Gideon Polya, “Saddam’s crimes DWARFED by Coalition carnage”, MWC News, 9 April 2006, partly cached by Google.
Saddam’s crimes DWARFED by Coalition carnage
SADDAM HUSSEIN is on trial in Baghdad but his awful crimes PALE when compared to those of the UK-US-led Coalition countries in Iraq under Sanctions and Occupation. In short, by 1990 “under-5 infant deaths per 1,000 births” reached a MINIMUM of 50 in oil-rich Iraq under Saddam Hussein as compared to 44 in its neighbour, resource-poor Syria (from catastrophic high values of about 170-200 in the immediately post-colonial era). However Western-imposed Sanctions immediately reversed this trend, leading to doubled infant mortality and avoidable mortality for a dozen years; ultimate US-led invasion and occupation further increased mortality. According to UNICEF (2006) (see: here ) in 2004 “under-5 infant deaths per 1,000 births” had reached 125 in UK-US-occupied Iraq as compared to 16 in Syria.
The latest United Nations Childrens’ Fund (UNICEF) data (see: here ) ALSO show that in 1990 the “under-1 infant mortality rate” expressed as “under-1 infant deaths per 1,000 births” was 40 in Iraq under the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein, this comparing favourably with a value of 35 in neighbouring Syria; however by 2004 after 16 years of violent Western impositions this was 102 in Occupied Iraq as compared to 15 in Syria.
The Ba’athist régimes in both Iraq and Syria (for all their authoritarian faults) had been quite successful in reducing the “under-1 infant mortality rate” which had been 150 (post-colonial Iraq, 1950-1955) and 144 (post-colonial Syria, 1950-1955) according to Web-accessible data from the UN Population Division (see: here ). In 1950-1955 the “under-5 infant mortality rate” was 197 in Iraq and 167 in Syria, these countries having only recently emerged from the almost genocidal rigours of occupation by the British and French, respectively.
However the return of Western armies to Iraq in 1990 with the application of Sanctions (and thence war, sustained bombing and sustained Sanctions-induced privations) interrupted this trend to lower infant mortality – “under-5 infant mortality rate” immediately INCREASED ENORMOUSLY and continued to rise in oil-rich Iraq, from a value of 50 in 1990 to 125 in 2004. In contrast, “under-5 infant mortality rate” in impoverished, neighbouring Syria continued to FALL from 44 in 1990 to 16 in 2004.
To put these “under-5 infant mortality rate” figures into a wider context, the current “125” value for oil-rich Occupied Iraq is similar to that found in wretchedly impoverished countries in the world in South Asia (e.g. Pakistan, 101) and sub-Saharan Africa (e.g. Zimbabwe, 129); “16” is around the value found in the “best” countries in the Developing World (e.g. Sri Lanka, 14); and, of course, infant mortality inevitably occurs even in peaceful, prosperous First World countries (e.g. Australia, 6).