Iraqis Already Pay the Price of One 'Weapon' While US Bombs May Soon Drop on Iraq, the Country Buckles under Years of Sanctions

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For many Iraqis, American bombs would be only one more "weapon" bringing tragedy to their lives.

In daily life for seven years, people here in Iraq have paid a very real human cost. Millions lack enough food and medicine. Death rates, especially for children, have risen dramatically.

The "weapon" causing all this is political: UN economic sanctions - or rather, as US officials say, the refusal of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to meet UN demands to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. "Sanctions are unbearable, inhuman," says Moyassar Hamdon Sulaiman, head of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society. "They {in the West} speak about 'weapons of mass destruction,' but we call …