An opinion piece calls it a scam... Ok well some people have the 'opinion' that the Nazi holocaust was a scam too.
Your opinion author doesn't deny the deaths. He argues that the studies were flawed 'in his opinion,' so the numbers could be less than previously reported.
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* The Center for Economic and Social Rights CERS study estimated 500,000 excess deaths among Iraqi children (cited in the CBS report).
* The Lancet British Medical Journal - a separate detailed study (1995): 567,000 children
* a 1999 UNICEF survey within Iraq reinforced the earlier studies. Based on new data, it also estimated 500,000 excess deaths among Iraqi children under 5-years old.
* UN Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday, the Humanitarian Coordinator for the Oil for Food program in Iraq, resigned in 1998 to protest sanctions that he later termed "genocidal". "I don't want to administer a programme that satisfies the definition of genocide.
* "Richard Garfield, a Columbia University nursing professor ... cited the figures 345,000-530,000 for the entire 1990-2002 period" for sanctions-related excess deaths.
Richard Garfield, whose major work (available at www.cam.ac.uk/societies/casi/info/garfield/dr-garfield.html) picked apart others' methodologies and freely admitted which of his data points were weakest. "Even a small number of documentable excess deaths is an expression of a humanitarian disaster, and this number is not small," he concluded.
Garfield's conclusion: Between August, 1991, and March, 1998, there were between 106,000 and 227,000 excess deaths of children under five. Recently, he has estimated the latter, less conservative number at 500,000 plus between 1990 and 2002.
The non-express goal of the sanctions was the removal of Saddam Hussein. For example, the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 stated that U.S. policy was to "replace that regime", an outcome that was not referenced in the U.N. resolutions but frequently mentioned by its supporters.
Paul Lewis wrote in the New York Times: "Ever since the trade embargo was imposed on Aug. 6, after the invasion of Kuwait, the United States has argued against any premature relaxation in the belief that by making life uncomfortable for the Iraqi people it will eventually encourage them to remove President Saddam Hussein from power."
On May 12, 1996, Madeleine Albright, (then U.S Ambassador the United Nations appeared on a 60 Minutes segment in which Lesley Stahl asked her "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" and Albright replied "we think the price is worth it."
guardian.co.uk
superbessay.com
mattwelch.com |
