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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend.... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (7258)	1/20/2005 8:18:04 AM
From: sandintoes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 35834

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has endorsed the nomination of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state; the full Senate is set to confirm her tomorrow, a few hours after President Bush takes the oath of office. The vote was 16-2, with Barbara Boxer, the sweetheart of the Angry Left, and John Kerry, the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat who by the way served in Vietnam, casting the only "no" votes. Perhaps Kerry will vote "yes" tomorrow so he can say he voted against her before voting for her. Ooops the democrats won't let it happen...they do not want a black Republican woman as Sect of State, and are doing everything in their power to keep from confirming her...how do you spell racist? Message 20966092

To: Sully- who wrote (7258)	3/13/2005 3:52:48 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 35834

Don't you always pay bribes when you have nothing to hide? Common Sense and Wonder <<< Saddam's $2m offer to WMD inspector Saddam Hussein's regime offered a $2 million (£1.4 million) bribe to the United Nations' chief weapons inspector to doctor his reports on the search for weapons of mass destruction. Rolf Ekeus, the Swede who led the UN's efforts to track down the weapons from 1991 to 1997, said that the offer came from Tariq Aziz, Saddam's foreign minister and deputy. Mr Ekeus told Reuters news agency that he had passed the information to the Volcker Commission. "I told the Volcker people that Tariq [Aziz] said a couple of million was there if we report right. My answer was, 'That is not the way we do business in Sweden.' " A clean report from Mr Ekeus's inspectors would have been vital in lifting sanctions against Saddam's regime. But the inspectors never established what had happened to the regime's illicit weapons and never gave Iraq a clean bill of health. The news that Iraq attempted to bribe a top UN official is a key piece of evidence for investigators into the scandal surrounding the oil-for-food programme. It proves that Iraq was offering huge sums of cash to influential foreigners in return for political favours. Nile Gardiner, of the Heritage Foundation in Washington, who has followed the inquiries, said: "It's the tip of the iceberg of what the Iraqis were offering. For every official like Ekeus who turned down a bribe, there are many more who will have been tempted by it." Saddam and his henchmen siphoned off an estimated £885 million from the humanitarian scheme, allegedly paying some of that to 270 foreign politicians, officials and journalists. Most of those alleged to have been involved in the scandal, including the former head of the programme, Benon Sevan, have denied that they did anything wrong. A United States Senate report said that Mr Sevan had committed criminal acts by soliciting oil contracts, while the Volcker commission said that he had failed to explain $160,000 (£83,000) paid into personal bank accounts while he was the head of the programme. news.telegraph.co.uk >>> Posted by Jerry Scharf commonsensewonder.com