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I know that nothing will convince a biased liberal, but here we go...

This was the first part published in The Washington times on March 22, 2004, and let’s hopes the link still works for your majesty...

http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040321 ... -2593r.htm



The U.N. Oil for Food scandal

First of two parts.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry complains that President Bush pursued a unilateralist foreign policy that gave short shrift to the concerns of the United Nations and our allies when it came to taking military action against Saddam Hussein. But the mounting evidence of scandal that has been uncovered in the U.N. Oil For Food program suggests that there was never a serious possibility of getting Security Council support for military action because influential people in Russia and France were getting paid off by Saddam. After the fall of Baghdad last spring, France and Russia tried to delay the lifting of sanctions against Iraq and continue the Oil for Food program. That's because France and Russia profited from it: The Times of London calculated that French and Russian companies received $11 billion worth of business from Oil for Food between 1996 and 2003.

Most disturbing are Iraqi records that suggest Benon Sevan, the executive director of the Oil for Food office, received a voucher for 11.5 million barrels of oil from Saddam's manipulation of the program — enough to yield a profit of between $575,000 and $3.5 million.

In a series of articles published earlier this year, the Iraqi independent newspaper al Mada reported on a list of several hundred individuals, corporations and political parties that benefited from Saddam's oil vouchers and explained how the system worked. The intent of the program was to sell Iraqi oil to pay for food and medicine for the Iraqi people, who were suffering due to sanctions. Instead, vouchers were doled out as gifts or as payment for goods imported into the country in violation of U.N. sanctions. The recipient would then turn the voucher over to one of a number of firms operating in the United Arab Emirates, in exchange for commissions ranging anywhere from 5 cents to 30 cents per barrel, depending on market conditions. (This translates into a profit of $50,000 on the low end and $300,000 on the high end for every 1 million barrels worth of oil vouchers.)

The beneficiary list (found in the archives of the Iraqi Oil Ministry and translated into English by the Middle East Media Research Institute) should be deeply embarrassing to many prominent people. In the United States, those listed include Iraqi American businessman Shaker Al-Khaffaji, who put up $400,000 to produce a film by ex-U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, which aimed to discredit weapons inspections in Iraq. Also, British Labor MP George Galloway, a strident foe of taking action against Saddam, is listed as a recipient or co-recipient of 19.5 million barrels.

Other recipients include: former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua (12 million barrels); Patrick Maugein, CEO of the oil company Soco International and financial backer of French President Jacques Chirac (25 million); former French Ambassador to the United Nations Jean-Bernard Merimee (11 million); Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri (10 million); and Syrian businessman Farras Mustafa Tlass, the son of longtime Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass (6 million). Leith Shbeilat, chairman of the anti-corruption committee of the Jordanian Parliament, received 15.5 million.

Right now, Claude Hankes-Drielsma, a British investigator, is auditing the program on behalf of the Iraqi government. His findings, and the records reported on in the Iraqi press, deserve serious scrutiny. If it turns out that prominent politicians and businessmen profiteered while Iraqis were deprived of basic necessities that the Oil for Food program was supposed to pay for, there should be serious consequences, up to and including criminal prosecution.


Update...

Where the Operation of the alleged scheme stand today?


Before UN officials have pledged full cooperation with the GAO's investigation, Joseph A. Christoff, director of international affairs and trade at the General Accounting Office, told a House hearing that U.N. auditors had refused to release the internal audits of the Oil For Food program

Benon Sevan, with support from Koffi Annan, has written letters to all former Oil for Food contractors asking them to consult Sevan before releasing any documents to GAO or US congressional inquiry panels.

The program had, throughout its history, received complaints from critics saying it needed to be more open, and complaints from companies about proprietary information being disclosed.

The United Nations has denied all requests by the GAO for access to confidential internal audits of the Oil For Food Program.

   

You haven't commented on the Americans found to be in on the scandal, Human. You also haven't addressed the fact that the US and UK had a say in what oil deals got approved. You haven't dealt with the not-inconsiderable matter of the sanctions that made Oil for Food necessary would have been lifted long ago if the US hadn't opposed them.

Quit using what amount to partisan op-eds to try to prove your point. Do some research and address the real issues.

   

While the true issues is that the United State panel that approved the deals, didn't concern its time with the corruption issue at the time because it was concentrating more on preventing Saddam from getting access funding more than what the Iraqi's need according to the program, and you know it.

The USA Government acted in trust that all people involved will not steal from children and the orphans as the Ibrahimi of the UN says as a Moslems--------> they don't do, but it seems like your Saddam didn't measure not even Islamically for all the support he got from them.

But then hey, I said the investigation will be reopened soon, didn't I?

   

you agree that the US should have known what was happening at least as much as the UN should have then, Human? You also agree that a half-dozen or so American citizens have been implicated in the scandal? Now that we've made a little bit of progress with the truth, lets not stop.

Will you acknowledge that most of the world wanted the sanctions lifted because they were harming the Iraqi people but not Saddam, but the United States opposed lifting the sanctions and threatened to veto any move to do so?

Will you acknowledge that the US, by insisting the sanctions remained in place, caused years of suffering for the Iraqi people?

Will you acknowledge that the United States had a vested interest in maintaining the sanctions until such time as they could invade in order to nullify the contracts non-US oil companies (including at least one Canadian company) had signed with the Iraqi government?

Will you acknowledge that there absolutely no credible evidence that Saddam Hussein had chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons?

Will you acknowledge that Joe Wilson debunked the nuclear threat from Iraq long before George Bush lied about it in his State of the Union Address?

Will you acknowedge that somebody in Dick Cheney's office then outed Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as being a covert CIA operative and that revealing the identity of a CIA operative is an act of treason?

These are all facts, Human. Real facts from real journalists, government reports, government and industry experts, and law-makers. They are not garnered from op-ed columns in right-wing rags or from heavily partisan press releases from the Oval Office.

   

Up their sleevies.

   

Since I said the investigation should open soon and we should get to the bottom of this, but got attacked by you anyway, the assertion you are making belong to you and not me, but certainly I understand when great people refuse to admit their flaws.

All what you have said is consequential, but necessary for it to surface if it has any implications on the issue at hand, and it must, though neither you or me are the judges here.

However, the facts behind the bribes, and where the accounted for WMD ingredients are now, must be known because according to the UN body that hold the records of the landing invoices of the Iraqi’s WMD purchases does not agree with the UN body that investigated and took samples of every WMD explosion Saddam released on the Iranian borders, and in the Iranians inner cities, or Halabja for that fact, and those samples records indicated the quantities used, and the type of agent; therefore, though I don’t blame you for your messy knowledge of this issue, but the facts that what the UN records indicates is that there is a large quantities no UN inspections accounted for because either they never got the opportunity to see, or some of them turned the blind eye for that abvious reason I am talking about in my original post…

Facts manipulation is the agenda of the leftist trade, isn’t it?

   

It seems like, you are very knowledgeable...

   

than you do anyhow.

   

Now I know for sure...

   

It already has surfaced, my deluded pal. That's the point. We know this stuff. It's been found out. It's been shown. It's been revealed. It's been on the news. It's been in the papers. It's been on web-sites. Members of the Bush administration have openly acknowledged it.

Now, I'm going to assume you are an American, Human...a member of the Republican Party too. I base that on a couple of clues. Your misconception that being labelled a (small "l") liberal is a bad thing is one clue. Most Canadians consider open and free thought to be an asset. Your unwavering support of George Bush is another....That sort of unquestioning loyalty isn't very common up here at all.

Since I assume you are an American, I'm going to give you some neighbourly advice, Human. Your country does not have the right to run the world. Your country was formed by intelligent people who did not want a foreign country running them. That works both ways. Read the news...not the American news, go to foreign sources. You will find that George Bush has so little international support that he couldn't organise a decent-sized piss-up even if he offered free booze and naked dancing girls.

So do yourself a favour and vote for anybody but George Bush. It doesn't have to be Kerry, but a vote for Bush is very much a vote for American imperialism. That is an inherently undemocratic thing.

   

Isn’t that what I said about the pay to say Media when it circumcises the news that doesn’t fit the leftists and the liberal agenda? Isn’t it that why that same media said “there is nothing to see here, and then right away, recruited their agents and musketeers to distinguish the fire that may eat them all alive. And certainly the Bush administration has to acknowledge it; otherwise, it doesn’t make sense to acknowledge only what has been leaked through the cracks of the UN alone, or does it? According to you and Kerry, maybe it does.

So here you are again appearing with your prejudice head to use accusation like assumption to say I am an American, and a member of the Republican Party too, but your misconception didn’t stop at that because after you labelled me, you also advised me as an American to whom I should cast my vote; though, you know that most Canadians consider open and free thought are to be an asset.

Therefore, I must assume here that your personal assets are different from the Canadian ones you are talking about because they sound like a mix of prejudice, irony and hypocrisy that is projected with inherently, undemocratic denial state that came through the Person International when you landed here, isn’t it?

   

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