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

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (234345)	5/23/2005 3:48:23 PM
From: Road Walker	Respond to of 1578495

Burying the Lede Ari Berman Mon May 23,10:16 AM ET The political fireworks of British MP George Galloway's testimony before the US Senate last Tuesday overshadowed the major discovery from the Oil-for-Food hearings. It was not the British, Chinese, French or the Russians--as Subcommittee Chairman Norm Coleman has so strenuously claimed--but good ol' Uncle Sam who most enriched Saddam Hussein through kickbacks in the Oil-for-Food program. Between September 2000 and September 2002, Iraq charged a 10 to 30 cent illegal surcharge per barrel of oil, collecting $228 million. During that period, "the United States imported about 525 million barrels of Iraqi oil on which $118 million in illegal surcharges were paid," reads a new report by the Democratic staff of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations: "That means US imports financed about 52 percent of the illegal surcharges paid to the Hussein regime." That's more than the rest of the world combined. The largest importer to the US was the Houston-based Bayoil, which at one time accounted for 20 percent of all Iraqi oil purchased under the Oil-for-Food program. Bayoil sold the Iraqi oil primarily to US companies such as Exxon, Valera, Premcor and Alon USA, which then sold refined products to American consumers. All the while the Treasury Department turned a blind eye to the $37 million in surcharges Bayoil funneled to Hussein, refusing for months to assist the UN's own investigation. "At the same time that US officials were urging the UN to institute pricing policies that would prevent Hussein from imposing illegal surcharges, the US was itself failing to ensure US corporations such as Bayoil were not paying those surcharges," the Senate report details. Moreover, far more illegal income--over $8 billion--derived through direct Iraqi oil sales to Middle East neighbors Jordan, Turkey, Syria and Egypt, in violation of UN sanctions. The US was not only aware of these transactions, according to the Senate report, but "on occasion, the US actually facilitated the illicit oil sales." Specifically, American authorities helped Jordan transport 7 million barrels of Iraqi oil, worth $53 million, on the eve of the US invasion. "When word of these oil shipments hit the press and an outcry arose about this apparent blatant violation of UN sanctions, the evidence indicates that the US continued to allow the shipments to proceed." Ironically, that money may now be going to finance the insurgency. Republicans calling for Kofi Annan's head must now face the facts. The logical conclusion is obvious: if anyone should resign in the wake of the Oil-for-Food scandal, it ought to be George W. Bush.

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (234345)	5/23/2005 4:22:43 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578495

From Ann Coulter's article: "When ace reporter Michael Isikoff had the scoop of the decade, a thoroughly sourced story about the president of the United States having an affair with an intern and then pressuring her to lie about it under oath, Newsweek decided not to run the story. Matt Drudge scooped Newsweek, followed by The Washington Post." Apparently, Ann Coulter is lying once again. At least she remains consistent.........a piglet hoping to be promoted to head hog! "Isikoff’s exclusive reporting on the Monica Lewinsky scandal gained him national attention in 1998, including profiles in The New York Times and The Washington Post and a guest appearance on “Late Show with David Letterman.” His coverage of the events that lead to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment earned Newsweek the prestigious National Magazine Award in the Reporting category in 1999. Isikoff’s reporting also won the National Headliner Award, the Edgar A. Poe Award presented by the White House Correspondents Association and the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Reporting on the Presidency. In 2001, Isikoff was named on a list of the “most influential journalists” in the nation’s capital by Washingtonian magazine." msnbc.msn.com