"If the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under-five in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998" —Unicef, 12 August 1999.

"We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that. It is illegal and immoral." —Denis Halliday, after resigning as first UN Assistant Secretary General and Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, 15 October 1998

"How long the civilian population, which is totally innocent on all this, should be exposed to such punishment for something that they have never done?" —Hans von Sponeck, before resigning as second UN Assistant Secretary General and Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, BBC Online, 8 February 2000.

"Approximately 250 people die every day in Iraq due to the effect of the sanctions." —UNICEF, April 1998

"One out of every four Iraqi infants is malnourished … Chronic malnutrition among children under five has reached 27.5%. After a child reaches two or three years of age, chronic malnutrition is difficult to reverse and damage on the child's development is likely to be permanent." —UNICEF and World Food Programme (WFP), May 1997

"The inherent inhumanity of economic sanctions damages those who impose it. As an American, I resent having my national character stained this way." ." —Scott Ritter, former head of the U.N. Weapons Inspection Team in Iraq

"We're killing 5,000 kids under the age of five every month. Now people say Saddam's killing them, but ultimately, sanctions are killing them, and we shouldn't be supportive of something that causes innocent people to suffer to such a degree." ." —Scott Ritter, From an interview with CBN, March 30, 1999

"Since the onset of sanctions, there has been a six-fold increase in the mortality rate for children under five and the majority of the country's population has been on a semi-starvation diet." —World Health Organization, March 1996

"The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies acknowledges that sanctions -- which are an instrument within the UN Charter -- are used by governments to political ends, a form of unarmed warfare which, as the former US President Woodrow Wilson put it: 'Provide a peaceful, silent and deadly remedy.' Let us be clear: sanctions can kill." —The President of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, May 1998

"The Cuban and Iraqi instances make it abundantly clear that economic sanctions are, at their core, a war against public health. Our professional ethic demands the defense of public health. Thus, as physicians, we have a moral imperative to call for the end of sanctions. Having found the cause, we must act to remove it. Continuing to allow our reason to sleep will produce more monsters." —New England Journal of Medicine (Editorial), 24 April 1997 Not very wacky at all.