While George W. Bush was frantically fighting to keep one woman's feeding tube in place, the war that he started has
doubled the rate of malnutrition in Iraqi children.
Oh, what irony:
Almost twice as many Iraqi children are suffering from malnutrition since the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, a U.N. monitor said Monday.
Four% of Iraqis under age 5 went hungry in the months after Saddam's ouster in April 2003, and the rate nearly doubled to 7.7% last year, said Jean Ziegler, the U.N. Human Rights Commission's special expert on the right to food.
The situation is "a result of the war led by coalition forces," he said.
Overall, more than a quarter of Iraqi children don't get enough to eat, Ziegler told the 53-nation commission, the top U.N. human rights watchdog.
[emphasis mine]
There's more below the fold.
Ziegler also mentions the famous
Lancet study about Iraqi casualties. If you think the casualties were all a result of violence, think again:
Ziegler also cited an October 2004 U.S. study estimating that as many as 100,000 more Iraqis — many of them women and children — had died since the start of the U.S.-led invasion than would have been expected otherwise, based on the mortality rate before the war.
"Most died as a result of the violence, but many others died as a result of the increasingly difficult living conditions, reflected in increasing child mortality levels," Ziegler said.
You can read about The Lancet study here.
Of course, the U.S. delegation had no comment.