Childhood malnutrition has increased 9 percent since Bush invaded and occupied Iraq

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41524

IRAQ: Childhood Is Dying

By Dahr Jamail and Ahmed Ali*

BAQUBA, Mar 10 (IPS) - Iraq's children have been more gravely affected by the U.S. occupation than any other segment of the population.

The United Nations estimated that half a million Iraqi children died during more than 12 years of economic sanctions that preceded the U.S. invasion of March 2003, primarily as a result of malnutrition and disease.

But childhood malnutrition in Iraq has increased 9 percent since then, according to an Oxfam International report released last July.

A report from the non-governmental relief organisation Save the Children shows Iraq continues to have the highest mortality for children under five. Since the first Gulf War, this has increased 150 percent. It is estimated that one in eight children in Iraq dies before the fifth birthday: 122,000 children died in 2005 alone. Iraq has a population of about 25 million.

According to a UN Children's Fund report released this month, "at least two million Iraqi children lack adequate nutrition, according to the World Food Programme assessment of food insecurity in 2006, and face a range of other threats including interrupted education, lack of immunisation services and diarrhoea diseases."

[acmavm]

1. And if I'm not mistaken, the same thing is happening here in this

country.

Gotta give bush** credit. He'll kill anyone. He's an equal opportunity destroyer.

[Sal Minella]

4. That was my first thought -- "Is this study about Iraqi kids or U.S. kids?" eom

[BrklynLiberal]

2. Bush and Company really know how to make friends and influence people in the Middle East.

anything prez shit-for-brains touches turns to crap.... and he appears to be doing his damnedest to totally destroy the US, if not the entire planet, as well.

[The Stranger]

3. What was someone saying about genocide recently?

Torture, destruction of infrastructure, including water, electricity, sanitation, sewage, services, medical care, infant mortality, disease, torture, mass murder -- and the slow realization that invasions like this and their aftermath are not misfeasance, but malfeasance.

[KamaAina]

5. You mean "food insecurity", right?

"Malnutrition" is just so, y'know, Dickensian. :eyes: