We've spent $10,000 per Iraqi on the war, and we can't even get Iraqi children fed?
Posted by DeLong at November 22, 2004 09:00 AM | TrackBackCrooked Timber: Child malnutrition in Iraq : One of the points made most insistently by critics of the Lancet study was that they disbelieved the claim that infant mortality had increased since the war. Heiko, a contributor to one of Dsquared’s threads , wrote: “I do believe infant mortality may have dropped (though maybe not halved as yet), because a lot of things are available now that weren’t before the war.” The Washington Post has now published an article suggesting that there has been a dramatic rise in child malnutrition since the war:
Acute malnutrition among young children in Iraq has nearly doubled since the United States led an invasion of the country 20 months ago, according to surveys by the United Nations, aid agencies and the interim Iraqi government.
After the rate of acute malnutrition among children younger than 5 steadily declined to 4 percent two years ago, it shot up to 7.7 percent this year, according to a study conducted by Iraq’s Health Ministry in cooperation with Norway’s Institute for Applied International Studies and the U.N. Development Program. The new figure translates to roughly 400,000 Iraqi children suffering from “wasting,” a condition characterized by chronic diarrhea and dangerous deficiencies of protein.The article makes grim reading for anyone concerned about winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people:
“Believe me, we thought a magic thing would happen” with the fall of Hussein and the start of the U.S.-led occupation, said an administrator at Baghdad’s Central Teaching Hospital for Pediatrics. “So we’re surprised that nothing has been done. And people talk now about how the days of Saddam were very nice,” the official said.
Since at least June I've been saying that there were only two stages left in the Iraq war: 1. The optional massacre and 2. the US withdrawal.
It looks like the war is in stage 1 and now the question is how big the massacre will be.
Any one want to point out why I am wrong?
Posted by: sm at November 22, 2004 09:49 AMI have wondered about the figure put out over the years that as many as a half million children died in Iraq from malnutrition and disease as a result of the sanctions. Is there any truth to this estimate? I had thought with the invasion and the end of sanctions at least this problem could be brought under control, but I guess because of the continuing war it only gets worse.
Posted by: Stephen at November 22, 2004 10:06 AM"I have wondered about the figure put out over the years that as many as a half million children died in Iraq from malnutrition and disease as a result of the sanctions. Is there any truth to this estimate?"
Not much. I believed it myself at the time, but it is a substantial overestimate. Richard Garfield (one of the authors of the Lancet study) did most of the work in establishing accurate data on this subject.
Posted by: dsquared at November 22, 2004 10:14 AM"I have wondered about the figure put out over the years that as many as a half million children died in Iraq from malnutrition and disease as a result of the sanctions. Is there any truth to this estimate?"
Not much. I believed it myself at the time, but it is a substantial overestimate. Richard Garfield (one of the authors of the Lancet study) did most of the work in establishing accurate data on this subject.
Posted by: dsquared at November 22, 2004 10:17 AMInteresting take, dxd. I took Madeleine Albright at her word, that 500,000 children's lives were worth it. As long as they were brown ones, of course. Even if the number were an order of magnitude less, it would still constitute a massive crime against humanity.
Posted by: Mellifluous at November 22, 2004 12:33 PMI suspect that the problem isn't money and supplies, but distribution. The terrorists have targeted anyone working with Aid agencies, and have successfully driven the UN, Medecins Sans Frontieres, etc out of the country. They have also sabotaged infrastructure, and attacked Iraqis who co-operate with the Iraqi government. The US military is busy fighting; the international agencies left; and the Iraqis are afraid to help for fear of attacks. Who's going to get the food where it's needed?
Posted by: SamChevre at November 22, 2004 02:04 PMThe dark irony here is that if this was a different situation with a different protagonist everyone would be demanding foreign intervention.
Posted by: CapTVK at November 22, 2004 03:05 PMSome people don't agree on who the roles of protagonist and antagonist are.
In any case, the malnutrition stats appear to be old.
OxBlog found that these numbers (7.7%) are the same as that reported immediately after the fall of Baghdad:
http://oxblog.blogspot.com/2004_11_21_oxblog_archive.html#110105898212629320
"Not much. I believed it myself at the time, but it is a substantial overestimate. Richard Garfield (one of the authors of the Lancet study) did most of the work in establishing accurate data on this subject."
It might be an overestimate, but not a ballpark overestimate. I think the most recent update puts the number at 350,000 until 2000 (this includes infant mortality as an aftereffect of GW1).
Posted by: ogmb at November 22, 2004 03:17 PM500,000 compared to what? Compared to:
-No child deaths at all?
-Child deaths had there been no sanctions and Saddam had administered his country honestly, taking into account the fact that even a benevolent Saddam wouldn't turn Iraq into Norway?
-Child deaths had there been no sanctions but Saddam had stolen as much money as he wanted?
-Child deaths compared to the sanctions being in place, but the oil-for-food program being correctly administered, and Saddam not being able to steal it?
In the real world, we had the worst of all worlds: a corrupt and brutal Saddam, and a corrupt oil-for-food program, so I think there are bound to be SOME child deaths over all of the above scenarios, but which one are we talking about?
Posted by: Julian Elson at November 22, 2004 03:39 PMdsquared (and Stephen, etc.),
As ogmb says, Richard Garfield's most recent estimate was that 350,000 Iraqi children had died through 2000 from the effects of the sanctions, the first Gulf War, etc. You can track this down easily with Google.
Two other things to keep in mind:
1. Under the relevant UN resolutions, the sanctions were to be lifted when Iraq disarmed. As we now know, Iraq has had no banned weapons or weapons programs since 1991, and turned over its last, hidden documentation of pre-war programs in 1995.
Of course, the Bush I and Clinton administrations repeatedly said we would never allow the sanctions to be lifted as long as Saddam was in power. Looks like we weren't kidding.
2. There is enormous bitterness in the mideast toward us because of the sanctions policy. In fact, bin Laden cited the sanctions (exaggerating the dead children by a factor of two or three) as one of the prime reasons for the 9/11 attacks.
Apparently the Bush administration took this pretty seriously. See this recent article in Esquire:
http://www.ocnus.net/cgi-bin/exec/view.cgi?archive=56&num=14737
But what were the real reasons for going into Iraq? I'd asked a senior administration official...
Most people who opposed the war argued that containment was working, that, as the phrase went, "Saddam was in his box." "The containment of Saddam, while not as costly in the short term as war, was still a very costly endeavor. It cost money, obviously. But that was a small part of it."
"It resulted in large American forces being stationed in Saudi Arabia"...
And the connection between containment and Al Qaeda? I asked. Between our Iraq policy and September 11?
The official pointed out fatwas from Osama that cited the effects of sanctions on Iraqi children and the presence of U. S. troops as a sacrilege that justified his jihad. In a real sense, September 11 was part of the cost of containing Saddam. No containment, no U. S. troops in Saudi Arabia. No U. S. troops there, then bin Laden might still be redecorating mosques and boring friends with stories of his mujahideen days in the Khyber Pass.
Julian Elison,
The comparison in all these studies was
child deaths after the 1990 sanctions
vs.
projections, based on previous Iraqi infant mortality rates, of how many child deaths there would have been without sanctions and the Gulf War. As you may know, during the Gulf War we intentionally targeted electrical and sewage systems in hopes it would worsen the effect of sanctions, lead to epidemics, etc.
Posted by: Jonathan Schwarz at November 22, 2004 03:50 PMThis is not surprising, since we've only spent
$270M (= $11 per Iraqi) on actual reconstruction
(excluding security costs and CPA overhead).
This incompetence has contributed greatly to
the rise of armed resistance - being ruled by
foreigners is never popular, being ruled by
incompetent penny-pinching foreigners - well,
that's how the good old USA got started.
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You must be asking "how will we get this done?", well, I'm in contact with the money men, and women looking to fund a liberal/progressive pushback in this country. They are looking for fresh voices with good ideas. I've posted my initial outline for you all to critique, and offer feedback. I want the best voices out here to get involved, and let's present something to these folks, and start taking action.
"Getting good looking, smooth, educated folks, to push the agenda on television . . . "
But don't then dump them into programs which make no attempt to be even-handed or informative.
I believe most regular viewers of those Fox-type shows are pretty hard-core, like the audience the Blues Brothers faced in Bob's Country Bunker. Don't waste time trying to change them, just launch into the theme from Rawhide.
Undecided voters who stumble on these shows see pathetic "knock-me-down-with-a-feather" liberals like Alan Colmes sitting impotent while their co-hosts and guests spit out their venomous monologues. This just reinforces the stereotype of "gutless liberals" that these clowns are selling.
Sean Hannity and his ilk are just liars and bullies. Deny them oxygen. When the audience can't smell blood a lot will stop watching anyway, and Rupert Murdoch will pull the plug.
Posted by: Steve at November 22, 2004 09:46 PMThere were on the order of 3000 lives lost at the Twin Towers and we chose to account it as an atrocity giving us the moral authority to invade two nations one of which is not really related to the original incident.
When we start getting into a position of asking how many thousands of children must die in order to constitute an atrocity, then we are way far gone down the WRONG road. Yes innocents suffer in time of war, but that is why the "just war" doctrine was evolved. The ends must one balance justify the means.
Have we won anything or have any realistic hope of wresting any benefit from our Iraqi venture either for us or the Iraqis that justifies the deaths of thousands upon thousands of children in the most conservative scenario?
Since the answer is either a resounding no or a sputtering from those who make speculative unevidenced claims of hoped for but ellusive benefits, then we can logically reason that this whole mess has been pointless, wasted, and insofar as we can determined we let those children die - we helped them die - for no good reason.
But it will take time for Americans to get a grip on the complete wasteful pointless of the exercise as the true crime. When we dropped the Bomb on Japan, at least it had a reason and a rationale and produced results we can point to to justify our decision.
Who will stand forth and provide evidence of the results that can justify this debacle?
Posted by: oldman at November 23, 2004 09:26 AMThe news is keeping it mum, but in Chile, our beloved cowboy president decided to be presidential and enter a fracas between US secret Service agent and Chilean agents. It seemed, that for a gala diner, a secret service agent was not on invitee list. When it became apparent the agent was not allowed in...there was a shoving match that ensued. President Bush then entered the shoving match and pulled his agent to safety, thus changing the invitation list.
Somehow the rules got reversed.
Actually, the prez was showing his true low IQ level.
Can anyone tell him that as president, when he see's secret service men in a shoving, wrestling match, he is to go the opposite direction, not enter the fracas. Suppose there was an assailant, and he was entering danger toward the nozzle of a gun.
This is very telling. This is why he went into Iraq headfirst without a lifesaver.
America is in deep, deep trouble now as it seems out over-medicated president has now lost it.
This is f'd up. The sad aspect, all those voters in the red states look at this as....That's out Bush, as if behavior like that is becoming of a southern gentlemen. Pit-bull wannabe
Posted by: Dave S. at November 23, 2004 05:36 PMPeople starve anymore because someone wants them to. In Iraq, the Shiites in the south were starved even when we were semi-suppressing Iraqi air power. Don't want them taking anything over or joining up with Iran, who we already didn't like from that 70s thing.
Kurds were better organized and a minority we could use to attack south and raise a ruckus in Turkey if we had to get something rolling with NATO. Troops in Saudi were unnecessary: Kuwait would have been enough ground support. I think those troops were there to guide the Saudi royalty in case of a rough transition of power from Fahd to whichever crooked princeling gets the job.
ionstorm, OXblog's claim that the numbers are old is incorrect. See here
Posted by: Tim Lambert at November 23, 2004 08:35 PMCan anyone tell him that as president, when he see's secret service men in a shoving, wrestling match, he is to go the opposite direction, not enter the fracas. Suppose there was an assailant, and he was entering danger toward the nozzle of a gun.
Not nice to tease people with fantasies, Dave S.
Posted by: SqueakyRat at November 24, 2004 08:30 AM