"First I sold my television, then my furniture, then my car, then my house," said Mohammed Abdul Razaq, a retired office worker. "Everything that I built up over a lifetime is gone. A bomb is something you hear far away, or at worst, it kills you in a second. Sanctions kill you every day." -- from Smart Bombs, Dumb Sanctions January 3, 1999 New York Times Article

In July 1989 (before the sanctions), 387 children per month under the age of five died in Iraq.
In July 1998 (after the sanctions), 6,495 children per month under the age of five died, a 16-fold increase from before the sanctions.

The U.S. is at war with Iraq -- make no mistake about that. And it is brutal, genocidal war -- make no mistake about that. And it is substantially the result of the convoluted, but real nevertheless, U.S./Israeli/Saudi alliance to control the entire Middle East region - - make no mistake about that either.

Iraq is being collectively tortured for its defiance of American and Israeli domination plans for the region. Even official U.N. reports document that nearly 1 million Iraqis -- mostly the young and the elderly -- have died in the past eight years as a direct result of American policies. Other expert estimates put the number at somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million -- half under the age of 5.

When compared to the American population, this would be the equivalent of some 12 to 20+ million Americans killed since 1990!

And more bombing, destruction, misery, and collective death lie immediately ahead. And yet, still facilitating this terrible carnage - - no matter what public relations theatrics they use -- the Arab "client regimes" from Cairo to Amman to Riyadh continue to allow American aircraft carriers and battle ships to pass through the Suez Canal and American bombers of all descriptions to land at their huge desert military encampments, preparing another round of devastation for the people of Iraq.

"We call on the president of America, the vice president and the congressmen to come to Iraq and see the little children and Tony Blair, the U.K. government and Kofi Annan to come and to go to the cancer ward and give us an answer...what was their crime?" -Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Perez-Esquivel of Argentina who traveled to Iraq in March (AP, March 9, 1999)

"I asked myself many times where do the rights of children fit in here? Why should any, but especially children under the age of five, suffer so much and die in such numbers? Sadly, I had to witness ever repeated scenes of children dying as I walked through hospital wards...." - Margarita Skinner, UNICEF Health Coordinator in Baghdad from 1991-1992, excerpt from her 1998 book 'Between Despair and Hope. Windows on my Middle East Journey 1967-1992'. The Radcliffe Press . London and New York 1998.

"Even the most conservative, independent estimates hold economic sanctions responsible for a public health catastrophe of epic proportions. The World Health Organization believes at least 5,000 children under the age of 5 die each month from lack of access to food, medicine and clean water. Malnutrition, disease, poverty and premature death now ravage a once relatively prosperous society whose public health system was the envy of the Middle East. I went to Iraq in September 1997 to oversee the U.N.'s "oil for food" program. I quickly realized that thishumanitarian program was a Band-Aid for a U.N. sanctions regime that was quite literally killing people. Feeling the moral credibility of the U.N. was being undermined, and not wishing to be complicit in what I felt was a criminal violation of human rights, I resigned after 13 months." --Denis Halliday, former humanitarian aid coordinator for Iraq (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 12, 1999)

"You kill people without blood or organs flying around, without angering American public opinion. People are dying silently in their beds. If 5,000 children are dying each month, this means 60,000 a year. Over eight years, we have half a million children. This is equivalent to two or three Hiroshimas."-Ashraf Bayoumi, former head of the World Food Programme Observation Unit, in charge of monitoring food distribution in Iraq (Al-Ahram Weekly, 24 December 1998).

"Malnutrition was not a public health problem in Iraq prior to the embargo. Its extent became apparent during 1991 and the prevalence has increased greatly since then: 18% in 1991 to 31% in 1996 of [children] under five with chronic malnutrition (stunting); 9% to 26% with underweight malnutrition; 3% to 11% with wasting (acute malnutrition), an increase in over 200%. By 1997, it was estimated about one million children under five were [chronically] malnourished." --Situation Analysis of Children and Women in Iraq, UNICEF Report, 30 April 1998, pg. 23 and 63.

The effects of the sanctions are more devestating now (late 1999) then ever. I have indexed a number of docuemnts describing the political/military, and genocidal aspects of this ongoing war. Learn what you can do to help stop the murder of more innocent Iraqi lives. See also the complete list of sanctions related articles.

Bibliography:

• Genocide on Iraq: As if many millions of Americans Killed by Sanctions MER - Washington - 24 November 1997