In the interview, Mr. Butler answered questions on the sanctions regime, and on the Middle East double-standard relating to the continued possession of nuclear weapons by Israel. Mr. Butler refused to answer further questions on this last matter and walked out of the interview. From 1990, when sanctions were imposed on Iraq until 1995, half a million children under the age of five died of malnutrition and preventable diseases.
Sanctions impose artificial famine.
A third of Iraq's surviving children today have stunted growth and nutritional deficiencies that will deform their shortened lives. Inspectors have only to enter the wards of any hospital in Iraq to see that the sanctions themselves are a lethal weapon, destroying the lives of Iraq's most vulnerable people. In children's wards, tiny victims writhe in pain, on blood-stained mats, bereft of anesthetics and antibiotics. Five thousand children, under age five, perish each month.