Iraq Amnesia ~ "The Coalition of the bribed"

[Sparrowhawk]

And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication. Rev 14:8 KJV

The general characteristics of Babylon has always been of a nation that is proud, haughty, insolent, oppressive.

Here it describes how she influenced other nation to partake of her madness. Just an interesting sidenote, to the Wall Street Journal news story below.

Sf

Cook

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Iraq Amnesia
October 8, 2004; Page A16

Judging from the current Iraq debate, you might think Saddam Hussein didn't use poison gas on the Kurds and the Iranians in the 1980s. Or that 500,000 American troops hadn't been sent to the Gulf in 1990-91 to reverse his invasion of Kuwait. Or that Saddam hadn't tried to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush in 1993, or long harbored one of the bombers who attacked the World Trade Center that year.

It might also be easy to forget that Saddam never came clean about his weapons of mass destruction, resulting in Bill Clinton's Desert Fox bombing of 1998 and the ejection of U.N. inspectors. Or that he necessitated a huge U.S. troop presence in the region, which Osama bin Laden cited in his 1998 fatwa as one of his primary grievances against America.

It's clear why John Kerry doesn't want to talk about these things, having decided for now that Iraq was "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time." Count us a bit mystified, however, that the incumbent hasn't done a better job putting his Iraq policy in this context. Fortunately for President Bush, Congressional Oil for Food hearings and Charles Duelfer's final weapons inspections report for the CIA have come along this week to remind us all that the "containment" of Saddam was neither as blissful as certain partisans remember it, nor even sustainable.

"By 2000-2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of sanctions and undermine their international support," Mr. Duelfer writes. "Iraq was within striking distance of a de facto end to the sanctions regime."

We realize that some of our media friends think the salient news here is the old news: that Saddam did not possess large stockpiles of WMDs when Coalition forces invaded in March 2003. But Mr. Duelfer explicitly rejects the facile conclusion that therefore sanctions were working. Among his other findings, based in part on interviews with Saddam himself and other senior regime figures:

• Saddam believed weapons of mass destruction were essential to the preservation of his power, especially during the Iran-Iraq and 1991 Gulf wars.

• He engaged in strategic deception intended to suggest that he retained WMD.

• He fully intended to resume real WMD production after the expected lifting of U.N. sanctions, and he maintained weapons programs that put him in "material breach" of U.N. resolutions including 1441.

• And he instituted an epic bribery scheme aimed primarily at three of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, with the intent of having them help lift those sanctions.


"Saddam personally approved and removed all names of voucher recipients," under the Oil for Food program, Mr. Duelfer writes. Alleged beneficiaries of such bribes include individuals in China, as well as some with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Jacques Chirac.

As Congressmen Chris Shays's House International Relations Committee heard in testimony on Tuesday, France, Russia and China did in fact work hard to help Saddam skirt and escape sanctions. One Iraqi intelligence report uncovered by Mr. Duelfer says that a French politician assured Saddam in a letter that France would use its U.N. veto against any U.S. effort to attack Iraq -- as indeed France later threatened to do.

Evidence also continues to mount that U.N. Oil for Food Program director Benon Sevan was among those on Saddam's payroll. (He denies it.) And contrary to earlier claims that Secretary General Kofi Annan's son Kojo severed connections with the Swiss-based firm Cotecna prior to it winning its Oil for Food inspections contract, we now know that Kojo was kept on the company payroll for another year. We eagerly await the promised interim report from the U.N.'s Paul Volcker-led Oil for Food review panel, and hope in the interests of an informed electorate that it can be delivered soon.

But there are already plenty of facts on the table to support one conclusion. To wit: Even if one accepts the desirability of some kind of "global test" before America acts militarily, U.N. Security Council approval can't be it. There was never any chance that this "coalition of the bribed" was going to explicitly endorse regime change, or the presumed alternative of another 12 years of economic sanctions. "Politically," writes Mr. Duelfer, "the Iraqis were losing their stigma" by 2001.

The sanctions-were-working crowd also ignores that Saddam never would have readmitted weapons inspectors without the kind of U.S. troop mobilization that isn't feasible with any frequency. For President Bush to have backed off in 2003 without unambiguous disarmament would have meant the end once and for all of any real threat of force behind "containment."

Senator John McCain summed it up well at the Republican Convention: "Those who criticize that decision [to go to war in Iraq] would have us believe that the choice was between a status quo that was well enough left alone and war. But there was no status quo to be left alone." Supporters of his Iraq policy are hoping that Mr. Bush finds a similar voice tonight.

[Sparrowhawk]

October 7, 2004 4:54 p.m. EDT

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
October 7, 2004 4:54 p.m.

NEW YORK (AP)--Suitcases full of cash, secret bank accounts, covert operatives, corrupt politicians on the take - a report detailing alleged illicit U.N. oil-for-food deals with the former Iraq government paints a portrait of Saddam Hussein as an international gangster, not a nuclear terrorist.

The financial schemes propped up Saddam's regime for more than a decade and involved cloak-and-dagger efforts to hide the alleged graft by dealing in front companies, untraceable accounts, cash sales and smuggling, the report by the top U.S. arms inspector said.

The report, delivered Wednesday by Charles Duelfer, who was charged to investigate the extent of Iraq's weapons programs, relies on internal Iraqi documents and extensive interviews with members of the former regime now imprisoned in Iraq.

Although Saddam opposed the program at first, he quickly realized it could be exploited and did so with mendacious verve until the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, former Iraqi officials report.

Saddam was able to "subvert" the $60 billion U.N. oil-for-food program to generate an estimated $1.7 billion in revenue outside U.N. control from 1997-2003, Duelfer's report says.

The names of U.S. companies and individuals who may have been involved in oil deals weren't released because of U.S. privacy laws, the report said.

The program was designed to allow limited oil sales to pay for humanitarian goods.

In addition to oil-for-food schemes, Iraq brought in over $8 billion in illicit oil deals with Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Egypt through smuggling or illegal pumping through pipelines during the full period that sanctions were in place from 1991-2003, the report says.

While the U.N. focused on delivering humanitarian goods to an Iraqi population suffering from international sanctions and the totalitarian regime, Saddam's government devised elaborate ways to skim money from deals sending oil out and goods in. The report spells out how kickbacks were solicited and how money got to Baghdad.

Iraq tried to manipulate foreign governments, including members of the U.N. Security Council by awarding contracts -and bribes - to foreign companies and political figures in countries who showed support for ending sanctions, in particular Russia, France and China, the report says.

The former head of the oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan, also is accused of receiving bribes in the form of vouchers allowing him or companies tied to him to purchase 7.3 million barrels of oil, which would have netted $700,000 to $2 million, depending on oil prices.

Sevan is among hundreds of companies, groups and individuals on 13 secret lists kept by the Iraqi Vice President Taha Yasin Ramadan and the Oil Minister, Amir Rashid Muhammad al-Ubaydi.

"Saddam himself would recommend a specific recipient," the report says, "and the recommended amount of the allocation."

Russian and French companies were singled out by the regime for special treatment, according to the report, with politicians close to the French President Jacques Chirac appearing on list, among them former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua and businessman Patrick Maugein, "whom the Iraqis considered a conduit to Chirac," according to the report.

The report says this allegation is unproven and the governments and officials deny it.

Some of the bribes allegedly paid by Iraq involved cash to covert operatives. Saddam's former secretary and ambassador to Moscow, interviewed by Duelfer's group, claims former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz paid a cash bribe of $15 million to $20 million to a female colonel in the Russian Intelligence Service.

"She wanted Aziz to accommodate the companies nominated by the Russian Intelligence," according to the official, said Abd Hamid Mahmud Al Khatab al Nasiri.

The most lucrative exploitation of the program involved kickbacks from companies executing legal sales of oil. Under the terms of the U.N resolution establishing the program, Iraq maintained the right to determine who got contracts for oil being exported and the humanitarian goods being imported and to determine market prices.

In what the report calls, "an open secret," the Iraqi government demanded illicit surcharges of 25 cents to 30 cents on all barrels of oil bought, which buyers had to secretly pay before the deals were sealed. They complied because the Iraqis were selling slightly below market prices.

One of the most prolific purchasers of the oil was Swiss-based Glencore (GNC.YY) run by one-time fugitive U.S. financier Marc Rich, which the report alleges paid over $3.2 million in kickbacks to the Iraqi government. Rich, formerly wanted for tax-evasion, was pardoned by President Bill Clinton in his last days in office.

The report says that the company denies any inappropriate deals.

Most of the kickbacks were transferred to the Iraqi government through secret bank accounts in Jordan and Lebanon, from which "trusted Oil Ministry employees" withdrew an estimated $2 billion, the report said. They hand delivered the cash to Baghdad.

"Oil suppliers and traders, who sometimes brought large suitcases full of hard currency to embassies and Iraqi Ministry offices, so that the payments would be untraceable, filled these illegal bank accounts," according to senior Iraqi officials, the report says.

An additional $750 million was recovered in the accounts after the war and returned to Iraq.

The report alleges Iraqi embassies in Moscow, Hanoi, Ankara and Bern were also used to collect kickbacks from oil companies with the money shipped back to Iraq in diplomatic pouches.

The Iraqis exploited deals for importing goods in a similar manner. It cites the case of a Jordanian company, the Al-Aman Group, which was made to deposit 10% of the value of some deals in a Jordanian account before they were signed.

"When the goods were delivered to Iraq, the U.N. Iraq account would pay the full contract price to Al-Eman," the reports says. "At that point, the Jordan National Bank would automatically kick back the performance bond to an Iraqi account instead of returning it to Al-Eman, as would normally be the case."

Elaborate methods were used to hide the secret accounts in Jordan and Lebanon. Temporary accounts set up under false names by Iraqi ministries were used for initial transactions before money was spirited into accounts held by the Central Bank of Iraq at the same banks. Iraq also used front companies in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates to transfer kickbacks.

Once the money returned to Baghdad, the government had a standard scheme for dividing the spoils. The government routinely allocated 5% to 10% of the kickbacks to the ministries who distributed the money to bureaucrats to encourage them to continue soliciting bribes.

Another Iraqi scheme involved signing deals with foreign companies for inferior or spoiled goods, while paying premium prices. The Iraqi government often did this knowingly, according to the report, under the understanding that the differential would be paid in kickbacks.

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,BT_...008020,00.html

[CAR]

I watched the Fox News report: Breaking point this weekend. It was part two of an ongoing investigation. Needless to say It made me mad as hades. Now I am left wondering just why in the world NOONE other than Fox is even covering this. I see it raraly on some columns but not in the depth I think it should be covered on Main stream media. So far it seems as if our "allies" stabbed us in the back. Major importance, considering that one of our candidates for president boasts of how he will get our "old allies" to help us.

The NY Times can run over 60 stories on Abu Ghirab but no front page headlines on Oil for Food scandels that I have seen or heard, am I missing it? Just pi$$es me off, would like to hear from others on this