Via Amy Ridenour com…
Via Amy Ridenour comes a link to this Claudia Rosett article about the UN Oil-for-
The latest insights into this cosmos of U.N.-fostered corruption come by way of a bipartisan report just released by the Senate Permanent Subcomittee on Investigations, or PSI, led by [Sen. Norm] Coleman. In detail, with supporting documentation, the report shows how Saddam Hussein, via Oil-for-Food, gave rights to buy millions of barrels of underpriced Iraqi oil to two politicians who supported his regime: former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua and British Member of Parliament George Galloway.
Why should they be worried?
That’s news, because both Pasqua and Galloway have denied allegations that they received any such riches from Saddam’s regime. Galloway last year won a libel suit in the U.K., against the British Daily Telegraph, over similar allegations — which were based on documentation different from that produced by Senate investigators.
Welcome to the tip of the iceberg. Remember how some countries were bucking to keep Saddam in power? Here’s why.
Another of the report’s findings is especially interesting in light not only of Saddam’s subversion of Oil-for-Food to bust sanctions, but also as context for the hot debate within the U.N. Security Council just prior to the U.S.-led military overthrow of Saddam in 2003. The report explains that the prime targets of Saddam’s scheme to buy influence were “individuals and entities from countries on the U.N. Security Council.” Both documents and interviews with former senior officials of Saddam’s regime confirm that “The regime steered a massive portion of its allocations toward Security Council members that were believed by the Hussein regime to support Iraq in its efforts to lift sanctions — namely, Russia, France, and China.”
And yet there are still folks who hold the United Nations in such high esteem and insist that it’s the only body that should be allowed to determine who can and can’t go to war or how disputes should be settled. What it winds up being is a one-stop-shopping mall for bribery.
And this is interesting:
Citing interviews with Saddam’s former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan, and an unnamed former senior Iraqi official, the Senate report says that Iraq’s Baathist regime, in doling out rights to buy cheap oil through the U.N. program, “gave priority to foreign officials, journalists and even terrorist entities.” Ramadan, Saddam’s former vice president, told Senate investigators that such oil allocations were “compensation for support.”
Ms. Rosett lists some of the terrorist organizations, but I’ve emphasized a different word; journalists. Now that’s a list of names I’d really like to see. I have a feeling they’d not all be from Al Jazeera.
This post is just a very light version of all the information Claudia Rosett has been uncovering about this scam. This latest report is yet another blockbuster. RTWT
(RTWT = Read The Whole Thing)
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