LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Iraq: United States
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By 1996, the unrelieved economic blockade of Iraq was severely affecting its ability to purchase food and medicine on the world market, as it like most Arab countries had little besides oil to export. Various claims were made to the effect that Iraq's infant mortality was now the highest in the Arab world or even that hundreds of thousands of people had starved to death. For the purpose of purchasing food and medicine, the United Nations agreed to permit Iraq to resume oil exports in what became known as the oil-for-food (OFF) program (see below). The Iraq economy finally recovered from the Gulf War with the OFF. This is now generally considered a major error by conservatives which will not be repeated should the current sanctions against Iran be toughened to what they were against Iraq.
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Founded in 2004, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) is the nation's first and largest group representing veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. IAVA is a non-profit and nonpartisan organization with more than 62,000 active veteran members and grassroots supporters in all 50 states. For more information, visit www.iava.org.
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Iraq has number of ethnic minority groups in Iraq: Kurds, Assyrians, Mandeans, Iraqi Turkmen, Shabaks and Roma. These groups have not enjoyed equal status with the majority Arab populations throughout Iraq's eighty-five year history. Since the establishment of the "no-fly zones" following the Gulf War of 1990–1991, the situation of the Kurds has changed as they have established their own autonomous region. The remainder of these ethnic groups continue to suffer discrimination on religious or ethnic grounds.
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In November 2002, following a period of escalating pressure on Iraq, UNMOVIC inspection teams were allowed access to Iraq. Inspections continued until 18 March 2003 at which point all United Nations staff were withdrawn after the United States issued an ultimatum to Iraq. The UNMOVIC teams did not find any evidence that Iraq had resumed its WMD programs.
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For all the optimism in Washington about the latest figures, a more considered analysis reveals that the “surge”, far from ending the quagmire for US imperialism in Iraq, has qualitatively deepened the crisis. The Bush administration has failed to achieve its stated aim of fashioning a pro-US Iraqi government that is accepted as legitimate by the majority of the Iraqi population. [T]he main reason for the decline in intra-Iraqi violence is the completion of this sectarian cleansing, not the deployment of thousands more US troops.
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With the warming of relations, the United States began providing Iraq billions of dollars in credits to purchase agricultural and industrial products. The war with Iran caused Iraq to borrow on a massive scale, which in turn caused Iraq's credit rating to drop. U.S. and other Western banks, concerned over Iraq's mounting foreign debt and increasingly uncertain whether the government in Baghdad would be able to withstand Iran's onslaught, became reluctant to loan to Iraq. In l983, the U.S. government stepped in to ease Iraq's burden by providing credits through the United States Commodity Credit Corporation ("CCC") credit-guarantee program, for the purchase of U.S. agricultural products. Through l988, Iraq acquired more than $2.8 billion in U.S. agricultural products under the CCC credit-guarantee program. In l989, the year following the Reagan administration's public rebuke of Iraq for using chemical weapons against its Kurdish population, the Bush administration doubled the CCC program for Iraq, raising credits to a level exceeding one billion dollars in 1989.
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