17;s dramatic limiting of Iraqi funds, neither of these necessities can be afforded by Iraqi citizens in substantial quantities. Plus, Iraq’s oil producers were suffering from a post-Gulf War, dilapidated infrastructure, which kept them from being able to pump enough oil to suit their own needs. Also, due to massive and meaningless bombings, electrical systems and power supplies throughout the country have been destroyed. Raw sewage flows in deathly harmony with Iraq’s drinking water, carrying diseases like typhoid fever, cholera and malaria, which were largely eliminated several years ago but now have reached epidemic proportions. These problems are left unattended as well, for the impoverished nation cannot afford their replacement or even repair.The U.S. must now “take notice and name the policy for what it is: a tragic failure.” (“Iraqi Sanctions” 2) If all of Iraq’s problems are combined, the result is as simple as 2+2 – or rather 0 + 0. Add together scarce heat and electricity, contaminated water, an insufficient supply of food and medicine and a very low income, the result is death. But how many lives could possibly lost without gunfire? The United Nations International Emergency Fund (UNICEF) estimate that a total of more than one million Iraqi citizens have perished as a result of the sanctions imposed by the US and UN. 500,000 of those lives lost were children under five years of age. The combined loss is more than ten times the amount of those lost during Gulf War combat. It was UN agencies that totaled these statistics. Many would agree that, in the midst of the Iraq conflicts, “[t]he UN itself became a victim of US policy on Iraq” (Bennis, 4). Multiple UN officials have realized this, or worse, and have since resigned:UN assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday had resigned in October 1998 to protest…the ‘genocidal impact’ of economic sanctions...
