The facts of Iraq’s epic suffering are now unassailable. The latest report by Unicef says that half a million young children have died in eight years of economic sanctions. That represents almost 200 deaths every day.
Without in any way mitigating Saddam Hussein’s tyranny, Unicef says: “The Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivation in the absence of the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of war.” The liability of the Security Council, said the French ambassador to the UN, was “indisputable”. Denis Halliday, the UN’s Assistant Secretary General, resigned rather than administer “an immoral and illegal” policy. His successor as the senior UN humanitarian official in Iraq, Hans von Sponeck, followed him in despair, along with the head of the World Food Programme. Few doubt that sanctions would have been lifted long ago were it not for the intransigence of the United States and Britain.
Last week, the New Statesman published a reply by Robin Cook to my catalogue of Foreign Office lies about Iraq.
— source johnpilger.com | john pilger | 3 Apr 2000