Saddam Hussein

Summary

The Iraqi ruler whose regime’s falsified infant-mortality data under the sanctions regime, and its gains from the Oil-for-Food Programme, form the case study of Chapter 6 of Debunking the Genocide Allegations (Debunking the Genocide Allegations: A Reexamination of the Israel-Hamas War from October 7, 2023 to June 1, 2025, PDF p.151-162).

His regime refused any Oil-for-Food mechanism that would prevent it from using oil revenues for its own purposes, primarily regime survival; the May 1996 Memorandum of Understanding allowed Iraq to keep one-third of its oil export revenues, and the regime gained over $11 bi l l i o nb ey o n d t h eo f f i c ia l l y a l l oc a t e d am o u n tt h r o ug hi l l e g a l o i l s m ug g l in g l e v er a g in g t h e p r o g r aman d a f u r t h er$ 1.7 billion through secret commissions and bribes paid by more than half the participating companies (PDF p.152-153).
The loosening of the sanctions regime on the basis of the false infant-mortality claims allowed him, in the work’s account, to strengthen his army, reinforce his regime and bolster his population repression mechanisms (PDF p.151).
The Kurdish autonomous region’s declining child mortality under the same sanctions is read as indicating that the main responsibility for deaths lay with his regime and its resource distribution policies, not with the sanctions themselves (PDF p.160).
After his regime’s fall in 2003, additional UN surveys showed no sharp and sustained increase in under-five mortality from 1991 onward; the sharp but limited 1990-1991 rise is attributed mainly to the suppression of the Shia uprising in the south and the Kurdish uprising in the north (PDF p.159).

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aliases	Saddam Hussein, Saddam