On January 8th, Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, Edward Said & Howard Zinn issued the following statement in their "A CALL TO ACTION ON SANCTIONS AND THE U.S. WAR AGAINST THE PEOPLE OF IRAQ": "At the end of 1998, the United States once again rained bombs on the people of Iraq. But even when the bombs stop falling, the U.S. war against the people of Iraq continues though the the use of harsh economic sanctions. This is a call to action to end all the war. "This month, U.S. policy will kill 4,500 children under the age of 5 in Iraq according to UN studies, just as it did last month and the month before that, all the way back to 1991. Since the end of the Gulf War, at least hundreds of thousands - maybe more than one million - Iraqis have died as a direct result of UN sanctions on Iraq, which are a direct result of U.S. policy. "This is not foreign policy -- it is sanctioned mass-murder that is nearing holocaust proportions. If we remain silent, we are condoning a genocide that is being perpetuated in the name of peace in the Middle East, a mass slaughter that is being perpetuated in our name."
