View Full Version : Ahh, Our French and Russian Allies. How Stupid We Were to Take Action Without Them
KCWolfman
10-02-2004, 02:07 AM
House Panel to Blast Oil-for-Food Program (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,134256,00.html)
UNITED NATIONS — Congressional investigators have uncovered new evidence of corruption within the U.N. Oil-for-Food program and are expected to unleash a fresh barrage of accusations and criticisms next week, FOX News learned Friday.
A memo, obtained by FOX, was prepared for members of the House subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations. The panel, chaired by Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., will hold a hearing on the matter next Tuesday.
The committee will be highly critical of what it says is the lack of transparency about Oil-for-Food, a program the United Nations created in late 1996 to allow the Iraqi government to sell oil so it could buy humanitarian goods. But officials believe billions of dollars were diverted to Saddam Hussein and his associates.
Investigators said the list of oil purchasers was not known and the list of humanitarian providers was not known. Plus they found that not only were internal U.N. audits not released, they continue to be withheld from both member states of the United Nations as well as from the public.
But the committee will also single out certain Security Council (search) nations as being complicit in the corruption, among them France, Russia and China. Businesses from these nations, the memo says, made billions through their involvement with Saddam’s regime.
Release those records, gentlemen. Or we can only consider you collaborators in terror.
Whoa! Its the right-wing, propaganda machine, FOXNews!
Kraut
10-02-2004, 04:33 AM
It is amazing how this story is getting no press from the other networks. To me this kind of story is more important then a prescripted presidential debate. At least Fox is running the story.
jcl-kcfan2
10-02-2004, 06:47 AM
Whoa! Its the right-wing, propaganda machine, FOXNews!
So davo, your saying that they are making up the "corruption" that was perpetrated under the "food for oil" program?
That makes sense, since the U.N. won't release their records those member nations must truly be innocent. Otherwise the UN would've already called them out, right.
I mean, these people must be above reproach since we want to let them dictate our foreign relations/policies... right???????
whoman69
10-02-2004, 08:15 AM
Of course there has never been any corruption within the American government at all.
The fact is that we not only could not get the cooperation these countries due to their involvement, we didn't get any significant cooperation from any country except the UK. We have face 90 % of the miltary and financial burden for Iraq.
Duck Dog
10-02-2004, 10:28 AM
Of course there has never been any corruption within the American government at all.
The fact is that we not only could not get the cooperation these countries due to their involvement, we didn't get any significant cooperation from any country except the UK. We have face 90 % of the miltary and financial burden for Iraq.
blah, blah, blah. You forgot to add something about Haliburton.
If you can't see past your hatred of our government and our president and see why we didn't have any help from them, you are lost.
Cochise
10-02-2004, 10:31 AM
Of course there has never been any corruption within the American government at all.
Hmmm... not sure what that has to do with the Oil for Saddam program but thanks.
Another example of why the UN is useless.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,134265,00.html
The above link is to the text of the U.N.'s response to a recent Fox News special on this "scandal". One of the points the U.N. makes is the very obvious fact that the United States consumed the lion's share of the oil in the oil-for-food program.
Speaking of lion's share, let's grant that these allegations are true, how does the corruption of a few elites explain how huge majorities of ordinary citizens in a couple of long-established and wealthy industrialised nations would not want their countries to go to war, especially a preemptive aggressive war which, according to the codes developed by the American-led prosecution at the famous Nuremberg trials which were held in one of those countries, is the supreme war crime?
If the corruption of a few elites is a way to guarantee that nations won't squander their lives and treasure on unnecessary wars against exaggerated threats, then corruption would have a better reputation as a public policy. In fact, "corrupt and deceptive elites" is far more viable as an explanation of how nations got into this war, not as an explanation of how other countries didn't drink the Kool-Aid that the Straussians tried to serve up in their unconvincing UN Presentation in February, 2003. Here are the opening paragraphs of antiwar.com Justiin Raimondo's essay from last year on the Straussian adherence to an elitist culture of deception.
BEHIND THE LIES
Neocons lied us into war – will they get away with it twice?
Senator Robert Bennett (R-Utah) has denounced the widespread call for the U.S. to account for the "weapons of mass destruction" Iraq was supposed to have as "historical revisionism." This is odd phraseology. Our understanding of history is being constantly revised and updated, as new evidence comes to light, which is why "revisionism" – acting as a constant prod to orthodoxy – is the motor of intellectual progress. We need more "revisionism," not less.
In retrospect, the events that have impelled us to war have turned out, in every case, to be elaborate hoaxes. We now know, for example, that the Maine was blown up, not by the Spanish, but by an internal malfunction: the investigation carried out by Admiral Hyman Rickover in 1976 showed that the event that sparked the Spanish-American War was in all likelihood spontaneous combustion in a coal bin. Yet the media whipped up a war hysteria that swept aside all questions of fact. "Remember the Maine!" is a slogan that ought to make us forever leery of war propaganda.
Those infamous tales of Belgian babies speared on German bayonets – war propaganda that did much to rile the American public on the eve of World War I – were a figment of some British propagandist's vivid imagination. The myth-makers were even busier in the period leading up to World War II: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, we have since learned, knew much more about the "surprise" attack on Pearl Harbor than even the most cynical observers suspected. Clare Booth Luce was right when she said of FDR's deception: "He lied us into war." But it doesn't stop there.
The grand deception continued into the cold war era. The Satan with a sword that was supposed to have been the Soviet Union, it turned out, was a 90-lb. weakling that, finally, succumbed to its own inherent disability: yet, right up until the fall of the Berlin Wall, U.S. intelligence assessments were flat-out wrong, driven as they were by ideological assumptions and interests. The neocons at first denounced the self-dissolution of Communism, as carried out by Mikhail Gorbachev, as a trick. Right up until the end, they warned of the growing Soviet threat.
In the post-cold war world, the masters of deceit really went overboard: remember those Kuwait babies that were supposed to have been disconnected from their incubators by invading Iraqi troops and flung to the floor? It turned out that the "eyewitness" to these imaginary happenings was none other than the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador, and that the hoax had been concocted by Kuwait's American PR firm. A similar style of blatant fakery permeates the war propaganda of the post-9/11 era, except on a much grander scale.
John Dean speculates as to whether the lies about Iraq's alleged arsenal, told by this administration, and by George W. Bush personally, constitute grounds for impeachment. This seems, theoretically and practically, a dubious proposition: if every President who ever lied us into war had been tried and found guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, we'd have indicted every occupant of the White House in modern times.
Team Bush constructed an imposing edifice of lies to impress Congress and the people with the enormity of the Iraqi threat. Shocking, isn't it? Well, uh, no. Not when it comes to the neocons. They are, as has been widely noted, students and admirers of the late Leo Strauss – the New York Times calls them "Leo-cons." Strauss was a classics professor, influential thinker, and neocon icon who believed that wisdom must be imparted to intellectual elites in esoteric terms, because it might be misunderstood by the ignorant masses.
Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, a leading hawk, and Abram Shulsky, the director of the Office of Special Plans unit set up by Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to find evidence of Iraqi WMDs, received their doctorates under professor Strauss's tutelage. Shulsky is a scholar steeped in Strauss and the classics, and lest it be doubted that the labored effusions of a philosophic eccentric could have an application to intelligence work, there is always a 1999 essay, authored by Shulsky and Gary Schmitt, "Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence," which makes the argument that Strauss's concept of esoteric meanings:
"Alerts one to the possibility that political life may be closely linked to deception. Indeed, it suggests that deception is the norm in political life, and the hope, to say nothing of the expectation, of establishing a politics that can dispense with it is the exception."
So this administration lied to Congress and the American people over a period of several months – what else do you expect from people who proudly aver that "deception is the norm in political life" and make no bones about their disregard for the idea of objective truth?
http://usatoday.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&expire=&urlID=6554879&fb=Y&partnerID=16
KCWolfman
10-02-2004, 11:31 AM
in one of those countries, is the supreme war crime?
If the corruption of a few elites is a way to guarantee that nations won't squander their lives and treasure on unnecessary wars against exaggerated threats, then corruption would have a better reputation as a public policy. In fact, "corrupt and deceptive elites" is far more viable as an explanation of how nations got into this war, not as an explanation of how other countries didn't drink the Kool-Aid that the Straussians tried to serve up in their unconvincing UN Presentation in February, 2003. Here are the opening paragraphs of antiwar.com Justiin Raimondo's essay from last year on the Straussian adherence to an elitist culture of deception.
[url]http://usatoday.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&expire=&urlID=6554879&fb=Y&partnerID=16
I guess if you are willing to sell your soul and watch the deaths of innocent people based upon your profit, you can justify it by saying "well, not that many are dying".
Yesterday, Colin Powell said he regrets that the administration in which he serves said that Iraq had stockpiles of WMD.
Posted on Fri, Oct. 01, 2004
Powell regrets saying Iraq had weapons stockpiles
HARRY R. WEBER
Associated Press
ATLANTA - Secretary of State Colin Powell said he regrets the Bush administration said that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in its argument for war, but he believes the world is better off without Saddam Hussein.
Following a speech to the Atlanta Press Club on Friday, Powell defended the bulk of his presentation to the United Nations in February 2003 in which he made the case for war in Iraq.
"The only thing where we got it wrong and where our presentation did not hold up was the actual stockpiles," Powell said. "We've seen nothing to suggest that he had actual stockpiles. That was not right."
He added, "As we've gone back and looked through the intelligence, there are indications that we had bad sourcing that we should have caught. For that I am disappointed and regret that that information was not correct."
A Senate Intelligence Committee's report on prewar intelligence about Iraq found that much of the information provided or cleared by the CIA for inclusion in Powell's speech to the United Nations "was overstated, misleading or incorrect."
Nevertheless, Powell noted that the war has led to the ouster of Saddam, and for that he believes the world will be safer. Saddam had used weapons of mass destruction against his own people and Iraq's neighbors - contentions that were also used as part of Bush's argument for war.
"So, he had a history, the intention of doing it, he was hiding things, he was not responding to the demands of the international community," Powell said of Saddam.
On other topics, Powell said he believes that multinational talks to try to end nuclear proliferation in North Korea is the right way to go, rather than the bilateral talks pushed by Democrat John Kerry during his debate Thursday night with Bush.
"The president has shown the patience and the skill to move the process forward," Powell said.
As for his future, Powell said he has made no decision about whether he will leave at the end of Bush's current term if the president is re-elected, though he said his future is something he will discuss with Bush in time.
He joked about media speculation about his future.
"Media reports are very often quite accurate, very often not accurate, very often totally unsourced with no basis in fact," Powell said to laughter. "I serve with the pleasure of the president."
unlurking
10-02-2004, 11:36 AM
Hmmm... not sure what that has to do with the Oil for Saddam program but thanks.
Another example of why the UN is useless.
The UN isn't useless, the problem is that SOMEONE ELSE is using it instead of us. We should be leading the UN. If not, kick the f0ckers out of our country and walk away. I'm sure it would soon collapse.
I guess if you are willing to sell your soul and watch the deaths of innocent people based upon your profit, you can justify it by saying "well, not that many are dying".
I'm not sure if you understood my question. Put it like this. In how many minds would the above rationalization (in your quote) have to be made in order for a country not to commit to a war?
a) only one mind
b) the minds of a few elites
c) the minds of a helluva lot of people
Grant that corruption existed. How many people in those countries benefitted from it and how does that explain the countries' decisions not to go to war?
KCWolfman
10-02-2004, 11:42 AM
I'm not sure if you understood my question. Put it like this. In how many minds would the above rationalization (in your quote) have to be made in order for a country not to commit to a war?
a) only one mind
b) the minds of a few elites
c) the minds of a helluva lot of people
It would be dependent upon the type of government, wouldn't it?
KCWolfman
10-02-2004, 11:43 AM
Grant that corruption existed. How many people in those countries benefitted from it and how does that explain the countries' decisions not to go to war?
The same people who lead those countries were the ones benefitting. They also insured that the media being released was condusive to their efforts and we truly don't know how many actually profitted until the UN capitulates and releases the records.
Hey, I got an idea, let's start a 12 year sanction on the UN until they do.
The same people who lead those countries were the ones benefitting. They also insured that the media being released was condusive to their efforts and we truly don't know how many actually profitted until the UN capitulates and releases the records.
Hey, I got an idea, let's start a 12 year sanction on the UN until they do.
So in France and Germany, your answer would be "b) the minds of a few elites" is all that would be necessary for a corrupt rationalization that leads to the will of the nation to be against a war. What about in the United States?
It'll be interesting to learn what the Congressional investigators are complaining about when they say they can't figure out who bought what and that they want to look at France's and Germany's internal audits. Here are two entries from the UN Response to Fox News that may be pertinent:
Is the UN cooperating with investigators? Fox News quotes Rep. Representative Christopher Shays expressing concern that Paul Volcker's panel may not get "the cooperation he wants." However, the Security Council itself adopted a resolution requiring all UN member countries "including their national regulatory authorities, to cooperate fully by all appropriate means with the inquiry." For his part, Secretary-General Kofi Annan issued instructions to all staff to do the same, and publicly declared that those who fail to cooperate will be fired. Mr. Volcker has stated a number of times that he is committed to cooperating with other on-going investigations. Furthermore contractors working for the Oil for Food Programme have been urged by the UN to cooperated with subpoenas and are in fact doing so. For his part, Secretary-General Kofi Annan issued instructions to all staff to do the same, and publicly declared that those who fail to cooperate will be fired.
Oil for Food contracts — who knew what? Fox News makes much of the UN's supposed "secrecy" when in fact all contracts had to be submitted to the UN for approval via the national authorities of each supplier. All details of every contract were known not only by the national authorities of each supplier but also by the members of the Security Council 661 Committee — including, of course, the US — who had the power to approve or hold any contract. Further, on November 23, 2003, the UN provided the Coalition Provisional Authority with its entire database. Simultaneously, thousands of copies of Oil-for-Food contracts were placed on CDs and transferred to the Iraqi authorities and the CPA (which had requested copies of all active contracts).
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,134265,00.html
BigOlChiefsfan
10-02-2004, 01:09 PM
link NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/02/international/middleeast/02food.html?oref=login&oref=login&oref=login)
CORRUPTION - 3 Nations Reportedly Slowed Probe of Oil Sales
By JUDITH MILLER
Published: October 2, 2004
Congressional investigators say that France, Russia and China systematically sabotaged the former United Nations oil-for-food program in Iraq by preventing the United States and Britain from investigating whether Saddam Hussein was diverting billions of dollars.
In a briefing paper given yesterday to members of the House subcommittee investigating the program, the investigators said their review of the minutes of a United Nations Security Council subcommittee meeting showed that the three nations "continually refused to support the U.S. and U.K. efforts to maintain the integrity" of the program.
The program, set up in 1996, was an effort to keep pressure on Mr. Hussein to disarm while helping the Iraqi people survive the sanctions imposed after the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The briefing paper was prepared by the House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, before hearings scheduled for Tuesday on the scandal-ridden program.
The paper suggests that France, Russia and China blocked inquiries into Iraq's manipulation of the program because their companies "had much to gain from maintaining'' the status quo. "Their businesses made billions of dollars through their involvement with the Hussein regime and O.F.F.P.," the document states, using the initials for the program. No officials of the three governments could be reached for comment.
The paper also accuses the United Nations office charged with overseeing the program of having "pressed" contractors not to rigorously inspect Iraqi oil being sold and the foreign goods being bought. The program office, headed by Benan Sevan, who is also under investigation by a committee appointed by the United Nations, turned a blind eye to corruption charges, the paper says, because it apparently saw oil-for-food "strictly as a humanitarian program."
Representative Christopher Shays, the Connecticut Republican who chairs the subcommittee, said in an interview that there was no doubt that the abuses were systemic and that blame for the widespread corruption must be shared by Security Council members, the United Nations office that administered the program, and the contractors hired by the United Nations to inspect Iraq's oil exports and aid purchases.
The briefing paper said the hearing would focus on Cotecna, the Switzerland-based company hired by the United Nations in 1999 to monitor goods shipped to Iraq, and Saybolt International B.V., the Dutch company that monitored Iraqi oil exports.
Also under scrutiny will be BNP Paribas, the French bank that handled oil revenues under the program and which "never initiated a review of the program or the reputation of those involved," the paper says. This "apparent incuriosity," it adds, "raises questions about its internal due diligence and ethical safeguards."
The paper said Mr. Hussein's government had influenced whom Saybolt and Cotecna employed and had made it hard for them to obtain the equipment and supplies they needed. "This slowed the inspection process, making it difficult for the inspectors to carry out their duties and easier for the Iraqis to pressure the inspectors or sneak things past the inspection regime,'' the paper says.
Cotecna, which monitored goods bought by Iraq, "had no authority to force authentication or inspection on shipments coming across the border, nor did they have the practical authority to detain shipments that failed authentication or inspection."
The subcommittee paper called Cotecna a "paper tiger.''
The paper concludes that the program's greatest weakness was a lack of transparency. "Most transactions involving the program were done behind closed doors or sometimes illicitly," it states. The lists of oil purchasers and aid providers were not known. The United Nations internal audits continue to be withheld from United Nations members and the public.
A recent report issued in Washington by the Government Accountability Office, formerly the General Accounting Office, accused the Hussein government of having pocketed more than $10 billion from the six-year oil-for-food program, which used $64.2 billion in Iraqi oil sales to pay for food, medicine and other goods from 1997 to 2003. Last February, a document from Iraqi ministries reportedly cited Mr. Sevan, the chief of the United Nations office that administered the program, as having received oil allotments himself. Mr. Sevan has denied the charges.
The Shays subcommittee is investigating all aspects of the program, as are several other Congressional panels and the United Nations-appointed panel, which is headed by Paul A. Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Thanks for the link to the Judith Miller story. She has a remarkable ability to find things that others can't, as a yahoo.com search for
+"Judith Miller" +lies
will indicate. Here's the lead paragraph from one of the "hits":
http://slate.msn.com/id/2086110
The Times Scoops That Melted
Cataloging the wretched reporting of Judith Miller.
By Jack Shafer
Posted Friday, July 25, 2003, at 3:49 PM PT
If reporters who live by their sources were obliged to die by their sources, New York Times reporter Judith Miller would be stinking up her family tomb right now. In the 18-month run-up to the war on Iraq, Miller grew incredibly close to numerous Iraqi sources, both named and anonymous, who gave her detailed interviews about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Yet 100 days after the fall of Baghdad, none of the sensational allegations about chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons given to Miller have panned out, despite the furious crisscrossing of Iraq by U.S. weapons hunters.
Slayer
10-02-2004, 03:30 PM
France hasn't done anything for another country without thinking "What's in it for us?" since it officially became France. So no surprise there when it comes to corruption. Russia has that huge history of becoming corrupt or tyrannical, so no surprise there either. China has more moral problems than I can go over in a day's time...the highest of which include torture, backstabbing, and prison sanitation that makes a dog's mouth look devoid of bacteria and viruses. So no surprise when it comes to China.
...and they say we don't have probable cause to attack those three countries....HA!
Here's to all the countries of the world that have enough common sense and fortitude not to do things that are not in the interests of their own people. :toast:
ck_IN
10-02-2004, 05:44 PM
I'm shocked, <b>shocked</b> to hear that the UN and France are corrupt.
So I wonder how this works into Kerry's 'Plan' since his 'Plan' seems to consist of groveling at the UN and begging France to help us. Of course there's tons of countries that are just waiting to join us in Iraq if they were only asked nicely. His 'Plan' should be printed in detail in the NY Times. After all they seem to love fiction and fantasy.
listopencil
10-02-2004, 06:21 PM
This story seems to have legs, so I've been doing a little research. Here are two different views of the HQ building:
Early:
http://fantasia.ncsa.uiuc.edu/doug/superhtml/images/hall3.jpg
Later:
http://fantasia.ncsa.uiuc.edu/doug/superhtml/images/hall4.jpg
Obviously there were some renovations. Where did the money come from?
listopencil
10-02-2004, 06:28 PM
Here's a couple of pics I dug up on the Drudge Report. The first one shows a meeting between the French, Russian and Chinese representatives on the mean streets of Iraq. Notice that the French rep seems to be signalling an unseen cohort:
http://fantasia.ncsa.uiuc.edu/doug/superhtml/images/wendy1.jpg
Here's another pic (I can't disclose the source to maintain the integrity of field operatives) of the three on a hillside in Afghanistan, shortly after inspecting poppy fields which would later be harvested to produce heroin:
http://fantasia.ncsa.uiuc.edu/doug/superhtml/images/wendy2.jpg
There's more to this story. I won't rest until I find out what the League Of Nations is up to!
MadProphetMargin
10-02-2004, 06:38 PM
[QUOTE=KCWolfmanRelease those records, gentlemen. Or we can only consider you collaborators in terror.[/QUOTE]
Oh, wow. Another attempt to merge Saddam/AQ. What a surprise.
listopencil
10-02-2004, 07:12 PM
I think this guy might be in on it. Here's the Syrian rep addressing the Security Council in a special back office meeting. Strangely, the meeting appears to have been held in a swamp:
http://members.aol.com/Polecattt/scrow2.jpg
listopencil
10-02-2004, 07:13 PM
[QUOTE=KCWolfmanRelease those records, gentlemen. Or we can only consider you collaborators in terror.[/QUOTE]Oh, wow. Another attempt to merge Saddam/AQ. What a surprise.
Nice quote job, by the way.
MadProphetMargin
10-02-2004, 07:20 PM
=KCWolfmanRelease those records, gentlemen. Or we can only consider you collaborators in terror.Oh, wow. Another attempt to merge Saddam/AQ. What a surprise.
Nice quote job, by the way.
I R html JENYUS! :homer:
Of course there has never been any corruption within the American government at all.
The fact is that we not only could not get the cooperation these countries due to their involvement, we didn't get any significant cooperation from any country except the UK. We have face 90 % of the miltary and financial burden for Iraq.
has it ever occured to you to ask yourself the question as to why the UK WON'T join the EU? or why the current administration bypassed the UN when it wasn't enforcing it's own sanctions ANYWHERE at ANYTIME?
i didn't think so...
BigOlChiefsfan
10-03-2004, 07:47 AM
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1291280,00.html
Saddam ‘bought UN allies’ with oil
Robert Winnett
A LEAKED report has exposed the extent of alleged corruption in the United Nations’ oil-for-food scheme in Iraq, identifying up to 200 individuals and companies that made profits running into hundreds of millions of pounds from it.
The report largely implicates France and Russia, whom Saddam Hussein targeted as he sought support on the UN Security Council before the Iraq war. Both countries were influential voices against UN-backed action.
A senior UN official responsible for the scheme is identified as a major beneficiary. The report, marked “highly confidential”, also finds that the private office of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, profited from the cheap oil. Saddam’s regime awarded this oil during the run-up to the war when military action was being discussed at the UN.
The report was drawn up on behalf of the interim Iraqi government in preparation for a possible legal action against those who may have illicitly profited under Saddam. The Iraqis hired the London-based accountants KPMG and lawyers Freshfields to advise on future action.
It details a catalogue of alleged bribery and corruption perpetrated by Saddam under the UN programme, revealing how the regime lined its pockets and those of influential politicians, journalists and UN officials.
The UN oil-for-food scheme was set up in 1995 to allow Iraq to sell controlled amounts of oil to raise money for humanitarian supplies. However, the leaked report reveals Saddam systematically abused the scheme, using it to buy “political influence” throughout the world.
The former Iraqi regime was in effect free to “allocate” oil to whom it wished. Dozens of private individuals were given oil at knockdown prices. They were able to nominate recognised traders to buy the cheap oil from the Iraqi state oil firm and sell it for a personal profit.
The report says oil was given to key countries: “The regime gave priority to Russia, China and France. This was because they were permanent members of, and hence had the ability to influence decisions made by, the UN Security Council. The regime . . . allocated ‘private oil’ to individuals or political parties that sympathised in some way with the regime.”
The report also details how the regime benefited by arranging illegal “kickbacks” from oil sales.
From September 2000, it is said Saddam made $228m (£127m) from kickbacks deposited in accounts across the Middle East. The analysis details only the export of oil — not the import of humanitarian supplies, also alleged to have been riddled with corruption.
The report is an interim analysis and therefore studies only a sample of oil contracts.
The other main allegations included in the report are that:
*Benon Sevan, director of the UN oil-for-food programme, received 9.3m barrels of oil from the regime which he is estimated to have sold for a profit of £670,000. Sevan has always denied any improper conduct.
*A former senior aide to Putin allegedly organised the sale of almost 4m barrels of oil at a profit of more than £330,000. At the time the oil was sold, Russia was blocking the UN from supporting America’s demands to attack Iraq. According to the report, the aide, who worked in the presidential office, received 3.9m barrels of oil between May and December 2002.
*In the two months during the run-up to the war, the Iraqi regime illegally sold about £30m of oil to a Jordanian-based company with the money deposited in a Jordanian bank account established by the regime. This is suspected to have been an attempt to secure safe passage for Saddam’s family in the event of war.
*A French oil company teamed up with the regime to bribe a UN-appointed inspector monitoring exports of Iraqi oil. The inspector, a Portuguese national working for Saybolt, a Dutch firm, was paid a total of £58,000 in cash to forge export documents.
The French firm is linked to a close associate of Jacques Chirac, the country’s president. A spokesman for Saybolt said it would be investigating the allegations.
Saddam imposed a surcharge of between 10 cents and 50 cents (5p to 27p) for every barrel of oil allocated by his regime between September 2000 and the end of 2002.
The money raised from this illegal surcharge was deposited in bank accounts in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates. Iraqi embassies, including those in Moscow, Athens, Cairo, Rome, Vienna and Geneva, collected the money.
In total, 175 firms and individuals allegedly paid bribes to secure oil from the regime. According to the report: “The only way of enforcing the surcharge was through verbal personal guarantees and promises due to the sensitivity of the surcharge and the secrecy surrounding its imposition. However, after extensive efforts in collecting these amounts, a total of $228m (£127m) out of $263m (£146m) was eventually collected (87% of the total imposed).
“Some companies were afraid to pay the amounts through the banking system, in order not to be exposed or face possible legal sanctions overseas, and therefore preferred to pay in cash.”
The report claims that Russians had a prominent role. They received “unprecedented priority” and were allocated a third of all Iraqi oil — most of which was resold to other nations. Besides Putin’s private office, those named as having received oil include political parties, Russian oil firms and the foreign ministry.
A section of the report on Russian involvement says Saddam and his henchmen furthered “their political and propagandist cause through companies, individuals and political parties that have no relation to the oil industry. Through their activities, they have gained the indebtedness of the Russian Federation and with that, its weight and leadership on the world stage as well as its permanent membership of the UN Security Council”.
Last week Claude Hankes-Drielsma, an Iraqi government adviser who worked on the investigation, confirmed the report as genuine. “The records demonstrate that the UN oil-for-food programme provided Saddam with a vehicle to buy support internationally by bribing political parties, companies, journalists and other individuals,” he said. “This shows the need for a complete review of the UN.”
FringeNC
10-03-2004, 08:29 AM
Thanks for the link to the Judith Miller story. She has a remarkable ability to find things that others can't, as a yahoo.com search for
+"Judith Miller" +lies
will indicate. Here's the lead paragraph from one of the "hits":
http://slate.msn.com/id/2086110
Are you suggesting that she perhaps a future with CBS?
So davo, your saying that they are making up the "corruption" that was perpetrated under the "food for oil" program?
That makes sense, since the U.N. won't release their records those member nations must truly be innocent. Otherwise the UN would've already called them out, right.
I mean, these people must be above reproach since we want to let them dictate our foreign relations/policies... right???????
ROFL Chill. I'm with ya on this. Sarcasm? :thumb:
KCWolfman
10-03-2004, 10:42 AM
Oh, wow. Another attempt to merge Saddam/AQ. What a surprise.
I attempted to link AQ and Hussein? What the hell do you do, read your screen through a full fishbowl?
It has been established that Saddam Hussein has supported terrorism through other links besides AQ? You really need to work on reading comprehension.
Are you suggesting that she perhaps a future with CBS?
She'll probably never want to leave her place at the NY Times. From what little I know about the CBS story, they presented something from a document that alleged facts that have not been proven to be false without doing proper background checks on the document's authenticity. The identity of the person that fed the document to CBS was then revealed and there was a public airing of the dispute and an apology about the lack of a proper check on the authenticity of the documents. Nothing of factual substance within the document has been proven to be false, though, right? Or am I mistaken?
With the NY Times, they have a record of just publishing horsesh!t fed to them by anonymous liars of various sorts, some of them actual employees, all of them with agendas. Before there was Judith Miller and Jayson Blair, there was Walter Duranty, who somehow missed reporting on one of the biggest crimes of the 20th-century:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/nati...05023-1820r.htm
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N.Y. Times keeps disputed 1932 Pulitzer
By Larry McShane
ASSOCIATED PRESS
****NEW YORK — The 1932 Pulitzer prize awarded to a New York Times reporter accused of deliberately ignoring the forced famine in Ukraine will not be revoked, the board for the journalism awards said yesterday.
****"The board determined that there was not clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception, the relevant standard in this case," said a statement from the Pulitzer Prize Board, which met yesterday.
****The decision was immediately criticized by Ukrainian groups, who had complained Walter Duranty's reports intentionally made no mention of the 1932-1933 forced famine in Ukraine that killed as many as 7 million people. Josef Stalin's regime created the famine to force Ukrainian peasants into surrendering their land.
****"The Pulitzer Prize committee must review their standards of journalistic integrity," said Michael Sawkiw, president of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America. He added that his group will continue to press for revocation.
****A Pulitzer subcommittee began a review of Mr. Duranty's work in April. In October, a historian assigned by the New York Times to review the winning work said the award should be revoked because there is a "serious lack of balance in his writing."
****"For the sake of the New York Times' honor, they should take the prize away," Mark von Hagen, a Columbia University history professor said.
****The board's statement pointed out the award was given for 13 articles written and published during 1931 — before the famine. It was the second time since 1990 that the Pulitzer Board has decided against revoking the award.
****The review of Mr. Duranty's work did find that his 1931 work, "measured by today's standards, falls seriously short," the statement said. The board's finding echoed those of scholars and the Times itself, he added.
****But the board ultimately decided revocation "would be a momentous step" that it opted not to take.
****In the 86-year history of the awards, no Pulitzer has ever been revoked. The prize was once returned, however, when Janet Cooke, a reporter for The Washington Post, surrendered her Pulitzer in 1981 after admitting she had fabricated stories.
****Mr. Duranty covered the Soviet Union for the Times from 1922 to 1941, earning acclaim for an exclusive 1929 interview with Stalin.
****He was eventually criticized for reporting the communist line rather than the facts. According to the 1990 book "Stalin's Apologist," Mr. Duranty knew of the famine, but ignored the atrocities to preserve his access to Stalin.
****The Times has also distanced itself from Mr. Duranty's work. The reporter's 1932 Pulitzer is displayed with this caveat: "Other writers in the Times and elsewhere have discredited this coverage."
****In a statement yesterday, Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who privately had made a recommendation to the board after receiving Mr. von Hagen's review, said he respected and commended the Pulitzer Board's decision.
****"All of us at The Times are fully aware of the many defects in Walter Duranty's journalism, as we have and will continue to acknowledge," he said. "We regret his lapses and we join the Pulitzer Board in extending sympathy to those who suffered in the famine."
****
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The best way to approach any journalism is to ask yourself "why am I being told this?" Once you see what the topic is, you should stop reading and ask yourself, what do I consider to be the best and the most objective ways to measure or to evaluate whatever is the topic? For example, if the topic is the performance of the Chiefs' middle linebacker, you might think that the most pertinent measure would be "number of tackles" or "rushing yards gained against" or something. Then, you might think, "wait, if the guy sucks, maybe they'll run right at him and he'll have a lot of tackles, but only after yielding too many yards", so maybe "yards against rushing" is most pertinent, except in games where the Chiefs got their ass kicked early because they guy is a handicap on pass defense and the other team was just running the ball a lot at the end to exhaust the clock.
Blah, blah, blah. The point is, think ahead of time how you would evaluate the topic at hand. Spend some time--even if only a few seconds to ask yourself what you'd want to see, not what they want you to see. Then, read the rest of the article. When you approach news that way, you'll realize just how selective, manipulative and dishonest much of it is as a result of the laziness or malice of the journalists and the people they cover.
patteeu
10-03-2004, 07:45 PM
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,134265,00.html
The above link is to the text of the U.N.'s response to a recent Fox News special on this "scandal". One of the points the U.N. makes is the very obvious fact that the United States consumed the lion's share of the oil in the oil-for-food program.
Speaking of lion's share, let's grant that these allegations are true, how does the corruption of a few elites explain how huge majorities of ordinary citizens in a couple of long-established and wealthy industrialised nations would not want their countries to go to war, especially a preemptive aggressive war which, according to the codes developed by the American-led prosecution at the famous Nuremberg trials which were held in one of those countries, is the supreme war crime?
If the corruption of a few elites is a way to guarantee that nations won't squander their lives and treasure on unnecessary wars against exaggerated threats, then corruption would have a better reputation as a public policy. In fact, "corrupt and deceptive elites" is far more viable as an explanation of how nations got into this war, not as an explanation of how other countries didn't drink the Kool-Aid that the Straussians tried to serve up in their unconvincing UN Presentation in February, 2003. Here are the opening paragraphs of antiwar.com Justiin Raimondo's essay from last year on the Straussian adherence to an elitist culture of deception.
BEHIND THE LIES
Neocons lied us into war – will they get away with it twice?
....
http://usatoday.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&expire=&urlID=6554879&fb=Y&partnerID=16
I found it odd that the article repeatedly talked about the lies that led us to war in Iraq, but never really mentioned any specific lies.
FringeNC
10-03-2004, 08:04 PM
She'll probably never want to leave her place at the NY Times. From what little I know about the CBS story, they presented something from a document that alleged facts that have not been proven to be false without doing proper background checks on the document's authenticity. The identity of the person that fed the document to CBS was then revealed and there was a public airing of the dispute and an apology about the lack of a proper check on the authenticity of the documents. Nothing of factual substance within the document has been proven to be false, though, right? Or am I mistaken?
With the NY Times, they have a record of just publishing horsesh!t fed to them by anonymous liars of various sorts, some of them actual employees, all of them with agendas. Before there was Judith Miller and Jayson Blair, there was Walter Duranty, who somehow missed reporting on one of the biggest crimes of the 20th-century:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/nati...05023-1820r.htm
Huh...the docs had been proven beyond reasonable doubt to be fake by the time Dan Rather launched his jihad against "partisan political operatives". Dan Rather and CBS can not simply be accused of incompetence...it is much, much worse than that.
patteeu
10-04-2004, 07:10 AM
Huh...the docs had been proven beyond reasonable doubt to be fake by the time Dan Rather launched his jihad against "partisan political operatives". Dan Rather and CBS can not simply be accused of incompetence...it is much, much worse than that.
I think this is a more fair take from the situation.
:thumb:
StcChief
10-04-2004, 08:35 AM
The UN isn't useless, the problem is that SOMEONE ELSE is using it instead of us. We should be leading the UN. If not, kick the f0ckers out of our country and walk away. I'm sure it would soon collapse.
I've been saying that for years. UN is weak without the US. We need a new version with 'Democratic nations', This was post by someone else
If UN is kept it would have to reformed and members re-evaluated.
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