OpEdNews - Diary: More dead babies in Iraq

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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. -----