PARIS (AP) - France's former U.N. ambassador has been 
    taken into custody as part of an investigation into 
    allegations of wrongdoing in the Iraq oil-for-food 
    program, judicial officials said Tuesday. 

    Jean-Bernard Merimee, 68, who also was ambassador to 
    Italy from 1995-98 and to Australia in the 1980s, is 
    suspected of having received kickbacks in the form of oil 
    allocations from the regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam 
    Hussein. He was also a special adviser to U.N. Secretary-
    General Kofi Annan from 1999 to 2002.

    The interesting thing to me is the Guardian is now 
    stating "Saddam manipulated the program" as a forgone 
    conclusion. No longer is the press treating this as if 
    it "alledgedly" happened. One wonders how long it will 
    take the MSM to make the connection between the lucrative 
    income generated by this scam and the "international 
    resistance" to the war in Iraq.