He meant the bombs of 1991, which nearly destroyed Baghdad and killed thousands of people, and he meant the support for Saddam in the 1980s, which prolonged the Iran-Iraq War. And he meant the sanctions, which destroyed the livelihoods of men and families, plunged people into poverty, and caused as many as five hundred thousand children to die. (About which Madeleine Albright—today a feminist icon—once said, “We think the price is worth it.”) The sanctions were still in effect when we invaded Iraq in 2003, but I remember hearing little about them. The Iraqi man said he despised America for the
...more
