wfn.org | Iraq war never ended, Quaker says

[NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG]

April 9, 2001 News media contact: Linda Bloom*(212) 870-3803*New York
10-21-71B{168}

NOTE:  This may be used as a sidebar to UMNS story #167.

By Linda Bloom*		

NEW YORK (UMNS) - The U.S. war against Iraq never ended, according to a
Canadian Quaker who has been totally immersed in that struggle since the
Gulf War.

Richard McCutcheon, who with his wife, Tamara Fleming, spent the past seven
months overseeing humanitarian projects in Iraq for the Mennonite Central
Committee and American Friends Service Committee, spoke quietly but
powerfully about his convictions during the April 5-6 workshop on "The News
Embargo on Iraq."

"There is a massive war going on, nothing less," he declared. "The people
there are dying, on the one hand, and are surviving, on the other. I don't
believe it's genocide. I believe it's war."

Still present are three major elements of war - direct bombardment, economic
embargos and, he said, the demonizing of a people "in a way that allows them
to be killed."

Sanctions will end if the war is stopped. The problem is an absence of
peaceful relations between Iraq and the United States and Great Britain, he
pointed out, adding that a treaty is needed to end hostilities.

As a Quaker and pacifist, McCutcheon said he could never support sanctions
of any kind because he considers them to be "a form of violent coercion." 
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*Bloom is News Director in the New York office of United Methodist News
Service, the church's official news agency.

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United Methodist News Service
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