Sanctions against Iraq are genocide

A serious legal argument can be made that sanctions imposed against Iraq in 1990 by the United Nations have come to constitute genocide.

Sanctions -- which will come up for renewal in Congress this month -- were originally instituted to compel Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait. Iraq refused, and was forced out militarily in early 1991 through Operation Desert Storm. Sanctions against Iraq -- a country devastated by war, dependent on oil exports for 90 percent of its foreign revenue and one which imports 70 percent of its food -- were nonetheless re-imposed after the Gulf War.

The vanquished country was faced with a long list of demands, chief among them that it submit to extensive inspections and surrender its weapons of mass destruction. The Iraqi government's overall failure to satisfy the demands of the United Nations are a matter of record and are not in dispute here. The same is true of the autocratic, even murderous character of the regime of Saddam Hussein.