Since the end of the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein has directed and sustained a multi-billion dollar palace construction program while pleading that the UN sanctions keep him too poor to feed and provide health care for his people. While he keeps Iraq's hospital shelves bare and shows them to journalists, Saddam restricts access to the new and ornate palaces to himself and his chosen admirers of any given moment. Moreover, Saddam fits out these monuments with the finest foreign materials -- from golden plumbing to the finest European marble and crystal chandeliers -- smuggled in despite the embargo that Baghdad propaganda falsely claims blocks the import of food and medicine.
Saddam Hussein pays for these palaces with that part of the Iraqi national wealth that he has managed to keep under his control and out of the UN's mandatory oil-for-food program. Through that program, the UN controls how Iraqi oil revenues are spent and compels the regime to invest Iraq's oil wealth for the benefit of its people. But every day that he remains in power, Saddam lets his favored supporters steal hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil from the Iraqi people to enrich themselves, in direct violation of UN resolutions.
Palace Construction
Photographic evidence confirms that Saddam Hussein and his regime have sustained a non-stop program of palace building since 1991. Saddam has been spending billions of dollars on the man-made lakes, waterfalls, marble, and other luxuries that make up his palaces and those of his supporters. At the same time, Saddam parades well-intentioned foreigners to gawk at the sick and hungry of Iraq, as he pleads that UN sanctions prevent him from buying or importing his people's most basic needs.
• Among the more notable features of these palaces are: extensive security facilities to protect the regime from its own people; elaborate gardens which require large amounts of water, often in drought-stricken areas; and sophisticated waterfalls and other waterworks using pumps and other infrastructure that the regime says sanctions prevent it from importing for the Iraqi people.
• Saddam ruthlessly protects the extent of his luxury. According to Iraqi opposition sources, Saddam recently ordered the execution of one of the Iraqi architects who worked on presidential palaces in Tikrit, Al-Hillah, Al-Azimiyah, and Al-Wafa. His crime was to describe to friends the sumptuousness and lavishness of Saddam's palaces, and the swimming pools, fish aquariums, and deer farms in the vicinity of some of them. A circular was then sent around to workers in the engineering department of the Presidential Office warning them that the harshest punishment will be inflicted on anyone who talks about the presidential sites, even to family members. Our knowledge of the inside of Saddam's palaces comes from first-hand information from international observers who have traveled to Iraq and visited the palaces.