January 13
My husband, Dr. John Bentwood, and I each pack a carry-on and drive to NYC for a day of orientation. We are an ordinary couple, among fifty people, who will be leaving the following evening to challenge the sanctions against Iraq. The penalty, should the Dept. of Treasury pursue, is a $1million fine per person and 12 years in prison. However, we can no longer ignore UN reports that 5,000 children a month are dying. As health care professionals we have a moral duty to protest sanctions that impose human suffering to attain political goals. Our delegation represents the IAC - the International Action Center, brainchild of former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and activist Sarah Flounders.

January 14 & 15
J.F.K. to Amsterdam, and on to Amman, Jordan is uneventful. We wear Iraq Sanctions Challenge badges. Two physicians, Saudi Arabian and Jordanian, make it their business to shake our hands and express their love and support for the people of Iraq. One agrees as the other states "Of course you won't hear that from our governments, but the people feel differently." This reception bolsters us on our 15 hour bus ride to Baghdad. We are joined by Masako, from Tokyo. This will be her nineteenth trip She shares 8 X 10 photos of the children she has grown to know and love. They range in age from 1 to 14 years. All beautiful and all dead. Her voice breaks. She cannot speak. More children dead now than at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

January 16
Baghdad: We are not greeted with suspicion and anger as we had anticipated, but are met at the hotel, with tremendous warmth and hospitality. We leave for the Ameriya shelter: a bomb shelter designed to house 1200 people for 21 days in the event of a nuclear attack. Nine years ago, at 2 a.m., hundreds of people died at this site when two American bombs, with unerring accuracy, hit their target.

Ameriya is a shrine to the innocents; their photographs line wall after wall - babies, children, mothers. Our guide is a mother who had lost seven children in the explosion. I overhear a whispered "We (USA) thought Saddam was in the shelter." As if that was a rationale for murdering the helpless.

Stunned and sobered by the reality of war, we return to the hotel where there is a mosaic of George Bush on the lobby floor with the underlying inscription CRIMINAL -USA. Our villain is Saddam Hussein. Their villain is George Bush.

January 17
We assemble at 2:00 a.m. for a procession in downtown Baghdad to commemorate the bombing. John and Ramsey Clark hold an anti-bomb, anti-sanction banner. As the march begins they find themselves leading hundreds, with a similar 100 person Spanish delegation, directly behind the Americans. With CNN cameras rolling, any thought of remaining low profile ends here.

Two hours sleep, breakfast, then a tour of a local hospital specializing in ophthalmological and neurosurgery. (There are concurrent meetings and tours. Because John is a surgeon and I am a nurse we have selected a medical agenda). The third-world poverty, which has befallen this once rich, progressive country, is confirmed by this tour.

Our guide, a surgeon, speaks of his frustration in being able to effectively serve only 20% of his patients. He lacks adequate supplies and equipment, often sharing suture material. Patients lie in shabby, almost barren rooms. Outlets and receptacles once housing state of the art technology are empty. This is a direct result of the sanctions.

It's very complicated. Besides rejecting items under military and economic sanction classification there is another, often specious, category known as "dual use." Dual use is anything that could possibly be construed to assist Iraqi military. Pencils, X-ray machines, ambulances, and bicycles are but a few items. This classification insidiously undermines any semblance of normal life.

For example, in the hospital setting, a child with leukemia may need a bone marrow transplant. However, the child cannot be immunosuppressed because it is not possible to provide the sterile environment needed to protect the patient from infection. Chlorine used in sterilization and water purification is approved in small, inadequate amounts because it is a dual use item (can also be used in weapons).

Two-million dollars worth of donated medicine comes with us. We deliver it to the office of the Minister of Health. He thanks us but says above all else, they need up-to-date medical journals and medical and surgical CDs. Teams of surgical specialists, personally escorted from border to border, are greatly appreciated.

Saddam Children's Hospital: We witnessed many dying children, with preventable diseases such as dysentery and e-coli. Tuberculosis, malaria and polio, once eradicated, are on the rise. If the child is to have sheets or blankets, families must bring them. The mothers sit in quiet vigilance next to the small bodies of their unconscious children.

I lingered after the delegation moved down the hall, tentatively reaching out with an apologetic gesture of sympathy. They each responded and warmly took my hand. Indelibly etched is one young mother in profile, her tears falling, holding the pale, limp, hands of two children, her 18- month old son and 3-year old daughter. This could be my child, another time, another place.

January 18
Many in our group, more politically attuned, have chosen to hear the Minister of Finance. We (four) go to the Museum of Archeology and Culture. Ed Lewinson, a professor emeritus of U.S. History at Seton Hall and blind since birth, joins us. We see the exhibit through Ed's hands. Only one in thirty exhibit halls remain open. The sanctions allow for no supplies for restoration or maintenance. No traveling exhibits in or out for nine years.

The University of Baghdad. These healthy looking, energetic, students swarm around us with warm enthusiasm. This reception is incredible. Who's attending class? They are all outside on the lawn with us and they are a joy!

Most of our delegation travel to the site of ancient Babylon. The restoration, although halted, is none the less awesome. The air is cool, the sky clear blue and somewhere in the north and south of us, American bombs are still being dropped indiscriminately on a weekly basis.

Nine of us visited an elementary school in the north where wary first-graders bore the signs of a bombing six weeks earlier when their school was blasted as a bomb exploded on a house next door. Eight children were injured, none killed.

January 19
At one of six water purification plants in Baghdad. All were bombed. One in our group is a purification expert. He is also Iraqi-American. He explains the first step in this vital process is clarification. However this step is skipped because the epoxy needed to repair the concrete tanks is unavailable as a dual use item. Only one-quarter of the chlorine needed is allowed. In the USA, we use 4.9 parts per million (ppm). Iraq is only permitted 1.5 ppm. Trash and garbage removal is poor. An order for ten sanitation trucks and replacement parts for old trucks was rejected (dual use).

So the water remains unsafe to drink and the children and elderly remain victims. If one is part of the 10% with means, bottled water is available. The prewar dinar was worth $3.00. Now it's worth 12 cents. The devaluation of the dinar has caused the destruction of the middle class.

On to a food distribution center. The allowance is 2,100 calories a day, without the protein from meat. Iraqis, normally beef and poultry eaters, can no longer sustain cattle and chickens, because the animals need to be vaccinated and the vaccine has not been approved (dual use). This compromises their dietary intake of protein. Enriched powered milk is another dual use item (can be used as a medium to incubate germs for warfare).

Final presentation this afternoon is the most interesting. An Iraqi engineer, who earned her degree at Colorado School of Mines, is the speaker. She illustrates the damage to the population, due to the use of depleted uranium, a by-product of weapons grade uranium. In spite of a UN report stating that the use of this toxin, which incinerates upon contact (it is used in the making of many munitions because it has twice the density of steel and therefore is an effective armor piercing weapon), is a violation of international law, we have left 300 tons of it in southern Iraq.

The projection for future increases in cancers of the lung, kidney and blood (leukemia) is extremely high. The Iraqi scientists were first alerted by Gulf War Syndrome. The US has stated that DU is relatively safe, however, all the US tanks affected during the war are now buried in a nuclear toxic waste site in South Carolina. DU has also been used by the US in the war in Yugoslavia and sold to numerous other countries. This is not a revelation. We are shamefully aware that the US is the leading arms broker in the world.

After dinner the delegation meet in the lobby to celebrate birthdays for two in our group. Masako has a surprise. She is animated as usual and seems truly happy. One of the children she has grown to love, just turned 14, has come to play the piano for us. He is a slender, handsome, quiet boy. He plays beautifully, gliding from Beethoven to Chopin and then plays his original composition, written when he was 10. "The Ameriya Requiem". He is a fine ambassador for his people. The phoenix will arise from the ashes.

And what about Saddam Hussein? Three Iraqi brothers were asked the same question. The first, a government employee, is a strong supporter of Saddam. The second would not comment and the third believes Saddam is in collusion with the US.

Who can ever know the truth about government? One man's traitor often is another mans patriot. But the people are not the government, and they are being harmed.

I urge our leaders to heed the advice of the UN humanitarian coordinators who, after years of close monitoring, have repeatedly called for an end to the sanctions. And I urge all of us to act on the admonition of another Middle Easterner, who lived 2,000 years ago: love one another.

Cathy Bentwood is an RN, mother, foster mother, refugee resettlement volunteer and Peace and Justice Chair at St. Matthew's Parish in Plymouth, NH.