By: Ghazi Assali

It is not Cambodia, Rwanda, or Bosnia, but it is and has been Iraq
since the end of the Gulf war in 1991.

As a result of that war, economic sanctions have been imposed on 
Iraq with the purpose of punishing the entire country's population for 
the deeds of their leadership.

Does it sound like collective punishment?  I believe it is, with
the effect of causing the death of over 700,000 children since the
END of hostilities!

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
reported a last year that more than one million Iraqis have
died- 567,000 of them children - as a direct consequence of economic
sanctions...as many as 12% of children surveyed in Baghdad are wasted,
28% stunted, and 29% underweight.

Each ten minutes, a child under five dies in Iraq, totaling 4,500
every month from hunger and disease according to UNICEF.

Up to 95% of all pregnant women in Iraq suffer from anemia, and
thus will give birth to weak, malnourished infants.  Most of these
infants will either die before reaching the age of five due to the lack
of food and basic medicines or will be permanently scarred.

When asked by Leslie Stahl on 60 minutes (after Leslie's trip to
Iraq) on May 12, 1996 about the devastation she had seen among the
children of Iraq, Madeleine Albright, then United Nations Ambassador
answered: "It is a hard decision, Leslie, but we think the price ... is
worth it".  An answer worthy of a tyrant or a bloody dictator!!!

Economic sanctions are a weapon of mass destruction with its
victims being the weakest sections of society: the poor, the elderly,
and especially children.

When we destroy the water purification, sewage treatment and
medical care systems of a country, and then deny it the technical and
economic means to restore these systems, we are basically allowing
biological disease organisms in untreated water and sewage to kill the
civilian population.

Moreover, the U.N. permission to sell $4 billion worth of oil (in
a year) to buy food to stop the genocide is nowhere sufficient to
solve the problem since it only trickles down to $7.50 a month per
person after paying for war reparations and repairing pipelines.

As for the environmental impact of firing more than 500 tons of
highly toxic and radioactive depleted uranium (DU) during the war by
allied forces, more than 70% of the uranium oxidizes into a fine aerosol
mist which is inhaled into the lungs contaminating the food and water
supply, and resulting in numerous immune system related diseases, cancers,
congenital deformities, leukemia, and renal and hepatic dysfunction which
are occurring all over Iraq and among US, UK, and other allied soldiers.

Isn't it about time to stop the massacre?

The Geneva conventions stated that the "..starvation of civilians
as a method of warfare is prohibited".  The Iraqi people are forced to
live in poverty, watch their malnourished children die, live in sewage
flooded areas, and receive inadequate medical services due to the
sanctions.

Antibiotics, graphite for pencils, tires, chlorine to purify the
water, school textbooks, etc... are not military supplies, so why in
God's name are we preventing such items to enter Iraq?

It is time to end the genocide and stop killing the children of
Iraq.

It is time for human decency and sympathy for those kids who are
dying just because they're born in what used to be known as the
cradle of civilization.

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