> In a message dated 2/10/99 9:49:48 PM Eastern Standard Time, [log in to unmask]
> writes:
>
>> But the sanctions on Iraq have killed something
>>  like a half million kids,
>
> Do you evidence for this?  I would be most interested in learning more.
>
> Vunch

I'm no expert, but I'll give what evidence I can.  The following is from
a 1996 letter to the Attorney General protesting the sanctions:

"In the five years since the Persian Gulf War, according to the United
Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report, "as many as 576,000
children have died as a result of sanctions imposed against Iraq by the
United Nations Security Council." If the blockade continues, UNICEF
officers say that 1.5 more children will eventually suffer malnutrition
or a variety of unchecked illnesses because the sanctions make
antibiotics and other standard medicines impossible to get....

That's from: http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/voices/basicletter.htm

The following site,

http://www.oneworld.org/news/reports/may96_iraq2.html ,

provides more info on that UN report.  It's a bit out of date now, but
the situation has definitely not improved.

I recently attended a speech by Denis Halliday* in which someone
mentioned the current figures are more like one and a half million
people dead (not just children).

*Halliday worked on the UN/Iraq Oil-for-Food program, and resigned to
protest the devastating effect of the sanctions.

Our kind and benevolent leaders like Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright
frequently proclaim how they want to "protect the children."  Yet
strangely, they cheerfully support the sanctions, which are killing
dozens, perhaps hundreds, of kids per day.  I didn't take notes at the
speech so I naturally forgot the exact statistic.

For accuracy better than my memory, check out:

http://linux.clare.cam.ac.uk/~saw27/casi/index.html .

This site is the home of the campaign against the sanctions, or
something like that, and has lots more information, including this fact:
"4,500 children under 5 die in Iraq every month from hunger and
disease."

Halliday's more recent estimates from World Health Org reports (also on
the above site) are around 5000-6000 children dying monthly, due to
chronic malnutrition.  That conservatively translates to 167 a day.  And
those are just the children who are dying--the adult population is
suffering as well.  The whole civilian infrastructure has taken a
beating.  The water is unclean, there's not enough medical supplies,
etc. etc.

The US government and its junior lieutenant Britain are the cause of the
sanctions.  They are causing hundreds of thousands of deaths, maybe
(probably) more than a million now.

The Khmer Rouge killed similar numbers.