And Bush Fiddled...

...While the Children Died.

Like so many horrific things, child mortality in Iraq has "surged."

According to a report (State of the World’s Mothers 2007) released by Save the Children, mortality among children in Iraq has increased dramatically since the UN imposed economic sanctions in 1990: “Iraq’s child mortality rate has increased by a staggering 150 per cent since 1990, more than any other country.” The BBC reported that under the UN sanctions, the mortality rate among Iraqi children under five years of age doubled.

Recent figures show worsening mortality since the US led invasion in 2003:

Some 122,000 Iraqi children - the equivalent of one in eight - died in 2005, before reaching their fifth birthday. More than half of the deaths were among newborn babies in their first month of life...Conservative estimates place increases in infant mortality following the 2003 invasion of Iraq at 37 per cent.

That's right. Children in Iraq are now dying at a rate that is greater than the grossly elevated rate at which they were dying under the UN-imposed economic sanctions. Another mission accomplished.

"I am Iraq", originally uploaded by Prairie.

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always evil, never good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children. ~Jimmy Carter

And just how are Iraqi children dying? Combined, pneumonia and diarrhea account for over 30% of child deaths. Causes of the child mortality surge include:

1. tense security
   
2. deteriorating health services
3. lack of medical supplies
4. shortage of electricity
   
5. insufficient clean water
6. soaring inflation
7. prevalent pneumonia
8. rampant diarrhea

Watch this clip on the health crisis in Iraq from March 2004. What's going on is that because Iraq is so unsafe, there are not enough medications, not enough doctors, not enough medical facilities, and furthermore, traveling to the existing medical facilities is, itself, dangerous.

In hospitals throughout the country, it is not uncommon to hear the wails of grieving mothers, such as 30-year-old Zaineb Mohammed, whose two-month-old baby died after she failed to get him to hospital in time....En route to the hospital ...her family was repeatedly stopped at roadblocks and checkpoints...The delays caused the child’s condition to worsen and when they finally arrived there weren’t paediatric specialists to treat her. Mohammed has vowed not to have another child. "I don’t think that I can bear to lose another baby to the poor health and public services in Iraq," she said.

The sound of grieving mothers wailing. The sound of Bush fiddling ... while fortunes are being made, while people are tortured, killed, and rendered missing. The sound of Bush's "Freedom on the March" -- Freedom to profit on a war based on lies. Apparently, Iraq is for sale, along with its children.

Tell me again how this represents a "culture of life", because as sure as Bush lies, I don't get it.

TAGS: Humanitarian Crisis, Profiteering, War, Iraq, Sanctions, Child Mortality, Cost Of War