Following that, I introduced a bill that has 36 co-sponsors. This bill essentially declares the export of any food or other agricultural products, including fertilizers, as well as medical supplies, medical instruments, and medical equipment and the sale and delivery of such items, exempt from sanctions. It also stops the secretary of commerce from requiring a license for the export of humanitarian assistance but shall require the exporter to notify the secretary of commerce when such items are exported. Let me close by just pointing out why the program doesn't work. The main problem is that it does not generate sufficient funds to even barely begin the process of rehabilitating Iraq's once-modern social and economic infrastructure, which is now practically destroyed.
Most children die of treatable diseases from contaminated water.
They go untreated due to lack of medicine, and others die from treatable cancers or other serious diseases for which chemotherapy and life- saving drugs are unavailable or inadequate. So while few deaths are caused directly by starvation, deaths are more frequent because of the immune systems collapsing, especially among children, who are easily compromised by inadequate food and years of malnutrition. The long-term dangers of economic sanctions go beyond the immediate crisis of dying children. The intellectual embargo has isolated an entire generation from the rest of the world. Medical education is deteriorating because students have no access to medical journals, seminars, international exchanges, or academic life-Iraq has eroded as a nation and a society, and we find that there are all sorts of unnecessary and harmful results going on there.