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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Carragher who wrote (11013)	3/31/2004 9:29:29 AM
From: lorne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

Kerry is a big UN supporter? It becomes more apparent a little bit at a time why the UN and certain Countries did not want sadam removed. Gotta wonder also if US intelligence was aware of what was going on? William Safire: The UN kickback-for-food affair By William Safire (NYT) Tuesday, March 30, 2004 iht.com WASHINGTON: Never has there been a financial rip-off of the magnitude of the UN oil-for-food scandal. At least $5 billion in kickbacks went from corrupt contractors - mainly French and Russian - into the pockets of Saddam Hussein and his thugs. Some went to pay off his protectors in foreign governments and media, and we may soon see how much stuck to the fingers of UN bureaucrats as well. Responding to a harangue in this space on March 17, the spokesman for Kofi Annan confirmed that the secretary general's soft-spoken son, Kojo, was on the payroll of Cotecna Inspections of Switzerland until December 1998. In that very month, the United Nations awarded Cotecna the contract to monitor and authenticate the goods shipped to Iraq. Prices were inflated to allow for 10 percent kickbacks, and the goods were often shoddy and unusable. As the lax Cotecna made a lot of corporate friends, Iraqi children suffered from rotted food and diluted medicines. The UN press agent also revealed that Benon Sevan, Annan's longtime right-hand man in charge of the flow of billions, was advised by UN lawyers that the names of companies receiving the contracts "was privileged commercial information, which could not be made public." Sevan had stonewalling help. To shift responsibility for the see-no-evil oversight, the UN spokesman noted, "details of all contracts were made available to the governments of all 15 Security Council members." All the details, including the regular 10 percent kickback to the tune of $5 billion in illegal surcharges? We'll see. To calm the uproar, Annan felt compelled to seek an "independent high-level inquiry," empowered by a Security Council resolution, as some of us called for. Nothing doing, said France's UN ambassador, Jean-Marc de la Sablière. The money for the huge heist known as the Iraq-UN account passed exclusively through BNP Paribas. French companies led all the rest (what's French for "kickback"?), though Vladimir Putin's favorite Russian oligarchs insisted on sharing the wealth. That explains why Paris and Moscow were Saddam's main prewar defenders, and why their politicians and executives now want no inquiry they cannot control. Nor are the White House and State Department so eager for a real investigation, because as the truth emerges, the United Nations may use the furor as cover for its refusal to confer its blessing on the new Iraq. America's present and former ambassadors to the United Nations would have to take issue with Annan if he tried to hide under their wing. Peter Burleigh and Andrew Hillman, the United States' frequent representatives on the "661 committee" - so named for a sanctions resolution - are not about to be the United Nations' scapegoats. If the secretary-general appoints a Franco-Russian whitewash team, to whom can the world turn? 1. The Iraqi government-in-formation. Spurred by Kurds who have been blowing the whistle on this superscam for five years, free Iraq has hired accountants and lawyers to sift through captured bills and contracts in Baghdad. Former spooks are freelancing usefully. Paul Bremer 3rd, America's man in Baghdad, has placed a trove of additional half-corrupted tapes and damaged and damaging documents under seal to be turned over after June 30, Sovereignty Day. 2. The House International Relations Committee's chairman, Henry Hyde, whose interviewers are in New York on Monday, will hold initial hearings on April 21. Congress' investigative arm, the General Accounting Office, will testify about the scope of the chicanery that it estimates at $10 billion (including Saddam's clandestine oil smuggling to Syria and Jordan). It's a start that should awaken Senate Foreign Relations as well as Justice. 3. The press, stimulated by UN stonewalling, is on the trail. Al Mada led the way. Already denying the feisty Iraq newspaper's findings are a former French interior minister, a pro-Saddam member of Britain's Parliament, Arab writers and a financier reportedly behind a Scott Ritter film. The Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Sunday Telegraph of London have been exposing the outline of what Newsday admits is "the most underreported story of the year." Among magazines, National Review is out front, with no interest shown by The New Yorker and Newsweek. All of us need an embittered whistle-blower. If an ex-UN type named Shaukat Fareed is reading this, call me.