Elf Sternberg

This argument is, not to put too fine a point on it, a pile of shit.

Saddam is not selling as much oil as he is allowed to under the food for oil program. Every person who starves under the sanctions is on his head, not ours. The food for oil program is keyed to the the populations size and humanitarian needs to provide the Iraqi people with plenty and enough food and meds. But it's not in Saddam's interest to have his people fed and taken care of, so he isn't allowing it.

In fact, if his regime would allow it, the program would bring in MORE food and meds per capita than was imported prior to the first Gulf War.

Even with his not allowing the full import of aid, Iraq imports, per capita, enough food and meds to keep it well above the poorest nations, who (not counting AIDS) have lower death rates than Iraq does.

If you want to see what Iraq would be like under sanctions but without a brutal regime trying to slowly murder the population and blame someone else, look at the Kurdish zone in northern Iraq, that has it's food for oil program separately administered. It's prospering. It is, in fact, propering better than ANY other Middle Eastern country, with the exception of Israel.

Shame on you, Anonymous Coward, to blame the US on Saddam's murders, even as we go out of our way to save the people he's starving. No good deed goes unpunished, especially when it's the US.