December 19, 2002


The following is to be used to prepare yourself for talking to the media while here in Iraq and after you return home. (It is by no means the “party line” nor to be memorized but rather a way of thinking through some of the issues.) Since you may be approached at any time without much (or any) warning, it's helpful to have thought through what you might respond to some of the more common questions that have been asked of us. When talking to radio or television interviewers, remember that only soundbites will be used, so keep your answers very short (a sentence or two); anything more is likely to be lifted out of context and sound quite different from your original intent. (Possible one-sentence responses are in bold.) Many of these responses are personal to me as a Christian and US citizen; you will certainly want to modify them for yourself.

We are grateful to IPT Delegate Dr. David Hilfiker for compiling these points.


1. Are you planning to be human shields?

No, we don't consider ourselves “human shields” any more than war correspondents might be considered human shields. We have come here to stand in solidarity with the people of Iraq, to experience in some small way the conditions of our brothers and sisters in this country.Voices in the Wilderness refuses to incorporate military language or ideas to describe the peace witness of IPT members.

2. What are your main concerns, living in Iraq, as it seems war could be imminent?

Our primary concern living here, of course, is the suffering of the people of Iraq, both now because of the sanctions and in the future because of any possible war. We have met many people here, and we have come to consider them brothers and sisters. They are already suffering and that is our primary concern. Certainly, we are concerned about our own safety during any possible war; we have not come here to invite injury or death. But the current suffering of the people here is in our face, and it is our primary concern.

3. Tell us about what you did over the past few days and what you're planning to do during the coming week.


4. Tell us what motivated you to come here.

We came here primarily because we wanted to experience the conditions here and move into a greater solidarity with the people here. We wanted to prevent this coming war, and we hope that our presence here will in some small way highlight for the people back home the suffering that is here. Since we've been here, we've realized that we now have the responsibility to go home and tell the stories that people have shared with us, to give voice to the voiceless millions of innocent Iraqi citizens, to show the face of an invisible people.

5. Yes, there's been a terrific lot of misery here since the Gulf War, and in fact there were plenty of atrocities going on before the Gulf War, but the regime could have saved its people if it simply would have complied with the UN Resolutions. Why don't you tell the regime here to save its people and comply with the UN?

According to the UN and WHO, Iraq belonged before the Gulf War to a group of middle-income countries with a gross national product of US $2,800. Its public services ensured wide and equitable access of the population to health care. “The Iraqi health system was probably one of the best in the Middle East at that time.” Sanitation and safe drinking-water were well established. A “well developed and distributed infrastructure helped to secure the benefits of improved living standards and a higher quality of life for the Iraqi people.” There is no reason to believe that the continuous improvement in quality of life from the 1960s to 1990 would not have continued if there had been no war.

We, too, believe that Iraq should comply with the UN, but—aside from the United States and Great Britain—most of the other governments of the world believe that Iraq has complied sufficiently that the sanctions should be lifted. Because of strong pressure from the US government, the UN has never been willing even to promise the lifting of sanctions in response to fulfilling certain conditions. It's always been, “Comply and we'll think about it.”

(For those who are US citizens) There are plenty of voices calling upon the Iraqi government to change. We are American citizens, privileged to live in a country where citizens have a responsibility to involve themselves in the political process, to try to change government policies that they consider wrong. We speak to our country because that is our responsibility. We am calling upon our government to change.


6. Your numbers are very small. Why do you suppose so few people want to join you?

Our numbers here are indeed small, but each one of us represents thousands of people in our home countries who agree that the sanctions should be lifted and a war prevented. We can't speak for other people, but we imagine there are many reasons that many who support us strongly don't want to join us here. Many have work and family responsibilities that keep them home. Most people don't have the economic resources to make such a trip. People may be deterred because the US government threatens us with significant fines and jail sentences for coming here. Many people who deeply want peace are reluctant to disbelieve their government, especially in this public way. Many are afraid of the consequences of being considered traitorous. There is certainly danger to being here if a war starts. Others are already deeply committed to their own works of peace and justice at home. Each of us must respond to his own call; others are busy with their own work. Just as we can't join everyone else in their work, they can't join us. We could all come up with a long list of reasons why people might not want to join us.


7. How are you funded?

Each of us has raised our own plane fare and other travel expenses, and we contribute to a common pot for our other expenses. Most of us are supported by many people at home who have contributed to our work here.


8. Why Iraq? There are many places in the world where people are suffering, some even worse than here. What makes you focus so intently on Iraq?

(For US citizens) We focus so intently on Iraq because we believe that it is our government that is directly responsible for the suffering here, and we are therefore accountable for that suffering. As Sean Penn recently said, “If there is to be blood on my hands, I don't want it to be invisible. I want to see it and know it.”

As Christians, We believe that every person has his or her own call in life to create peace and justice in the world. Other people have their calls to other times and places. This is ours.


9. What do you want people in the US to do? What would you want to happen in order to consider yourself and your group “successful”?

We want the people of the United States to join the swelling anti-war movement in the country and pressure our government representatives to stop this war and lift the sanctions. Inform yourselves about the history of this conflict and how the sanctions are injuring and killing innocent Iraqi people. Speak out to others: your family, your neighbors, your church, your schools, your community. Write letters to the editor or longer articles for your local paper. And e-mail, fax, call, and write your representatives in Congress to stop the war. There is a story in the New Testament about the importunate widow. She wanted a certain judgment from a judge who was unwilling to rule in her favor. But she kept coming back to him again and again, knocking on the door, begging him on the street, that he finally ruled in her favor to get her out of his hair. We hope the citizens of the United States will take the lesson of that story to heart and realize that if we keep pressuring our representatives, they will change.


10. What are people in Iraq saying about you? How do people you talk to feel about their current situation?

First of all, it is amazing how friendly people are to us here. Such friendliness and warm hospitality is not only part of their cultural heritage but seems to be deeply felt. That in itself would be remarkable enough but when you consider that, if anything, they become more friendly when they find out we are Americans, it is truly miraculous. But in addition to that friendliness to us as individual citizens, there is a blunt straight-forwardness about the conduct of our government. To a person, even those we just run across and who speak to us in the safe confines of their homes, everyone we have met feels a deep rage against the US government.

Many of the older educated people here were educated in American schools and universities here and have received higher training in England and America. Even after the war and twelve years of sanctions, they still want to believe in the goodness of America. You can sense their deep sense of betrayal. We don't speak about their feelings toward their own government, so we don't know about that, but we do know about their rage against ours. They warn us that we are rapidly squandering a formerly large reservoir of good will towards our country.

What we hear over and over again is their concern for their children. They fear for the future. They can still remember what it was like to have a life of possibility, but they see only suffering for their children. One told us, “You are not only injuring our children but yours as well.”


11. How does the US government treat you?

So far, I've had no contact with the US government over my participation with Voices in the Wilderness (if this is true). The organization itself and several of the people active in it have been given fines for breaking the sanctions.


12. Are you able to move about freely in Iraq or are your actions and conversations monitored?

There is no single answer to that question, and our freedom to move around varies from time to time. Certainly we are free to walk around the areas where we live and meet with people and families. We have frequent invitations from private people that we know from our long history in Baghdad, and to our knowledge those conversations are not monitored. We are invited into the private homes of people we happen to meet. Sometimes we have “minders” (officials from the foreign service) who accompany us, and, of course, we are always aware that anyone could be with Iraqi secret intelligence. At the same time, it is also obvious that many of our meetings and conversations are completely spontaneous and unmonitored.

Usually (but not always) when we travel to Mosul, Basrah, or other places, we are accompanied by a “minder” from the Iraqi foreign service, who seem to be especially concerned about our taking pictures and videos of sensitive sights. But they accede to most of our special requests, and we are allowed to talk to whomever we want. For example, we were recently in Basrah accompanying several people who were visiting water treatment plants. After several of those visits, the others of us were tired of water treatment plants. We saw a school near the site of the next water treatment plant and asked if we might visit it. Within a few minutes we were inside. We split into several group and had quite uninterrupted access to teachers and classrooms.


13. Many people in the US might say that you are supporting an enemy during a time of war. How do you respond?

We believe that if we can determine and tell the truth, then the truth will set us free. The problem, of course, is that none of us can see all of the truth or communicate it completely. So we must be content with determining the part of the truth we can see and telling that. Many world religions remind us that it is usually the truth of the poor and the oppressed that is not adequately represented as decisions are being made, so we are here to give voice to the truth of those who otherwise have difficulty having their voice heard.

At this time in our history, the US government is committing enormous resources into discovering the truth about the Iraqi government and how it treats its people. The UN inspections committee is committing enormous resources into discovering the truth about the Iraqi government and any weapons of mass destruction it may have. Those truths are important. As people who try to speak up for those who have no voice, it is quite clear to us that the voiceless in this situation are the people of Iraq who are suffering from the effects of the war and the sanctions. Their voice is not being heard in the US, and we are here trying to give them voice. While some may disagree with our perceptions, no one who is interested in the truth should quarrel with our being here, trying to ascertain the truth and present that to the American people.


14. You say that you are here to hear the voices of the Iraqi people. How do you know that the people you meet aren't selected by the government and that you're not just hearing the voice of the Iraqi government?

See response to question #12. Certainly, the Iraqi government selects some of the people we meet. But (unless there is some kind of fantastic control à la The Truman Show), it is quite clear that many of our conversations are with people that we just happen to meet. One of the staff at the hotel where we work has a baby with a heart defect. He has been asking us for help. As we have tried to offer some minimal help, we have gotten to know him and his family well. It seems highly unlikely that the government has planted him in our path. We talk to shopkeepers, people on the street, random encounters. We can't prove it, of course, but it is quite obvious to us that many of the people we meet have not been pre-selected.


15. What do you think the US should do if, indeed, Saddam has weapons of mass destruction?

Weapons of mass destruction are a scourge upon the earth, and the international community must find a comprehensive way to rid our planet of them. It is important to recognize that these weapons are already widely available. Already the list of nuclear powers has grown beyond the US, Russia, China, France, and England to include India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, several of the states of the former Soviet Union and possibly others. Biological and chemical weapons are easy enough to obtain.

It's not necessary to know exactly what needs to be done to know some of the things that shouldn't be done. If there were a simple answer to the question of how to deal with all the groups and countries that possess these weapons, we would all have gone home by now. But it should be clear that war—a large-scale attack on one country that possesses weapons of mass destruction by another country that also possesses weapons of mass destruction—is not going to solve the problem. In fact, because it will increase the likelihood of terrorism, such a war will only exacerbate the problem.

The direction that we need to go, however, is quite clear. Through the UN, International Court, and other international bodies, the world needs to draw up agreements, treaties, conventions, declarations and so on that spell out what is permissible and what is not and enforce those agreements equally on all countries. If we are going to outlaw, for instance, biological weapons of certain types, then that needs to be spelled out, the enforcement mechanism agreed upon, and the treaty enforced equally across all nations. Only by a thoroughly international agreement do we stand a chance at controlling these things. But such an agreement will have to be enforced upon all nations. To date, the US has shown itself utterly uninterested in such a step.

It should be clear that weapons of mass destruction are not the primary issue in this conflict. There is general agreement that the previous UN inspectors succeeded in discovering and getting rid of over 90% of the weapons that Saddam has. If Iraq still has these weapons, several other countries certainly have many more of them than he does. Several of these countries are ruled by people every bit as ruthless as Saddam. Furthermore, even if Iraq does have these weapons, they pose no immediate threat to the United States. So it should be clear that the weapons-of-mass-destruction issue is primarily a smokescreen to hide the real issues, whatever they in fact may be. (In fact, it's such a blatant smokescreen that we would challenge the media to examine whether it should be taken seriously anymore.)

People in the United States have said that if war with Iraq can make them the least bit safer, then they will support it. There are many problems with the argument. The biggest one is that Iraq poses no danger to the US in any short run, and in the long run war with Iraq will not make us safer but far more vulnerable. But there is also the moral argument. Suppose that war with Iraq with its hundreds of thousands of ultimate casualties could make us somewhat safer. How many innocent Iraqi lives are we willing to sacrifice to save, say, 3,000 American lives? We're afraid that to prevent the deaths of 3,000 Americans, most people would not even count the Iraqi lives in the equation. That may be an understandable feeling but there is no moral justification for acting on it. Any war must be proportionate, that is, the violence of the war must in some way be balanced by the violence it will prevent. One cannot make that argument about a war with Iraq.