The entire population of Iraq is estimated at 24 million, which would imply a birth rate of just over a quarter of a million persons per year (very roughly). In seven years I would expect roughly 2 million or so children to be born, and 2,000 or so of these children to die (from all causes), using the mortality rate listed above. Am I miscalculating, or is there a mistake?
Dr. Thomas Cunningham
Pasadena, CA
Matt Welch replies: Thanks to Thomas Cunningham for correctly pointing out my embarrassing error in presenting UNICEF's estimated under-5 mortality rate for 1994-1998 in the Saddam Hussein-controlled regions of Iraq. It was indeed 130.6 per 1,000 births, not 100,000.
Joe Emersberger, Jude Wanniski, and Frank Brady would have preferred I write a different article, preferably one focused on condemning U.S. policy. I respect their disappointment and would like only to suggest that the article they were hoping for has been written thousands of times before, including in reason.
That doesn't mean those articles were wrong (though many passed along falsehoods), just that I chose to write about a less-covered aspect of the story: how and why partisans and the press bend and invent facts to support their political aims, thereby making it harder for the rest of us to gather the basic information required to form an intelligent opinion.
Also, I cannot agree with Emersberger's contention that "the most accurate and careful estimate of the number of victims doesn't help," or Wanniski's that "the exact number of dead children is unimportant," or Brady's that "whether American policies have led to the deaths of 100,000 Iraqi children or 600,000 is immaterial." It is my belief that truth actually matters, and distortion of truth -- whether by the U.S. government or its critics -- is inevitably counter-productive.
I think Britton Manasco is right to suggest that sanctions sometimes might work, and that Saddam Hussein's military buildup should not be ignored. I described the current sanctions regime as "ineffective" precisely because the crucial weapons inspection component has been absent since 1998, while the Iraqi population continues to suffer (though responsibility for that suffering under the oil-for-food regime -- which provides more value per capita than perhaps any other single-country humanitarian program in the world -- is probably now more due to the Iraqi government than to the sanctions).
It is hard to see what policy goals the current U.N. setup advances, unless there is a desire to inflict general degradation on a population and its leaders, and to give Saddam Hussein and his undemocratic neighbors a propaganda tool of uncommon resonance.
Correction: In "Speaking Lies to Power" (May), Ralph Nader's book
Crashing the Party was misidentified.
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