SANCTIONS AT A GLANCE: -One out of every four infants in Iraq is malnourished -Malnutrition in children under 5 has risen 72% since 1991. -5000-6000 children die each month from hunger and disease. -50% of rural people have no access to potable water. -Waste water treatment facilities no longer function in most urban areas. (Sources: UNICEF, UN Dept. of Humantarian Affairs, World Health Organization) One Bomb* dropped on Iraq could buy: -Ten 4-year scholarships to a top private American university. -A year of health insurance for 300 children. -One hundred thousand meals ($10/meal). -60 year-long jobs at $10/hour. -One thousand computers for public schools. *One smart bomb costs approximately $1.1 million. Thousands of bombs have been dropped since 1990.

(these messages reprinted today from the Fellowship of Reconciliation:)

Have you ever watched a child die? Imagine doing this 250 times a day.

Iraqi Children are not our enemy. End the Sanctions Now!

Every hour, seven civilians in Iraq die from starvation, malnutrition, and preventable disease. They are not dying because their leader is a dictator or because there are no natural resources. They are dying because the US government has slowly destroyed Iraq's infrastructure since 1990, and does not allow Iraq to import enough medicine to survive.

The economic sanctions were imposed in 1990 to force an Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait, and sustained after the Gulf War to prevent Iraq from building weapons of mass destruction. Rather than securing peace in the region, they have instead combined with US military attacks to kill at least 1.2 million Iraqi citizens. (UNICEF, 1997)

The US government is slowly killing the people of Iraq, through a sanctions regime that is opposed by the majority of the UN member states. This is not a war against poverty, but a war against the poor, in Iraq and the United States. This silent genocide, which is being waged in our name, is being funded with tax dollars which could instead be funding health care, jobs, and housing in the United States.

While the US military spends billions of dollars to destroy Iraq, children in the US suffer from poverty and a pervasive culture of violence. The US government supports sanctions to prevent the production of "weapons of mass destruction," while maintaining the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons on this earth, and remaining the world's largest arms supplier.

Let us start solving the internal problems of the United States, before turning to other countries to unleash violence in the name of peace, security and oil.