Retired engineer Bert Sacks discusses his case before the U.S. Supreme Court: sticking up for innocent Iraqi kids killed by the UN/U.S./UK blockade of 1990-2003, the different ways the law protects politicians for the mass murders they commit and the danger of dehumanizing even the worst people.
After the first Gulf War in 1991 Bert Sacks read a New York Times front-page story about famine and epidemic in Iraq “unless massive life-supporting aid was given.” He read in that same story that “by making life uncomfortable for the Iraqi people [sanctions] will soon encourage them to remove President Saddam Hussein from power.” Sacks thought something was terribly wrong. When he read a 1992 New England Journal of Medicine report that 46,900 Iraqi kids had died in just the first 8 months of 1991, he knew that something was terribly wrong. Since then he’s worked to educate about this issue.