AMY GOODMAN: This news from Baghdad: U.N. special envoy Prakash Shah flew back to Iraq today as a dispute over documents demanded by U.N. weapons inspectors rumbled on. We now turn to Jeremy Scahill, Democracy Now! producer, who is in downtown Baghdad.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Jeremy.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Thank you, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us what you know at this point?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, when Prakash Shah returned to Baghdad today, he was greeted by a much leaner press corps than had been present for much of the events here over the past month. The press center today in Baghdad was just plain dead. And, in fact, if you ask many of the reporters who are now departing the country if the crisis with Iraq is over, many of them will say yes. That just is not the opinion of many Iraqis across the country. I just returned from a trip down south, and they believe that this is not over and, in fact, that it hasn’t ended for the past seven-plus years.

In fact, the war of words is continuing over Iraqi documents that UNSCOM says could reveal Iraqi weapons stock. And at the center of this is an Air Force document, which is really a handbook of notes taken by a sergeant in the 1980s that apparently logs Iraqi chemical weapons supplies. Iraq admits that it exists, but says that UNSCOM has no right to it, because it doesn’t relate to this most recent crisis. And Richard Butler made a statement yesterday that people are taking here with some interest. He said that this talk about Iraq’s shortfalls in the last few days on documents leading automatically to airstrikes is a bit, quote, “exaggerated.” But, you know, Nizar Hamdoon, the ambassador to the United Nations for Iraq, is not so optimistic about Butler’s outlook, and he said yesterday, “Mr. Butler is now focusing on documentation as if to undocument Iraq is the issue here, and not to disarm it.” Iraq is saying that it has handed over 2.5 million documents and that that is all that it has to offer.

And at the same time this is going on, you have congressional hardliners really beating the drums of war, being led by Richard Lugar, who is saying, “When the president returns home, we better be prepared for military strikes.”

Amy, back to you.

AMY GOODMAN: We are talking to Jeremy Scahill here on Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!, Jeremy Scahill in downtown Baghdad. Jeremy, tell us a little about your trip to Basra this weekend.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, Amy, you know, reporters are supposed to cover all sides of a story. And after from Basra, which is in the south of Baghdad, I really feel that the side of the story that needs to be told is the atrocity that has been committed in the south of Baghdad.

Yes, I went down to Basra, which is near the Iraq-Kuwaiti border, and visited a pediatric hospital there. And we’ve talked a lot about hospitals over the past week on Democracy Now! But at this particular pediatric hospital, they average 50 to 60 births a day. Thirty percent of the children born at this hospital are born with birth defects. I saw children born with no mouths. I saw children born with no arms. You know, one doctor said to me that “When I was training to be a doctor here in Iraq, I was only able to really read about some of the deformities that I now see in my country. I saw them on TV.” And he said, “Now we’re lucky if a child is born without a deformity.” It is a devastating situation, and doctors here really seem like they’re on their last thread. I mean, they have the reality of no medical supplies. They have the knowledge to treat their patients, but not the supplies to treat them with.

And what’s interesting is that a lot of the patients that come to these hospitals travel some miles from towns that really border almost exactly on the Kuwaiti-Iraqi border, and their children are being born with defects in numbers that they have never seen before in Iraq. And a lot of this is assessed to the devastation wrought by the United States bombings over the past seven years, particularly the bombing in January and February of 1991. There’s also the reality of enormous amounts of depleted uranium that were left in the country. But it is just — it is an absolutely devastating scene to see.

We met one mother who had just been told by a doctor that — she’s eight months pregnant, and she had just been told by the doctor that she had to have an abortion because her child was born with no brain. You really see firsthand what a United States bombing does and continues to do to the people. I mean, there’s — and the people just beg for mercy when you see them in the hospital. They ask, “Why? Why is my child being born like this?” I can’t describe enough the unimaginable human suffering that exists, particularly in the south of Iraq, where you have these massive birth deformities.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, I want to thank you very much for being with us and giving us these daily reports from Baghdad, as a lot of other reporters leave each time President Clinton says we will not be bombing, and then go back each time it looks like the situation has escalated, as it is escalating this week. But you have remained and reported on what many call the real war in Iraq, which is the U.N.-U.S. sanctions against the people of Iraq. The U.N. estimates 8,000 people are dying every month. We’ll be back with you tomorrow. And be safe.

You are listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman.