Interesting Troll,

"While the world blamed the US for the starvation od Iraqi children, Saddam was pumping humanitarian funds into his military machine.
Sorry about the thread creep."

There is already a huge amount of evidence detailed by among others Edward Said, and Fred Halliday, that the sanctions are preventing the replacement of bombed water treatement plants and essential infrastructure and that this is what is causing the huge number of deaths of Iraqi civilians. Any country that bombs away the infrastructure and then bans by sanctions the supply of syringes, plasma drips and even wheelbarrows and stepladders, has got to ask itself what's the real purpose of the sanctions. It's easy to jump to a defensive posture and assume that the sanctions are justified.

I argue that the sanctions are designed to produce a subject people ripe for occupation. The fact that Britain has been bombing Iraq for longer than the Americans bombed Vietnam is completely indefensible. And the fact that Turkey is permitted to bomb the kurds in the no-fly zone (Turkey is a UN member) is equally scandalous.

Let's hear it for the Iraqi people. Stop the sanctions. Oppose the Bush tub-thumping and his war-mongering sycophants. And let's not play would-be intellectual games about US White House strategy. This is a point of political principle not some tactical exercise to defend oil company interests. The Standard Oil Company in the Gulf created havoc in its campaigns to get and preserve drilling rights and most of the middle east regimes were set up and sponsored with oil interests in mind. Just look at the history of Saudi Arabia, Oman, Dhofar, Aden, Yemen, as well as Iran and Iraq. The US government's role in all this is only about oil. Their record in the region marks them as just about the most aggressive world power ever to get near it (the UK is the other leading contender).

If anyone is really concerned about countries with nuclear weapons, attacking their own population, hounding oppositionists, sponsoring extra-judicial killings, invading neighbouring countries, violating UN resolutions, how come the US is not concerned about Israel. Oh yeah, it's a democracy isn't it - except that the regime is apartheid and bans arabs from voting...