Iraq war's lessons lost on U.S.
By RAMZY BAROUD
SEATTLE — In a White House Statement on Oct. 21, U.S. President Barack Obama pledged that his country would finally withdraw forces from Iraq. "After nearly nine years, America's war in Iraq will be over," he said.
Providing some context to Obama's announcement, a CBSNews.com report published on the same day stated, "The war in Iraq has meant the death of more than 4,400 U.S. troops and come at a cost of more than $700 billion."
The U.S. media is now failing to process any facts aside from the losses suffered by the United States, which wrought war and destruction on a country in urgent need of peace and humanitarian assistance. For over a decade prior to the war, Iraq was reeling under U.S.-led U.N. sanctions, which left the country's infrastructure in a state of near collapse.
In her introduction to former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark's important book, "The Impact of Sanctions on Iraq: The Children Are Dying," Sara Flounders wrote, "Sanctions are a weapon of mass destruction. Since sanctions were imposed on Iraq, half a million children under the age of five have died of malnutrition and preventable diseases. Sanctions impose artificial famine. A third of Iraq's surviving children today have stunted growth and nutritional deficiencies that will deform their shortened lives."
In 1999, I was one of those who directly witnessed the impact of the sanctions on Iraqi children. I came back from the country with heaps of photos and memories that haunt me to this day. Oddly enough, it was not sanctions as "a weapon of mass destruction" that inspired action to end the siege, but alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that invited another disaster to an already devastated nation.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/eo20111027rb.html
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