It's hard to tell, because U.S. officials have made both statements, giving Hussein little reason to think he can satisfy the United States. Whatever the policy, the United States has made it clear it cares little about the suffering of innocent Iraqis, who live and die with inadequate diets, unclean water that spreads disease and barely functioning medical facilities. From the point of view of creating and maintaining real peace, U.S. policy is a failure. The sanctions also have done nothing to advance democracy in Iraq. Living on the edge of survival, the Iraqi people have few resources for pressing political change.
Sanctions encourage isolation, alienation and possibly fanaticism.
But from the point of view of maintaining and extending U.S. power, the policy has worked. Recalcitrant regimes must be broken so that the flow of oil profits to U.S. and British banks and corporations is not threatened. Iraq, an ally throughout the 1980s until it challenged the U.S. system, is so devastated that it will be decades before it can rebuild. To oppose the sanctions is not to support the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein, but to reject genocide. Rather than stage-manage a genocide, Halliday resigned in protest in 1998.