-nonviolence.org

International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) Germany
ippnw-AT-vlberlin.comlink.de


Ideas of what to do with this letter:

1) request that your organization endorse it, (contact information below).

2) send it to your elected representatives and to President Clinton

3) revise or send it as a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. 

4) help finance the printing of the letter in the "Washington Post" newspaper.

We only have a small window of opportunity to help prevent actions that
could harm our world for a long time.  Please respond.  

The key to peace is in our uniting.

Best Regards,

Jonathan Haber
Coordinator of Stop Cassini Earth Flyby Action Site
P.O. Box 1999, Wendell Depot, MA 01380
http://www.nonviolence.org/noflyby/


To endorse this letter contact: 

Xanthe Hall, Co-Director, 
IPPNW (Germany) 
<IPPNW-AT-VLBerlin.comlink.de>

    Koertestra?e 10,                            Tel: +49 (0)30 693 0244
    D-10967 Berlin 61,                          Fax: +49 (0)30 693 8166

                    IPPNW-AT-OLN.comlink.apc.org
                      http://www.ippnw.de
_________________________________________________________________




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