Within two weeks there was no running water in any city or town in Iraq. Many tens of thousands of people in Iraq have died as a direct result of drinking contaminated water. This sum is a very small fraction of current needs. This is done deliberately to continue conditions of life destructive of the population of Iraq. Purchase of chlorine for municipal water treatment, a standard international usage, has been completely rejected.
People continue to die at increasing rates from bad water.
This is done to prevent Iraq from restoring its ability to save its people through the sales of oil. The sanctions committee fears communicated truth will set opinion free and end the sanctions. The Oil for Food Program has never been anything more than a means for slowly increasing the rate of destruction of the people of Iraq. Security Council Resolution 1284 is simply a means of starting the process over again. During three years under the program from 1996 to 1999, well over 200,000 children under age five died in drastically increasing numbers each year at a rate growing from just under 9 to well over 10 times the number who died in 1989.