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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DavesM who wrote (188766)	6/8/2006 6:43:18 AM
From: jttmab	Respond to of 281500

Did the United States aid Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War? Yes. There are a ton of links on the subject here's one which has a nice bullet list. I might argue myself against a few of the items on the list. but we used all sorts of methods to get weapons to Iraq, primarily third party countries. iranchamber.com Second, the Reagan Administration sent more weapons to Iran than Iraq (during the Iran-Iraq War). More or less aside, providing both sides of a war with military support, for what purpose? To prolong a war because we didn't want either side to "win". You call that American moral values? To foster the greatest number of Iraqi and Iranian deaths. re: "Further, the UN take on bribes and kickbacks was insignificant; it didn't add up to more than a 6-figure number and only involved a couple of people. "Saddam Hussein's government could use oil revenue only to buy humanitarian supplies. From 1996, when the program went into effect, until Nov. 2003, when it ended, Iraqis exported 3.4 billion barrels of oil worth about $65 billion. But now, seven separate investigations are underway into allegations that Hussein smuggled oil, paid kickbacks and skimmed more than $10 billion from the oil-for-food program." - Newshour with Jim Lehrer Now the problem may not have been as bad as the Newshour report, but it certainly wasn't 2 people nor less than 6-figures." It probably was. I'm not going to quible over $10B vs. $11B vs. $8B. It was billions and that's precise enough for this discussion. The direct involvement of UN personnel was trivial. It involved two people, a Russian and another UN employee. The UN didn't handle any of the cash transfers. That was done between companies around the world and Iraq. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations assigned to investigate the scandal has also concluded that "The United States (government) was not only aware of Iraqi oil sales which violated UN sanctions and provided the bulk of the illicit money Saddam Hussein obtained from circumventing UN sanctions. On occasion, the United States actually facilitated the illicit oil sales." The report also found that individuals and companies in the United States accounted for 52% of all oil-voucher kickbacks paid to Saddam Hussein. The largest of these recipients, Houston based Bayoil and its CEO, Bay Chalmers have been indicted by the US Department of Justice for their actions. The US government knew about it, even facilitated it, but never notified the UN until it was in the US's political interest to do so. More than half of all kickbacks were paid by US companies. Those were direct payments between the companies and Saddam Hussein completely bypassing the UN. You might as well call Wal-Mart corrupt because there is shoplifting occuring in Wal-Mart stores. It would make as much sense. But this tangeant has gotten us off the main point. Which was your claim that food under the Oil-for-Food program wasn't getting to Iraqis. But the severe malnutrition rate among children went from 13% down to 4% under the program. Yes, Saddam was lining his coffers and companies around the world were getting their cuts as well. But the food was distributed. The only excuse you have is that you're repeating all the claims by the Bush Administration and Fox News. You win. I've had enough. jttmab