Middle East Forum: By going beyond our declared agenda of advocacy for the Iraqi people and bringing this kind of regime propaganda back to the United States, we played right into Saddam's hands... We could not imagine that the Iraqi regime might use, or even exacerbate, the sanctions crisis for its own political ends... [For example, we] abhorred the [Oil-for-Food] program because it improved the lot of ordinary Iraqis, and therefore, diminished U.S. culpability... To be perfectly frank, we were less concerned with the suffering of the Iraqi people than we were in maintaining our moral challenge to U.S. foreign policy... had we been truly interested in alleviating the suffering in Iraq, we might have considered pushing for an expanded Oil-for-Food program. Nothing could have interested us less. (Via Instapundit.)