Oil for food program

So I decided to try to educate myself over what happened with the oil for food scandal by reading wikipedia's account of it. That's here. It's long and somewhat boring, but I have kind of changed my feelings of the program. I used to think the problem with it was unaccountable elites that ran the U.N. I think the core problem with the oil for food program is that after the first Golf War, unrealistic sanctions were placed on Iraq. The amount of oil the country is sitting on is second only to Saudi Arabia I believe and oil for food program was more like a breeding ground for kickbacks, bribes, and corruption. I hate to say it, but it actually reminds me of post WWI Germany and the unrealistic sanctions that were put on the country led to a revolt by Hitler which climaxed with WW2. Or it's kind of like the "proverb" in Baseketball, "What a terrible thing to happen on dozen egg night."

Oil for food was doomed from it's conception. If I had a lot of time on my hands, I'm confident I could come up with a very strong argument that the "rebuilding" process after the first Golf War was actually more damaging than the one we've got going on now. If the sanctions we imposed after the first war didn't fester so much corruption, I find it very likely that Saddam's perceived threat to the United States would not have provoked us to go to war.