SUFFER THE CHILDREN

In threatening to withhold oil from the West, Saddam Hussein has himself put at risk the United Nations-sponsored deal that was supposedly meant to relieve his nation's suffering.

To be sure, the threat put a spike in world spot-market oil prices yesterday - which should show up at the pump fairly quickly.

How long higher prices last, and how much (if any) damage they'll do to the U.S. economy remains to be seen. We bet this issue will fade quickly enough, if only because Iraqi oil represents only a small part of the world market.

In any event, the U.S.-initiated sanctions against Iraq were widely ignored by most countries even before the oil-for-humanitarian-aid deal was adopted.

The idea was that letting Saddam resume marketing his nation's oil supply would allow him to purchase the food and medical supplies needed to feed and treat the suffering Iraqi populace.

But skeptics rightly argued that Saddam had never before shown much concern for any population, least of all his own.

Indeed, the Iraqi people were starving largely as a result of Saddam's spending his nation's money on his own well-being and his desperate effort to build weapons of mass destruction.

And, in fact, he quickly made a mockery of the "humanitarian" aid once the deal was adopted: Many of the newly imported goods were quickly resold abroad, with the proceeds going straight to Saddam's pocket and to his military rebuilding programs.

Including, it is necessary to repeat, programs meant to produce relatively sophisticated chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

Imagine how many Iraqi children could be fed with the money dedicated to those programs.

Or, as National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said yesterday: "We ought to remind them that they're going to have a hard time eating their oil."

Which is one reason it was heartening to see British Prime Minister Tony Blair reiterate his backing for President Bush's get-tough policy on Iraq.

Blair's words were especially significant, given that he faces pressure within his own political party to go slow on any allied military effort to depose Saddam.

As for the rest of the world, it's time to stop preaching to Washington about the urgent need to relieve the suffering of Iraq's "starving children."

Tell it to Saddam Hussein himself.