The sanctions irrefutably meet the criteria of the Genocide Convention by prolonging the impact of the 1991 bombing of Iraq by not allowing any remedy to the intolerable conditions under which the Iraqis were living.
In addition to all the aforementioned brutal attacks on the Iraqi people, American forces continued their bombing throughout the 1990's under the guise of no-fly zones and engaged in an intensive bombing campaign for four days in 1998.
On March 20, 2003, President Bush announced his intention to use force against Iraq after a succession of spurious justifications, each as disingenuous as the previous one. The Iraq he intended to bomb had already become a victim of genocide.
After seven years of Bush and Obama "benevolence," conditions had not surprisingly become worse. As of August 23, 2010, four million people had become refugees, the unemployment rate has soared to 60%, 28% of Iraqi children are suffering from chronic malnutrition, electricity is only available one to two hours a day, only 37% of Iraqi homes are connected to a sewage system, 70% of Iraqis have no access to a decent water supply and only 22% of sewage treatment plants have been repaired. The number of civilians who have died as a result of American assistance varies from source to source, but a conservative estimate is approximately two million.
In a fair and just world, every president complicit in the
genocide would be tried at the World
Court for crimes against humanity, and the American
government would be required to pay reparations for all the damage it inflicted
on the people of Iraq.
In the real world, Obama is proud that the U.S. has prepared Iraq to "seize the opportunity for a better future." The tragic irony is that Iraq had a much better future in the past before the United States decided to rescue the Iraqi people.
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