Sammy Almashat was born to Iraqi parents in Ireland and moved to the U.S. just before the first American attack on Iraq in 1990 Over the next 13 years, he grew up watching his family in Iraq experience the devastating sanctions that killed between a half million and a million people. He participated in campus antiwar actions leading up to the 2003 invasion. After finishing medical school, he went into public health medicine, researching among other things, the health effects of the US/UK-led sanctions and wars on the Iraqi people and the country's health infrastructure, once a model in the third world. He has written more recently on the civilian consequences of the sanctions on Iran and Cuba