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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: steve harris who wrote (197667)	8/13/2004 6:46:57 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1586780

Steve, the NY Times finally publishes an in-depth examination of Iraq's oil-for-food program under Saddam and the U.N. And it comes to the conclusion that we've known all along. An excerpt from the beginning: Toward the end of 2000, when Saddam Hussein's skimming from the oil-for-food program for Iraq kicked into high gear, reports spread quickly to the program's supervisors at the United Nations. Oil industry experts told Security Council members and Secretary General Kofi Annan's staff that Iraq was demanding under-the-table payoffs from its oil buyers. The British mission distributed a background paper to Council members outlining what it called "the systematic abuse of the program" and described how Iraq was shaking down its oil customers and suppliers of goods for kickbacks. When the report landed in the United Nations' Iraq sanctions committee, the clearinghouse for all contracts with Iraq, it caused only a few ripples of consternation. There was no action, diplomats said, not even a formal meeting on the allegations. Since the fall of Mr. Hussein, the oil-for-food program has received far more scrutiny than it ever did during its six years of operation. Congress's Government Accountability Office, formerly the General Accounting Office, has estimated that the Iraqi leader siphoned at least $10 billion from the program by illicitly trading in oil and collecting kickbacks from companies that had United Nations approval to do business with Iraq. Multiple investigations now under way in Washington and Iraq and at the United Nations all center on one straightforward question: How did Mr. Hussein amass so much money while under international sanctions? <font color=red>An examination of the program, the largest in the United Nations' history, suggests an equally straightforward answer: The United Nations let him do it.</font> nytimes.com (I'm not going to post the entire article here. Those of you who want to read it in its entirety, sign up for the NYTimes subscription.) Tenchusatsu