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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (31385)	2/25/2004 12:38:15 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793690

Enron on the East River I hate to be so "hobby-horsical" in the words of the great Laurence Sterne about the continued non-investigation of the UN Oil-for-Food scandal, but it seems to me if we're fighting a War on Terror, which is really a War on Fascism in its various forms, we should be paying special attention to the lifeblood of that system, which is money. Greed and racism are its twin hearts. And that if one of those hearts is pumping, or has been pumping, from the center of our most important international institution, we are in trouble. That must be dealt with--and fully. Yet few in our media seem to be paying attention, preferring to play gotcha games on the affairs of the day. That is why we are lucky to have Claudia Rosset. If this blog gave the Pulitzer Prize, she would win it hands down. (Sorry, Claudia. How about an old felt hat?) Today in the WSJ OpinionJournal she gives one of her most complete run-downs yet of the malfeasance on 44th Street. Among the several "discrepancies," she catches was a new one for me involving a mere 5 billion dollars, which appeared in the sales totals on Oil-for-Food kept by the U. N. Compensation Commission offices in Geneva. Rosset puts this in perspective: "OK, but in some quarters, if not at the U.N., $5 billion here or there is big money. Halliburton has been pilloried, and rightly so, over questions involving less than 1% of such amounts." Have they ever! <font size=4>The NYT et al were all over Halliburton like the proverbial you-know-what. But with all their powers of investigative journalism, as far as I know, the same papers haven't really approached the UN scandal, not in any serious way.<font size=3> You would think they might now because, as Rosset notes, the very David Kay they quote endlessly on the subject of WMDs has pronounced the program a "scam." I have to assume it's a conscious/unconscious desire on the part of these media to protect a valued institution, but in ignoring this problem, they are actually participating in its demise. Nowadays when I, who as a kid got teary-eyed at the sight of the Secretariat Building, drive past the UN, I see the headquarters of Don Corleone, not Dag Hammarskjold. I may be a tad on the overly-idealistic side, but I don't think I'm entirely alone. Roger L. Simon rogerlsimon.com

To: Sully- who wrote (31385)	2/25/2004 12:50:19 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 793690

Vultures Coming Home to Roost The American Thinker MEMRI, The Middle East Media Research Institute, today supplies further details about the bribes paid by Saddam Hussein to overseas “friends” able to help him in various ways. The actual mechanism whereby allocations of oil led to cash commissions is presented, along with background information on various recipients of Saddam’s largess. Equally interesting are summaries of comments made in the Arab press in various locales, about the scandal. There are clearly some who want the matter to receive no publicity, while others are pointing accusing fingers at Saddam’s agents as betrayers of Arab interests. In other words, a long-needed debate within the Arab world is rumbling along, and possibly gaining speed, propelled by scandal details. MEMRI also notes that the original report of the scandal in the Baghdad newspaper Al-Mada is being confirmed by sources familiar with the documentation in the Oil Ministry’s records. In other words, proof seems to be available. <font size=4> The single name probably most familiar to Americans is George Galloway, Member of Parliament in Britain<font size=3>, and former member of the Labour Party, now-expelled. The future actions of the U.K. authorities regarding their own laws on treason could provide further news of interest to many. <font size=4> The country with the largest number of apparent bribe recipients is Russia<font size=3>. This could prove most interesting in the future, given the turmoil that vast nuclear-armed nation is experiencing. On the oine hand, facing its own militant Islamic terror threat, Russia came down hard on the wrong side of the Iraq liberation. <font size=4> The most interesting American recipient on the list is Shaker Al-Khaffaji, recipient of a 7 million barrels allocation. This is the man who advanced $400,000 to Scott Ritter, the former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq<font size=3>. Ritter produced a documentary film purporting to tell the true story of the weapons inspections, which in his telling were corrupted by sinister U.S. manipulation. Meanwhile, the role of the United Nations in facilitating Saddam’s bribes and other nefarious activities, via the cover provided by the “Oil-for-Food” program remains to be fully explicated. There has been no audit of this program, which generated well over a billion dollars in funds for the UN itself, giving that organization a vested interest in the continuation of Saddam’s regime. We highly recommend following the ongoing coverage of this element of the mega-scandal of Saddam’s helpers by the always-interesting Roger L. Simon. Posted by Thomas 02 20 04 americanthinker.com