Childhood is Dying in Iraq – Does ANYONE care?

How can any human person think this is all right. How is it that all of us, who have been granted Freedom to Life continue to stand by and allow it to continue to this precious population. What a bunch of Greed Monsters! Stop!

Published on Monday, March 10, 2008 by Inter Press Service

by Dahr Jamail and Ahmed Ali

Published on Monday, March 10, 2008 by Inter Press Service

BAQUBA – 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.