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Did the US really kill 500,000 iraqi children?

I can find no source to show that Madeleine Albright admitted on national television that 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a direct consequence of sanctions and the first Gulf War.

On the famous 60 minutes show, Stahl asked Madeleine Albright, then the ambassador to the United Nations. "We have heard that a half million children have died," Stahl said. "I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And -- and you know, is the price worth it?" Albright replied, "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it."

Now maybe to some it is the same thing.  This non-denial and admitting. Well if you must believe Albright, then believe her when she finally apologized for her infamous performance. "I shouldn’t have said it," she said during a speech at the University of Southern California (a month after the September 11 attacks). "You can believe this or not, but my comments were taken out of context."

Where did Stahl get her figures?  Well, the idea that sanctions in Iraq have killed half a million children showed up in 1995 and 1996, on the basis of two transparently flawed studies.  One of the studies has been withdrawn, and the other doubled it's already suspect numbers.

Matt Welch at Reason:
In August 1995, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) gave officials from the Iraqi Ministry of Health a questionnaire on child mortality and asked them to conduct a survey in the capital city of Baghdad. On the basis of this five-day, 693-household, Iraq-controlled study, the FAO announced in November that "child mortality had increased nearly five fold" since the pre-sanctions era. As embargo critic Richard Garfield, a public health specialist at Columbia University, wrote in his own comprehensive 1999 survey of under-5 deaths in Iraq, "The 1995 study’s conclusions were subsequently withdrawn by the authors....Notwithstanding the retraction of the original data, their estimate of more than 500,000 excess child deaths due to the embargo is still often repeated by sanctions critics."

http://www.casi.org.uk/info/garfield/dr-garfield.html

It should end here; "The 1995 study’s conclusions were subsequently withdrawn by the authors"

More from Matt Welch:
In March 1996, the World Health Organization (WHO) published its own report on the humanitarian crisis. It reprinted figures -- provided solely by the Iraqi Ministry of Health -- showing that a total of 186,000 children under the age of 5 died between 1990 and 1994 in the 15 Saddam-governed provinces. According to these government figures, the number of deaths jumped nearly 500 percent, from 8,903 in 1990 to 52,905 in 1994.

Somehow, based largely on these two reports -- a five-day study in Baghdad showing a "five fold" increase in child deaths and a Ministry of Health claim that a total of 186,000 children under 5 had died from all causes between 1990 and 1994 -- a New York-based advocacy group called the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) concluded in a May 1996 survey that "these mortality rates translate into a figure of over half a million excess child deaths as a result of sanctions."

In addition to doubling the Iraqi government’s highest number and attributing all deaths to the embargo, CESR suggested a comparison that proved popular among the growing legions of sanctions critics: "In simple terms, more Iraqi children have died as a result of sanctions than the combined toll of two atomic bombs on Japan." The word genocide started making its way into the discussion.


http://www.who.int/disasters/repo/5249.html

So the numbers came directly from Saddam, and then was doubled.  Remember, we know Saddam was a bad guy.  No one should be disputing that.  We should expect him to lie, and we certainly should not use him as a source.

Fact is, he had good reasons to lie.  Sanctions helped Saddam.  The rationing system he established allowed him to control his population.   Reports that children were starving would only spread the fear, and tighten the control.

So the whole thing rests on Madeleine Albright, and her non-denial.   We now know she was fed bad numbers.   It will not be the last time 60 minutes didn't check their source. 

Albright has just published her memoirs, Madam Secretary, in which she clarifies her statement.  Here's what she writes:


I must have been crazy; I should have answered the question by reframing it and pointing out the inherent flaws in the premise behind it.  Saddam Hussein could have prevented any child from suffering simply by meeting his obligations.  As soon as I had spoken, I wished for the power to freeze time and take back those words.  My reply had been a terrible mistake, hasty, clumsy and wrong.  Nothing matters more than the lives of innocent people.  I had fallen into the trap and said something I simply did not mean.  That was no one's fault but my own [page 275].


It was Saddam who killed his people, and blamed sanctions. He took his people to war, and used them as cannon fodder.  He filled the mass graves without regard for UNICEF, or The WHO.

The evidence is being compiled, and it will show he killed a million of his own citizens, and his neighbours.

The evidence will fill hundreds of thousands of pages, so I can't quote them all here.   However here are a few good links:

http://massgraves.info/

and I don't think sanctions killed these kids:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3738368.stm


If anyone is worried about Iraqi children, what would they do about childrens prisions?


"The prison in question is at the General Security Services headquarters, which was inspected by my team in Jan. 1998. It appeared to be a prison for children — toddlers up to pre-adolescents — whose only crime was to be the offspring of those who have spoken out politically against the regime of Saddam Hussein." -Scott Ritter
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,351165,00.html

The people using the 500,000 figure pretend to care about the children, but when their own hero, Scott Ritter, tells them about a children's prison they only want to change the subject.   Yes, Scott Ritter says there were no WMD, but we are not talking about WMD right now. We are talking about the children of Iraq, and he saw toddlers in prison, and he knew why they were there.   A clear violation of UN human rights, right there, and he just turned his back on them. "Sorry, not my table".  How can anyone hear about that, and still feel there was no justification for going to war?  Don't they care about the Iraqi children, and their mothers, and fathers?

Saddam's brutality, or his crimes against humanity, are relevant to this discussion,  because they want believe him when he tells them sanctions caused 500,000 childrens deaths.   Everyone who uses that figure, bases it on figures provided by the Iraqi Ministry of Health, and those questionare's.

Do you see why I doubt them?



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Last update: 22/04/2006; 12:23:33 AM.