This December I joined fifteen other US citizens on a fact-finding trip to Iraq. We went to deliver medicine and to document the effects of eight years of sanctions. Few in the U.S. know that 1.6 million Iraqis, according to UN figures, have died as a direct result of the sanctions. South Dakota, cut off like a desert island from an increasingly globalized economy. Without the imports of pipe and chlorine, sewage systems and clean waters supplies collapse.
Countless people become sick with diarrhea.
No more food imports, no fertilizer, no livestock vaccinations. Imagine this chaos for eight years with no end in sight. These are the conditions we witnessed in Iraq. Before 1990 Iraq had an excellent medical system and was able to provide free health care to its citizens. Now it is a place where a cold, an asthma attack, or an infected cut can be a death sentence.