"I was overwhelmed with sadness over what is happening to the people of Iraq, and also to the US troops there." With unemployment approaching 60 percent and food supplies dwindling, Gumbleton reported, ordinary Iraqis "are humiliated and feel degraded" as they try to cope without electricity, telephones and - in some places - running water: "Without exception, people said things were worse now than before the war."
Qasim Ali Abid, chief resident doctor at the same hospital, explained that the leading cause of death among his patients was from secondary infections caught while undergoing in-patient treatment. Hospital statistics put the secondary infection rate at 80 percent - a staggering rate for a Middle Eastern country like Iraq.
Rubble from pre-war maintenance also remains inside the building and there are only two toilets per floor of the four floor building for all patients, nurses, doctors and family members. Iraqi hospitals have been chronically short of medical supplies, trained doctors and money since the toppling of Saddam on April 9 last year.
These are small glimpses, almost never reported in the media, of the cataclysm inflicted on Iraq by the West. Desperately short of even the most basic medicines and facilities since the invasion, no questions have been asked on TV news, there have been no calls for emergency donations of medical supplies from the US or UK.
The war has so far claimed some 55,000 Iraqi lives, including 9,600 civilians, with 1,000 Iraqi children killed or injured by unexploded cluster bombs every month.
"Blair's personal tragedy is the squandering of his political capital over Iraq."
In her article, Toynbee has not one word to say about the "personal tragedy" suffered by literally hundreds of thousands, indeed millions, of Iraqis.
"It was the most brutal tyranny, I think, in human history."
This recalls a comment made by Digby Jones, Director General of the Confederation of British Industry, on the BBC's Question Time programme. Jones claimed that Saddam had killed 3 million people (BBC1, April 10, 2003). No one blinked an eye.
To be clear, the BBC ceases to be a "sober, less hysterical" forum when it "digs up dirt" on the government". When it shovels dirt +for+ the government by ranking Saddam above Hitler and Stalin in the league of tyrants, by failing for ten years to expose the genocidal impact of Western sanctions, by failing to make even the most obvious challenges to the government's pre-war lies on WMD, and when the BBC's Andrew Marr emotes that Tony Blair "stands as a larger man and a stronger prime minister as a result" of invading Iraq, there is no problem.
As ever, the only tragedy that matters is the suffering and damage inflicted on powerful interests - the vast horrors inflicted by them on others barely register. Anyone who tries to buck the trend is reviled, slandered and sentenced to career death.
As we know, the human catastrophe inflicted on Iraq went ahead against huge domestic and international opposition. Tony Blair's support, in particular, was crucial in affording George Bush the required fig leaf of international legitimacy. Without Blair on board, it is conceivable that Bush might not have been able to wage his war.
This fits quite well with what we known about when Blair began focusing on the idea that Iraq's non-existent WMDs were a threat.
Then, just three days of air strikes were deemed sufficient to keep Saddam 'in his box'. No invasion was needed to avert a "serious and current threat".
Throughout 1999 and 2000, the Guardian/Observer record next to no mention of fears of Iraq's alleged WMD (understandable, as we now know they didn't exist) or of its supposed links to terrorism (also understandable, as there were none).
Again, a few raids were deemed sufficient.
In other words, fully two and a half months after September 11, Blair demanded, not just evidence, but "incontrovertible evidence" of Iraqi involvement in the attacks as a pretext for war. Clearly, at this time, he did not deem Iraq's alleged WMD, Saddam's alleged links to al-Qaeda, or Saddam's human rights record, sufficient grounds for war.
The interesting question then arises: what stunning new evidence emerged of the threat from Iraq's non-existent WMD to change Blair's mind between November 30, 2001 and February 28, 2002? Clearly, it should be a simple task for an inquiry to focus on these few weeks to see what amazing new erroneous evidence emerged to bamboozle Blair.
What we will find, of course, is that there was no new evidence. Instead there was a decision made in Washington to go to war, and a decision made in London to initiate a propaganda campaign to fool the public and so facilitate an illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq.
"The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice."
Given international law, 100% UNMOVIC access to suspect sites, vast global popular opposition to war, the US's possession of an overwhelming deterrence in the form of 6,144 nuclear warheads, the decision to go to war on March 17 requires real explanation. Were we living in genuine democracies, it would also require that Bush and Blair face a war crimes tribunal.