10 May 2007

More dead babies in Iraq

More than four years ago, George W. Bush invaded Iraq, telling us that he was going to liberate the Iraqi people.

Would someone please give the president a dictionary?

According to an article yesterday in the British newspaper The Independent, there has been a huge rise in the mortality among young children in Iraq, "leaving statistics that were once the envy of the Arab world now comparable with those of sub-Saharan Africa."

The article goes on to say that a study by the Save the Children charity found that "in 1990 Iraq's mortality rate for under-fives was 50 per 1,000 live births. In 2005 it was 125. While many other countries have higher rates - Angola, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance, all have rates above 200 - the increase in Iraq is higher than elsewhere."

Of course the earlier sanctions didn't help. But then Bush blew up the country's infrastructure; hospitals are hurting; doctors are leaving Iraq in droves; and, of course, so many Iraqi children are simply hapless casualties of the war that Bush started for no good reason.

That doesn't sound like liberation to me.

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