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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
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To: sandintoes who wrote (662959)11/29/2004 7:36:07 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof  Read Replies (1) of 769670
 
"Our dues to the UN is over 7 billion dollars per year. I wonder how much of that went to the coffers of Saddam and his sons?"

None... as I explained. The program administering Iraq's allowed oil sells was self-financed from those sales.

It was IRAQ'S OIL (not your's or mine, not the UN's), and it was sold in the public oil markets so it DIDN'T COST THE AMERICAN TAXPAYERS ANYTHING (except, of course, whatever small fraction of our UN dues went to the administrative overhead of the program... and even there the administrative expenses were probably deducted from the sales to recoup the small expense of administration).

Oil is a HIGHLY FUNGIBLE COMMODITY. Selling it is not hard, not expensive, as there is a huge world market ready and willing to purchase it.

Whatever Saddam and his cronies and collaborators diverted through this program was stolen from the Iraqi people (if Iraq is sovereign, then the oil is Iraq's...), same as per usual.

Only the artifice of the embargo by foreign nations --- which limited the availability of public markets for Iraqi oil --- morphed Saddam's usual dictator's method of stealing from his subjects, to this new method.

Same old, same old.

But NOTHING was stolen from the American taxpayers. (We WEREN'T sending any subsidies to Iraq!)
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