Malnutrition

This is getting some attention. Pretty shocking that invading a country and destroying its institutions of health and security leads to an increased rate of child malnutrition. One would almost begin to think that utter chaos is worse than a brutal dictatorship.

David Adesnik makes a rather lame effort to respond in which he more or less concurs with the major finding while doing his best to obscure its importance. Helpfully, however, he does admit the following:

I do believe that the oil-for-“food” program improved nutrition for Iraqi children. Corruption at the UN may have been pervasive, but it seems that most of the money still went for food.

Recognizing that “food” may actually be, well, food is something that has completely escaped the non-sensical conservative onslaught against corruption in the oil-for-food program. However corrupt, the program seems to have saved a considerable number of Iraqi lives, which is much more than can be said of the invasion that halted it.