Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq

After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the United Nations (backed strongly by the US and UK) imposed harsh sanctions on Iraq that lasted for 10 years (1991-2001); the harsh restrictions on imports of everything, including access to key medicines, resulted in over a million deaths, more than half a million of which were women and children. That's more deaths than the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan and 9/11 combined. The purpose was regime change, but it never came. The overwhelming majority of those killed were the poor, elderly, women and children. Empirically, sanctions overwhelmingly punish the poor, the destitute. While the sanctions were in place, the richest people in control of the resources (Saddam Hussein et al.) still had everything they wanted: food, cars, mansions, access to the best medicines, etc. Award-winning journalist John Pilger has documented the reality of UN harsh sanctions in this hard-hitting film. --We hear so often about American, British or Canadian troops being killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. When 5 Canadian soldiers die its front page news. Even the mainstream news is often reporting how many soldiers have died in Iraq. Yet collectively, the Western world seems to have quietly and conveniently forgotten about the million that died in the years between the two Gulf wars due to the economic sanctions. John Pilger is one of the few journalists out there who actually understands what journalism is for...Personally, I don't think a journalist is trying hard enough unless he gets shot at, punched by the people he is interviewing, and have his camera smashed a few times...because the truth is always going to be threatening to someone.