By Ramzi Kysia

It was in a cold, dark room in Basra, lit only by lamplight, that I fully realized that George Bush is insane.

I was in Iraq with Voices in the Wilderness, a U.S.-based campaign to end sanctions. The house belonged to the al-Saraji family in Jumhuriya, one of Basra’s poorest neighborhoods. Raw sewage runs through open trenches on the street. There’s no running water, and they have electricity only half the day. 25 people live in 6 rooms: Salah and his children, Ali and Humdia and their children, Salah & Ali’s younger brothers and sisters, and presiding over them all with quiet dignity, Salah’s wife, Um Heider.

Heider Salah al-Saraji was killed, along with 16 other human beings, when a precision-guided U.S. missile hit their neighborhood on January 25, 1999. Heider was 6 years old.