Iraq Under Siege

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments and Note to the Updated Edition
Introduction to the Updated Edition (2002) by Anthony Arnove

Part I: The Roots of US/UK Policy
1 America's War Against Iraq: 1990-2002 by Naseer Aruri
2 Iraq: The Impact of Sanctions and US Policy by Phyllis Bennis and Denis J. Halliday; Interviewed by David Barsamian
3 US Iraq Policy: Motives and Consequences by Noam Chomsky

Part II: Myths and Realities
4 Collateral Damage by John Pilger
5 Myths and Realities Regarding Iraq and Sanctions by Voices in the Wilderness
6 The Media's Deadly Spin on Iraq by Ali Abunimah and Rania Masri
7 The Hidden War by Robert Fisk
8 One Iraqi’s Story by Howard Zinn

Part 3: Life Under Sanctions
9 Raising Voices: The Children of Iraq 1990-1999 by Kathy Kelly
10 Targets—Not Victims by Barbara Nimri Aziz
11 Sanctions: Killing a Country and a People by George Capaccio

Part 4: Documenting the Impact of Sanctions
12 Sanctions, Food, Nutrition, and Health in Iraq by Dr. Peter Pellett
13 Toxic Pollution, the Gulf War, and Sanctions by Dr. Huda S. Ammash

Part 5: Activist Responses
14 Sancti...

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Excerpt

from Raising Voices: The Children of Iraq 1990-1999 by Kathy Kelly

Leslie Stahl went to Iraq for 60 Minutes. On the program that aired May 12, 1996, she asked Albright, who was then the US ambassador to the United Nations, to explain US policy in the context of the devastation she had seen among the children of Iraq. Albright responded: "It’s a hard decision, Leslie, but we think the price…is worth it."

We arrive two hours before the hearing. Already thirty people are in line. Tucked inside our coats are folded enlargements of pictures of Iraqi children I visited in August 1996, children whose sunken eyes plead for relief from starvation and disease.

The hearings begin and we hear mutterings that there is no room inside for members of the public. I feel disappointed and a bit silly, having raced from Chicago to Washington on a moment’s notice, apparently for naught. Much to our relief, after then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher is escorted out, t...

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About the Author

Contributors

Ali Abunimah: A media analyst and activist, and frequent commentator on Palestine and the Middle East, Abunimah is vice-president of the Arab American Action Network, a Chicago-based social service and advocacy organization, and co-founder of The Electronic Intifada website (electronicintifada.net). Visit Ali Abunimah's web page.

Dr. Huda S. Ammash: Ammash is an environmental biologist and professor at Baghdad University and is a researcher at the Iraqi Academy of Science. Ammash earned her PhD from the University of Missouri. She has conducted extensive research and written numerous scientific papers on the environmental and biological impact of sanctions.

Anthony Arnove: Arnove worked for seven years as an editor at South End Press before becoming a freelance editor and writer. A regular contributor to ZNet, his writing has appeared in The Nation, International Socialist Review, Monthly Review, Socialist Worker, Z Magazine, In These Times, Financial Times, and other publications. An activist based in Brooklyn, New York, he is a member of the Read more

Praise

“For more than a decade, an inhuman campaign of sanctions—the most complete ever in recorded history—has destroyed Iraq as a modern state, decimated its people, and ruined the agriculture, its educational and health care systems, as well as its entire infrastructure. All this has been done by the United States and United Kingdon, misusing United Nations resolutions against innocent civilians, leaving the tyrant Saddam Hussein more or less untouched. This remarkable book is an invaluable documentation of the tragedy in Iraq, and deserves reading by every citizen interested in the appalling reality of US and UK foreign policy.”
—Edward W. Said

“This book gives us a key to understand the New World Order, and warns about how Iraq’s tragedy may be a model for global bullying and global impunity in coming times.”
—Eduardo Galeano

“Here is a brilliantly collated body of unrelenting, undeniable evidence of the horrors that sanctions and war are visiting upon the people, in particular the children, of Iraq. For ordinary citizens sanctions are just another kind of dictatorship. Remote-controlled, seemingly civilized, they actually, literally, squeeze the very breath from babies’ bodies.”
—Arundhati Roy

“Iraq Under Siege is a very useful weapon in our international struggle against sanctions. This is not only the horrible story of children dying...

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