CRITICISM: Iraq has been unable to produce clean drinking water for the past 11 years.
After U.S. bombs destroyed their water supply in 1990, economic sanctions were imposed on Iraq to disable them from producing weapons of mass destruction and punish them for invading Kuwait.
Instead, the sanctions blocked chlorine and purification equipment from entering the country, preventing Iraq from rebuilding their water systems.
In 2001, the United Nations estimated that over half a million children under the age of 5 died from drinking contaminated water; 5,000 more continue to die each month.
Thomas Nagy, author of The Secret Behind the Sanctions: How the U.S. Intentionally Destroyed Iraq's Water Supply uses six declassified documents from the Defense Intelligence Agency to outline the U.S. government's exact role in creating an environment of disease for Iraqi civilians.
Nagy shows that the U.S. knew that without clean water supplies, much of the nation, particularly children, would encounter "increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease."
The 1990 document titled "Disease Outbreaks in Iraq" lists possible diseases - diarrheal diseases, hepatitis A, diptheria, pertussis, and meningococcal meningitis in children, acute respiratory illnesses, typhoid, and cholera.
Nagy's article published in The Progressive, an alternative news source that advocates justice, democracy and civil rights, had little effect on local mainstream media.
The Houston Chronicle has made minimal mention of the civilian suffering that resulted from economic sanctions.
In several articles from 2001, the Chronicle attributes increasing child mortality rates to the sanctions, but makes no mention of the declassified documents or Nagy's article.
Most of the pieces are in the Outlook or Religion section, which offer more opinions than hard news.
The pieces that received A-section coverage assume that the sanctions caused civilian deaths, but fail to show how the sanctions prevented chlorine and purification equipment from entering the country.
The Austin-American Statesman uses a feature story to convey the hopelessness of civilian life after the bombing, mentioning the water supply briefly toward the end of the article.
The Madison Capital Times provides the best mainstream coverage of the issue. John Nichols, author of the article "U.S. Sanctions Against Iraq are a Crime," cites Nagy and one of the declassified documents, directly addressing the issue.
But The Madison Capital Times uses the editorial page as its platform for discussing Iraq's water system, treating it as an opinion rather than a real news story worthy of front page coverage.
The local alternative media, with The Progressive leading the way to governmental disclosure, fails to live up to Nagy's precedent.
Fort Worth Weekly and The Houston Press make no mention of the sanctions' effect on Iraq's water system.
The Texas Observer cites Nagy's article and the lives lost as a result of unpurified drinking water but buries it in an editorial that focuses on why the Middle East hates the U.S.
The nationally-aired Democracy Now, familiar to many KPFT listeners, does a much better job of alerting Houstonians to the issue.
The program that aired on Aug. 13, 2001 included an interview with Nagy who spoke about his article in more depth, stating that the U.S. knew exactly what would happen if Iraq could not get purification equipment, and yet continued to enforce the sanctions.
The story was treated as real news worthy of reporting, not just an editorial opinion.
Local news outlets have failed readers, disserving them by not actively seeking and reporting incidences of governmental foul play.
Both mainstream and alternative news sources have grossly undercovered what Peter Phillips, in his book Censored 2003, argues is one of the top 25 undercovered stories of 2001.
Tiffany Bosler, KPFT News, Houston.
E-mail Tiffany Bosler at News@kpft.org.