Someone posted this link on another thread, but thought it deserved it’s own. As was mentioned in the other thread, this one’s been under investigation for some time now. Fox is going to have a special program on this issue on Sunday.
“Breaking Point” on Sunday at 9 p.m. EDT on Fox
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,132682,00.html
Should be interesting to follow.
Glad to know its being reported by that bastion of fair and balanced news.
Must go find Alistair Campbell and spin some more WMD dossiers…
What about the source makes the oil for food scandal not a scandal? It isn’t an invention of Fox. I’ll bet when it is all said and done this oil for food thing is a gold mine of leads and insight to a global underworld.
I agree with you. Let’s stop talking about swiftboats and forged documents.
I can’t stand the f’ng UN. I bet if they opened their records we could FOLLOW THE MONEY. I bet the terrorists were skimming millions and laughing at the western world while making their car bombs - with our money.
Why do we need to follow the money? Not to prove Bush was right about going into Iraq. But to find the bad guys. Got it, Bush-haters? 
Did anyone watch this report on Sunday? I recorded it and just watched it last night.
After watching it, I can’t believe this is not one of the top news stories in the country. There is no doubt that the oil-for-food program was a big money laundering scam. It goes like this…
Sanctions after the 1st Gulf War were not working and only hurting the Iraqi people. The UN had hoped these sanctions would force a regime change, but it didn’t happen. So they started allowing Saddam to sell oil for food. But Saddam was skimming billions - he would price the oil below market and then sell it and the buyers would turn around and sell it for a huge profit and kick back money to Saddam. Saddam was allowed to do business with anyone - including terrorist linked companies and many dummy corporations he set up himself. The UN was supposed to be monitoring this - but they didn’t make much of an effort to do so.
Interestingly, the reporters digging on this story have found lists of companies and people and countries who were getting big contracts from Saddam. Guess who tops the list? France, Russia, China. They were doing billions of dollars worth of business. They are also the three permanent members of the security council members who voted not to support the U.S. action in Iraq. I guess that could be a coincidence. Who else is on the list? The UN guy in charge of administering the oil for food program.
The link to Al-Qaeda has not been specifically found yet. However, the 9-11 Commission points out the Bin Laden did not have the money previously thought and that he did not have a personal fortune capable of funding Al-Qaeda activities. Many of the companies doing business with Saddam are on the Terror Watch list. The food for money program kicked into high gear in 1998 - the same time frame Bin Laden’s people met with Iraqi intelligence officers in Baghdad - these meetings are detailed in the 9-11 commission. 1998 was also a deadly year, with Al-Qaeda bombing two of our embassy’s.
All of this is under investigation by Congress and the special treasury department set up to trace money that funds terrorism. The UN is not cooperating by releasing all of the documents on this program.
The number is now up to $21 Billion that Saddam stole from the UN. France, Russia, and China were the biggest participants in the Oil for Food program (remember they all voted against enforcing UN sanctions).
Congress has asked the UN to provide all the documents on the Oil for Food program and Kofi Annan REFUSES to give them up. At the very least he is an obstructionist.
Saddam might have backed down if France, Russia, and China stood firm with the rest of the world…and now we are at war because these countries wanted to protect their sweet oil deals.
When is this story going to become the number one story in the news???
Saddam might have backed down if France, Russia, and China stood firm with the rest of the world…and now we are at war because these countries wanted to protect their sweet oil deals.
Wow. That’s the best piece of re-invention I’ve read in a long time.
I don’t think TxDude is that far off. If those countries had been unloading their military hardware and not working with Saddam to stall and obstruct our efforts things may have been much different. I think there is much more to this story then some people want to see. It is just more fun to call Bush a stupid, arrogant liar who was going to do whatever he wanted. Bottom line is that when given the chance, those countries, chose to defend their financial interests rather than stand tough on the UN resolution. Even if we had ultimately gone to war, we would have their assitance.
I don’t think TxDude is that far off.
I do. I’m sorry, but blaming France China and Russia for being at war is the most ridiculous thing I can think of.
“It is just more fun to call Bush a stupid, arrogant liar who was going to do whatever he wanted.”
And this preferable alternative is being the unwitting victim of the French and Russian Chinese and their cynical pursuit of profit? Bullshit. Thats why its a re-invention. All that money was being spent on what? The most terrifying… deadly… imminent… non-existent (ie not materially there) weapons programme known to man.
I wouldn’t blame them for being at war, we ulitmately made that choice. It isn’t their fault, but had they not acted the way they did, the outcome would have been much different, and like I said we may have still gone to war but the war would have been better with them there.
while i get that there were gov’t officials and individuals in france, russia, china, etc. that were against war for personal reasons involving the money for oil scandal. however, there wasn’t much popular support for the war in france/russia(not really sure about china, but i don’t know that the u.s. was gonna ask them to participate). thus, the fact that france/russia had some ulterior motives is mitigated by the fact that the war wasn’t popular in those countries to begin with. the fact that the general populace was against the war made it more convenient for the interested parties to attempt block u.s. action/not participate in military actions in iraq.
And this preferable alternative is being the unwitting victim of the French and Russian Chinese and their cynical pursuit of profit? Bullshit. Thats why its a re->invention. All that money was being spent on what? The most terrifying… deadly… imminent… non-existent (ie not materially there) weapons programme known >to man.
We know Saddam built palaces and he would have built nucular weapons if left unchecked. Period.
As far as Kofi Anan’s son and Chirac’s right hand guy (forgot his name) - you need to ask THEM what they did with their pot of gold from Saddam. I’m sure other names will surface as well.
No revisionism here. Saddam would have backed down with the entire world in his face. Instead, he just mis-calculated thinking the U.S. would let the likes of Chirac dictate what needs to be done to protect our country. Wonder what he’s thinking now?
No revisionism here. Saddam would have backed down with the entire world in his face.
Where is this coming from? Did he leave a diary entry saying he would have been a good boy if only everyone asked him nicely?
What you are saying is ridiculous - you’re trying to pull other reasons in to justify going to war. France Russia and China forced Bush and Blairs to act against their will?!? France Russia and China didn’t arrange for there to be no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or (and here’s the kicker for you) for Saddam to come to power in the first place. Guess who claims the prize for that master stroke?
That is my opinion. And I don’t give a rats ass about WMD’s. Never did. Go sing that shit to someone that cares.
Well, at least that makes for a consistently realistic argument.
I’m not arguing anything. But thanks.
“Did he leave a diary entry saying he would have been a good boy if only everyone asked him nicely?”
If he did have a diary entry stating the same thing, would you have believed it?
**So that is the best defence of the UN you have? Fox sucks so there is no way the UN could be wrong? **
Why the hell is it you think it’s the UN that needs to be defended? They aren’t the ones who went to war on a faulty premise, were they? That was us.
As much as I really can’t stand the UN, this finger pointing is a smoke screen.
** And I don’t give a rats ass about WMD’s. Never did.**
Then refresh my memory, Tex- what reason did you think justified invading Iraq?
Its not just Fox news reporting this.
Come Clean, Kofi
The U.N. secretary-general ducks responsibilty for the Oil for Food scam.
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Wednesday, November 17, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
With estimates soaring of graft and fraud under the United Nations Oil for Food program in Iraq, we are hearing a lot about the need to “get to the bottom” of this scandal, the biggest ever to hit the U.N. To get to that bottom will need a much harder look at the top–where Secretary-General Kofi Annan himself resides.
That violates all sorts of taboos. But so, one might suppose, does a United Nations that allowed Saddam Hussein to embezzle at least $21.3 billion in oil money during 12 years, with the great bulk of that sum–a staggering $17.3 billion–pilfered between 1997-2003, on Mr. Annan’s watch.
These are the record-breaking new estimates released Monday by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, whose staffers, despite Mr. Annan’s refusal to cooperate, have spent the past seven months voyaging deep into the muck of Oil for Food. At a hearing Monday, these investigators surfaced to tell us the theft and fraud under Oil for Food was at least twice as bad as earlier reports had suggested, and that all this is just a preview of yet more appalling disclosures they expect to release early next year. Sen. Norm Coleman, the subcommittee’s chairman, underscored the urgency of such investigations, noting not only that the size of the fraud “is staggering,” but that some of Saddam’s vast illicit stash might right now be funding terrorists and costing American lives.
Mr. Annan, by contrast, seems to inhabit a different universe–one in which the chief problem lies not in the U.N.'s complicity, including his own, in the biggest fraud in the history of humanitarian relief, but rather in the attempts to shine any light on all that sleaze. In Annan Land, there was earlier this year no need for any probe into Oil for Food; and even now there is no need for any investigating beyond the U.N.'s own “independent inquiry” into itself, led by former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, required to funnel its findings first through Mr. Annan, funded to the tune of $30 million out of one of the old Oil for Food accounts it is supposed to be investigating, and not planning to clock in with any specific results until sometime next summer.
In the spirit of shooting the messenger, Mr. Annan has complained often in recent months about criticism of Oil for Food, denouncing it as a “campaign” that has “hurt the U.N.” Monday’s Oil for Food hearing evoked from Mr. Annan’s spokesman, Fred Eckhard, the comment that Mr. Annan feels he has been “misjudged by certain media” and that Mr. Annan is “not being obstructionist” in his refusal to cooperate with congressional investigators. We are given to understand that Mr. Annan would help if he could, but his job entails so many over-riding responsibilities.
OK, except that when it comes to Oil for Food, Mr. Annan has labored hard in recent months to disavow his own large role and responsibilities. From both Mr. Annan and the entourage of U.N. speechwriters and spokesman who report to him have come a long series of disclaimers and protests, eye-catching less for what they tell us than for what they leave out.
Just last week, we had Mr. Annan’s director of communications, Edward Mortimer, asserting in a letter to The Wall Street Journal that Mr. Annan was “not involved” in designing Oil for Food. Technically, it may be correct that Mr. Annan did not actually seal the original deal. But Mr. Annan’s own official U.N. biography states that before becoming secretary-general, he “led the first United Nations team negotiating with Iraq on the sale of oil to fund purchases of humanitarian aid”–and that implies a certain familiarity with the origins of Oil for Food.
Once Mr. Annan became secretary-general, he lost little time in getting deeply involved with Oil for Food. In October 1997, just 10 months into the job, he transformed what had begun as an ad hoc, temporary relief measure into the Office of the Iraq Program, an entrenched U.N. department, which reported to him directly–and was eliminated only after the U.S.-led coalition, against Mr. Annan’s wishes, deposed Saddam. To run Oil for Food, Mr. Annan picked Benon Sevan (now alleged to have received oil money from Saddam, which he denies) and kept him there until the program ended about six years later.
Mr. Annan’s reorganization of Oil for Food meant a nontrivial change in the trajectory of the program. All the signs are that Saddam immediately took the cue that he could now start gaming the program with impunity–and Mr. Annan did not prove him wrong. Within the month, Saddam had created the first crisis over the U.N. weapons inspectors, who were supposed to be part of the sanctions and Oil for Food package. Mr. Annan’s response was not to throttle back on Oil for Food but to go before the Security Council a few months later and urge that Baghdad be allowed to import oil equipment along with the food and medicine to which the program had been initially limited. This set the stage for the ensuing burst in Saddam’s oil production, kickbacks, surcharges and smuggling.
Mr. Annan then flew to Baghdad for a private powwow with Saddam and returned to declare that this was a man he could do business with. The weapons inspectors returned to Iraq for a short spell, but by the end of 1998, Saddam had evicted them for the next four years. Mr. Annan, however, went right on doing business. And big business it was, however humanitarian in name. Under the Oil for Food deal, Mr. Annan’s Secretariat pulled in a 2.2% commission on Saddam’s oil sales, totaling a whopping $1.4 billion over the life of the program, to cover the costs of supervising Saddam. Yet somehow the Secretariat never found the funding to fully meter oil shipments, ensure full inspections of all goods entering Iraq, or catch the pricing scams that by the new estimates of Senate investigators let Saddam rake in $4.4 billion in kickbacks on relief contracts.
Mr. Annan and his aides would also have us believe that Oil for Food had nothing to do with Saddam’s smuggling of oil–which generated the lion’s share of his illicit income. But it was only after Oil for Food geared up that Saddam’s oil smuggling really took off, totaling $13.6 billion during his entire 12 years between wars, but with more than two-thirds of that–an estimated $9.7 billion–earned during the era of Oil for Food. Those were precisely the years in which Mr. Annan repeatedly went to bat to enable Saddam, under Oil for Food, to import the equipment to rebuild Iraq’s oil infrastructure, whence came all that smuggled oil.
Transparency from the start might have flagged the world and stopped the scams as things turned deeply rotten under Oil for Food. But Mr. Annan’s policy to this day has been secrecy. On Monday, Sen. Coleman summed up his subcommittee’s efforts to get at the truth, as having required so far, eight subpoenas, 13 chairman’s letters, “numerous interviews with key participants, and receipt of over a million pages of evidence” to begin to understand “the behind-the-scenes machinations of the participants in the Oil for Food program.”
“Participants” are generally understood to have been Saddam’s chosen contractors. But we need to recognize that one of the biggest of those contractors was, in effect, the U.N. itself. As Oil for Food was not only designed but expanded, embellished upon and run for more than six years under Mr. Annan’s stewardship, it became not so much a supervisory operation, but a business deal with Saddam, in which the U.N. in effect provided money laundering services, the Secretariat collected a percentage fee from Saddam–and somewhere in there, between the kickbacks, surcharges, importation of oil equipment and smuggling out of oil, they jointly ran a storefront relief operation.
Who at the U.N. took illicit money from Saddam–if, indeed, anyone did–is an important question, and worth pursuing. But so is the matter of who covered up for Saddam; who pushed to continue and expand a program so derelict that it failed to nab more than $17 billion in illicit deals, and so secretive that investigators have spent much of the past year trying simply to get their hands on information the U.N. should have made public at the time. It is worth asking whose welfare was enhanced, whose domain was expanded, whose coffers filled with $1.4 billion delivered as a percentage cut of Saddam’s oil revenues–and who has failed to this day to take on board the thumping lessons about the need for transparency at the U.N.
That would be Mr. Annan. He is not protecting the U.N. At great cost to whatever noble aspirations the U.N. once had, and to all societies that value integrity over Potemkin institutions, he is protecting himself.
Ms. Rosett is a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the Hudson Institute. Her column appears here and in The Wall Street Journal Europe on alternate Wednesdays.