Exploiting Suffering*** Saddam Hussein's government uses tragic images to influence world opinion, and particularly to support the false allegation that the United Nations is killing Iraqis. These images include:
Exploiting sick and malnourished children for international television cameras;
Staging mass funerals;
Providing selective tours of empty markets and dilapidated hospitals;
Showing Iraqis with obvious diseases and blaming the sicknesses on the absence of modern medical tools, due to sanctions; and
Censoring television footage and restricting movement of journalists and television crews.
In a particularly shocking practice, the regime is known to collect the bodies of dead babies and store them for months at a time, so that they can stage mass funeral processions and create the impression that UN sanctions are killing small children.***