This time, the Americans came with medical supplies, not bombs.

The Bentwoods, of Plymouth, N.H., had joined a group called the "Iraq Sanctions Challenge," organized by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and other human rights activists. The group, which left for Iraq Jan. 14, set out to deliver over $2 million in medicine and medical supplies.

The group has been delivering supplies for several years now, as the health care situation in Iraq has deteriorated. The U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights reported last year that some 6,000 Iraqi children under the age of 5 were dying every month due to the "catastrophic health situation."

The group's action technically violated U.N. sanctions against Iraq, which ban all imports that are not pre-approved by a U.N. committee, according to Michael Sousson, a spokesperson for the U.N. Iraq program.

Americans who violate these santions can face a potential $1 million fine and up to 12 years in prison under U.S. law. The Iraq Sanctions Challenge has been making medicine delivery trips to Iraq since 1996, but so far has not been prosecuted.

It is unlikely that a group such as this one will be prosecuted for bringing food and medicine to Iraq, according to a state department source.

Still, the Bentwoods were nervous. Cathy, a nurse, had been active as the "peace and justice" chair at their local parish, but the couple had never done anything like this before.

A Medical System in Ruins

When the group arrived in Baghdad and visited local hospitals, what they saw only confirmed the U.N. reports.

"We went to a children's hospital with rooms full of children dying of common illnesses, such as dysentery and e. coli," Dr. Bentwood said. Since the drinking water in Iraq is not adequately treated, common bacterial killers proliferate. The antibiotics to treat these diseases are in extremely short supply, according to numerous reports.

Supplies such as surgical sutures must be reused, a doctor told Dr. Bentwood, and machines such as lasers for eye surgery cannot be imported due to the sanctions.

"I saw pediatric wards and [intensive care] units without equipment in them," said Paul O'Rourke-Babb, a nurse practitioner from Chico, Calif. "Patients even had to bring their own bed linens."

Ambulances are also scarce, as these vehicles are made in the West. "The Red Crescent provides a few medical transport vehicles, but in two of the hospitals we visited, I saw people arriving in private autos, taking in their family members on stretchers," O'Rourke-Babb said.

The hospitals, which 10 years ago were equipped with modern Western technology, are now "pretty much degraded down to [those of] a Third-World country," said Dr. Bentwood, who has worked in hospitals in Honduras and Burundi.

And people with serious problems such as cancer or heart attacks often die untreated. The problem isn't just the lack of medicine to treat the person but "the lack of a sterile environment needed to protect the patient from infection," Cathy Bentwood explained.

Human Casualties

The Iraqi government claims it can't adequately sterilize and purify the water because it can only import small amounts of chlorine. And water treatment plants and electrical plants were damaged in the Gulf War and subsequent bombing missions.

The U.S. State Department does not deny this. But chlorine and spare parts for treatment plants, as well as other parts to repair electrical plants and hospital equipment, are so-called "dual-use items," which could also be used to make weapons of mass destruction, according to a State Department spokesperson.

Since Iraq kicked out U.N. weapons inspectors in 1998, there is no way for the United States and its allies to monitor whether the country is using chlorine to making weapons or treat water, the State Department asserts.

The U.N. oil-for-food program allows Iraq to sell a set quantity of oil in order to pay for food and medicine. This program is now being streamlined to provide Iraq with necessary items and to prevent suffering.

But Hans Van Sponeck, the program's administrator, publicly resigned earlier this month in protest because he said the sanctions had resulted in a "true human tragedy." He met with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday to discuss his concerns.

As this policy tug-of-war continues at the international stage, the Bentwoods have returned to their work as health care providers and parents.

What Cathy Bentwood remembers most is watching other mothers sit helplessly as their children died of preventable diseases.

"Indelibly etched is one young mother in profile, her tears falling, holding the pale, limp hands of her 18-month-old son and 3-year-old daughter," Cathy wrote in a journal she kept of the visit. "This could be my child, another time, another place."