The American-instigated embargo of Iraq, undertaken by George Herbert Walker Bush in the aftermath of the first Iraq War, was carried forward for eight years under Bill and Hillary Clinton, taking the advice of their unbalanced, Zionist-dominated foreign policy team of Sandy Berger, Madeleine Albright, Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk. It was, to be sure, a bipartisan Washington enterprise”€”relentless, mindless, vengeful, and without mercy”€”all based predictably on politics, not facts. And Bill Clinton, as president, was the man who presided over it. In this regard, I refer you to another under-appreciated book, this time by an English writer, Geoff Simons. The title is The Scourging of Iraq, published in 1996. There would be four more years to go in Bill Clinton’s presidency. A few lines from the preface will give you an idea of what people inside the White House, working for Bill and Hillary Clinton, were doing to Iraq in America’s name:

The US-contrived economic siege of Iraq has now lasted well over seven years, as I write, with, according to all estimates, millions of casualties”€”perhaps 2,000,000 dead through starvation and disease, more than half of them children, and many millions more emaciated, traumatized, sick, dying…

The United States is the conscious architect of this years-long genocide. Knowingly, with a cruel and cynical resolve, US officials work hard to withhold relief from a starving and diseased people. And the grotesque facts are not even disputed by Washington. Madeleine Albright, now Secretary of State, was prepared to assert in public that the killing of 500,000 Iraqi children was justified.

The scourging of Iraq continued to the Clinton Administration’s end. Then Dick Cheney and G.W. Bush took up where Bill Clinton left off and put Iraq out of its misery. In a way, it made sense. Under Bill and Hillary, it was a slow death without a conclusion. President Clinton stated in his last days in office, “…sanctions will be there until the end of time, or as long as he [Saddam] lasts.” One must assume that Bill Clinton knew what he was talking about, as always.

A major target of the sanctions was the water supply of Iraq. This is recorded in some detail in Simons’s book. The topic was taken up by Professor Thomas Nagy, a professor at George Washington University. His September 2001 article,“The Secret Behind the Sanctions: How the US intentionally Destroyed Iraq’s Water Supply” is most revealing. Nagy concludes: “For more than ten years, the United States has deliberately pursued a policy of destroying the water treatment system of Iraq, knowing full well the cost in Iraqi lives. The United Nations has estimated that more than 500,000 Iraqi children have died as a result of sanctions, and that 5,000 Iraqi children continue to die every month for this reason.” If true, this constituted a war crime.

Meanwhile, back at the Clinton Global Initiative, the Comeback Kid has been in his glory. Commitments in excess of $6 billion were made. It was reliably reported that 40 heads of state attending the UN General Assembly meeting took time out for a personal get-together with the former president. Among other highlights, Barack and Michelle Obama dropped by to joke and offer advice. Demi and Ashton announced a campaign called “Real Men Don’t Buy Girls” in an effort, somehow, to stop child sex slavery. And the CEO of Procter & Gamble, Bob McDonald, “announced plans to distribute two billion packets of a water-purification product that Clinton said could save one life every hour.”

That’s good to know, isn’t it? How many hours will it take to erase the past?