Letter: Real facts on sanction in Iraq show U.S.'s guilt

Matt Ericksen's suggestion that the protesters are spreading lies about sanctions smacks of simplification. By suggesting that protestors believe the UN had no role in Iraqi sanctions, Ericksen characterized protestors as childishly ill-informed. This is not necessarily the case. Here's another take on the "facts" regarding children deaths and sanctions.

According to a report by a UN team visiting Iraq post-war, as quoted by Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States: "the recent conflict has wrought near-apocalyptic results upon the infrastructure. Most means of modern life support have been destroyed or rendered tenuous." This is due to the U.S. widely bombing necessary infrastructure, destroying water supplies and laying ruin to electric grids (causing, among other things, loss of power to hospitals; a particular hospital lost "40 prematures in the first 12 hours of the bombing"). Such action is in direct and explicit violation of Article 54 of the Geneva Convention, disallowing attacks that destroy essential civilian infrastructure. A Harvard study found that 55,000 more children died in the first four months of the year after the war than in the same period the year before.

There is some truth in referring to these UN sanctions as "U.S. sanctions," regardless of whether protestors actually used that language: The U.S. and Britain were the chief proponents of initiating and maintaining them. Reports from the UN Security Council Panel on Humanitarian Issues and a report released from UNICEF, among numerous others, corroborate that sanctions have had disastrous effects on the infrastructure, and that, perhaps, they have directly targeted water supplies (such as denying chlorine importing for sterilizing water supplies after the Gulf War). Saddam certainly bears responsibility for this to some degree, but when sanctions fail and are obviously impacting only the civilian population, shouldn't they be lifted right away? Denis Halliday, then coordinator of humanitarian relief for Iraq and Assistant Secretary-General to the UN resigned in 1998, stating: "I am resigning, because the policy of economic sanctions is totally bankrupt. We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that... 500 children are dying every month... I don't want to administer a programme that results in figures like these."

But hey, that's all the first war, right? Check the Internet for articles regarding our recent bombing of Iraqi TV stations, breaking Article 52, Section III (among others) according to Amnesty International. Yes, please, everyone, check my facts. Protestors shouldn't pretend to know everything, but perhaps they know something that isn't coming across on primetime CNN.