As Under Siege demonstrates, the carnage imposed by the US is immense. More than half of the million dead are children. Indeed, the UN estimates that the under-five mortality rate has doubled since sanctions began. Hospitals, water treatment plants, and the rest of the nation's infrastructure is a wreck. Good nutrition and basic medicines are unavailable for most people.
Every day is a struggle to get by.
And if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, as the civilians living in Basra were last year, you just might get bombed. US taxpayers are paying for all of this. It maintains a huge military presence in the Gulf, the end of which is to continue the slow death of Iraqi society. American citizens also pay by losing a natural market for their products and by paying higher oil prices that result from the artificial suppression of supply from Iraq. Iraq is pumping oil, but not nearly as much as it would produce in a free market.