Tuesday, May 08, 2007



What the US has done to Iraq

Save the Children have released their annual State of the World’s Mothers Report [PDF], and it paints a harsh picture of what the US has done to Iraq. Back in 1990, Iraq was once "the envy of the Arab world" for its health statistics and low child mortality. But a decade of sanctions followed by an illegal and immoral war has reduced it to one of the worst countries in the world for infant mortality and put it on a par with sub-Saharan Africa. In 1990, the child mortality rate (strictly, mortality of under-5's) was 50 per thousand live births. Now it's 125 - so one in eight Iraqi children don't live to see their fifth birthday. As the report points out, this is the worst backwards regression in the world, and the report blames it fairly and squarely on the international sanctions regime and on the US invasion and subsequent collapse in living standards. As for how much of the increase is attributable to either, looking back at the 2001 and 2004 reports [both PDF], it seems Iraq was beginning to make progress and claw back some of the ground lost under the sanctions regime; the 2001 report gave infant mortality as 104 deaths per thousand live births, while it had dropped to 102 by 2004. Since then, it has skyrocketed again: according to the report,

Conservative estimates place increases in infant mortality following the 2003 invasion of Iraq at 37 percent.

But hey, at least those babies died free, right?

4 comments:

Yes. This is bad news.

Trust that some of us in the USA are not happy that the war was started and not happy that it continued. Many are working in the USA to make sure that this does NOT happen again.

Even, as to your blog's headline, those on the right. Libertarian / Republican from Texas, Dr. Ron Paul, is often called a 'conservative.' The tags don't work mostly. And, he would have never gone to war and would end it right away. He is running for President now.

Posted by Mark Rauterkus : 5/08/2007 01:10:00 PM

Yeah Saddam really knew how to look after Iraqi babies.

Why do you lefties lie to yourselves so much.

Fair enough to disagree with the Iraq invasion but don't lie about how bad Saddam was or try and pretend Iraq was a good place to live under his iron fist.

Posted by Andrei : 5/08/2007 08:26:00 PM

andrei's heart bleeds for those Iraqi babies - when it siuts him. Here's what he was writing early last year:

"Perhaps crushing the Iraqi population might have been a better way. Peace might have come quicker that way."

If he was just a little smarter he'd be a scoundrel.

Posted by Anonymous : 5/08/2007 09:28:00 PM

But hey, at least those babies died free, right?


There's an exchange in Full Metal Jacket that goes some thing like...

(I think Cowboy's just been killed)

Well, at least he died fighting for freedom.

[reply]

Shit, if I'm gonna die for a word, my word is poontang

Posted by Anonymous : 5/09/2007 09:51:00 AM