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In Thursday night’s debate, Donald Trump put in a word for Saddam Hussein and Moammar Qaddafi, in a way. He said that, if those two were still in power, “instead of having terrorism all over the place, we’d be — at least they killed terrorists, all right?” The fact is, they were terrorists. And funders and shelterers of other terrorists. (Abu Nidal, for one, in Saddam Hussein’s case.)

Inside Iraqi Corruption Charles R. Smith Tuesday, March 29, 2005 John A. Shaw is a curious example of Washington politics gone mad. Shaw is a veteran government employee who served inside the White House under Presidents Ford, Nixon and Reagan and was an associate deputy secretary in the Department of Commerce. In 2001, Shaw was appointed by Bush Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld to head the newly formed Office of International Technology Security. In this post, Shaw began the difficult task of reforming government controls over the export of sensitive technology to foreign countries. In 2003, Shaw began investigating allegations of...

The Associated Press BAGHDAD, Iraq Sept. 25 — Aquila al-Hashimi, a career diplomat, was the only member of Saddam Hussein's regime to be chosen by Iraq's American occupiers to sit on the interim Governing Council. Al-Hashimi died Thursday of gunshot wounds, five days after being ambushed by six men in a pickup truck near her home in western Baghdad. Widely expected to become Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, she was preparing to attend the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York. Her assassination was the latest in a series of assaults against Iraqis who have worked openly with the...

A recent piece of news has shed new light on what could be another storm for both the Clintons. Like an old shipwreck, the crashing waves are slowly revealing more from beneath the sand. Recently, we were treated to the revelation that an agent of Saddam Hussein's essentially financed a junket to visit Iraq before the war and complain about the sanctions' effect on the poor Iraqi children. (Let's forget for a moment that it turned out that Saddam was actually engaged in a vast criminal enterprise through the oil-for-food program, and was essentially starving his "poor Iraqi children" for...

Galloway v the US Senate: transcript of statement By Times Online George Galloway, Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, delivered this statement to US Senators today who have accused him of corruption "Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader. and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one - and neither has anyone on my behalf. "Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea...

Senate hearings in mid-November 2004 revealed that Iraq‘s Saddam Hussein skimmed over $21 billion from the UN “oil-for-food” program that was supposed to feed and provide medicine for the Iraqi people--and used the money to bribe UN and European officials. Oil-for-Food was authorized in 1995, for “equitable distribution of humanitarian relief” for Iraq which was under trade sanctions. Saddam was permitted to sell oil to earn funds for food, medicine, and social services. Instead, the money went to pay off politicians to get UN sanctions lifted, to buy unauthorized weapons, and to pay off journalists for favorable propaganda. France was...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - An eagerly awaited first report by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker into alleged corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq will be sharply critical of U.N. management in key areas and will target Benon Sevan, who ran the program, a source close to the investigation told The Associated Press on Wednesday. The Volcker report, to be released Thursday afternoon, will focus on the administration, financial transactions, and internal auditing of the $60 billion program, all of which were "tainted badly," said the person with knowledge of the report. The interim report will not...

Did United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan hightail it to Moscow to check in with his handpicked UN reform man Yevgeny Primakov within weeks of William Safire’s New York Times expose on alleged scandal in the Oil-For-Food Program? The first of Safire’s groundbreaking Oil-For-Food investigative stories ran in mid-March, 2004. Here’s Annan’s Moscow itinerary as documented by The Russian Federation: "Annan arrived in Moscow on Sunday, April 4, 2004 where he had an early working dinner with Evgeni (sic) Primakov, former Prime Minister of the Russian Federation." On the following day, Annan visited the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where...

Did United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan hightail it to Moscow to check in with his handpicked UN reform man Yevgeny Primakov within weeks of William Safire’s New York Times expose on alleged scandal in the Oil-For-Food Program? The first of Safire’s groundbreaking Oil-For-Food investigative stories ran in mid-March, 2004. Here’s Annan’s Moscow itinerary as documented by The Russian Federation: "Annan arrived in Moscow on Sunday, April 4, 2004 where he had an early working dinner with Evgeni (sic) Primakov, former Prime Minister of the Russian Federation." On the following day, Annan visited the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where...

Saddam, the ATM of Al Qaeda By Christopher S. Carson FrontPageMagazine.com | November 15, 2004 The Report of the 9/11 Commission has been digested, and the news media outlets have seized upon it as confirmation of their view that al Qaeda is a kind of purely stateless entity that never had "operational links" with rogue states like Iraq. Somehow, goes the thrust of the Report, Osama bin Laden was for years able to finance, train and supply an international terrorist corporation that had ongoing jihad operations in fifty countries - by himself, on no more than a $30 million personal...

Today: November 17, 2004 Official: Russia Not Cooperating in Probe By EDITH M. LEDERER ASSOCIATED PRESS UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Russia is refusing to provide witnesses or information to the independent investigation into alleged corruption in the multibillion-dollar U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq, an official close to the investigation said Wednesday. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Russian diplomats "dug in their heels" during a meeting in Moscow this week with members of the independent inquiry. Russia is a veto-wielding member of the U.N. Security Council which approved Secretary-General Kofi Annan's recommendation in April to set up an...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime reaped over $21 billion from kickbacks and smuggling before and during the now-defunct U.N. oil-for-food program, twice as much as previous estimates, according to a U.S. Senate probe on Monday. The monies flowed between 1991 and 2003 through oil surcharges, kickbacks on civilian goods and smuggling directly to willing governments, Senate investigators said at a hearing. "How was the world so blind to this massive amount of influence-peddling?" asked Republican Sen. Norm Coleman (news, bio, voting record), head of the investigations subcommittee. Coleman made public more documents he said were...

When Pres. George W. Bush spoke in front of a joint session of the United States Cogress following Sept. 11, 2001 and then gave a major speech in front of the United Nations General Assembly in which he outlined the U.S. War on Terror, it is has become clear to me that Pres. Bush knew THEN that the United Nations is itself a terrorist organization. The U.N. is a terrorist organization because it supports, shields, and does business with terrorists. Saddam Hussein himself became a terrorist when he allowed Zarqawi refuge in Bagdad once he fled from U.S.-occupied Afghanistan and...

......... An internal United nations AUDIT from 2003 found SIGNIFICANT PROBLEMS with the International Organization's oil for Food Program, revealing Millions of Dollars went unaccountable for un der the UN's noses. ..........A company that employed Secretary General Kofi Annan's SON called CONTECNA!!! In please see: --- CONTECNA!!---- Comapny Kofi's Son worked for just months before the Swiss-Based company ( that ) was awarded a $ 4.8 MILLION dollar contract for the oil for Food program. AUDIT CHARGE LIST: @Contecna: U.N. officials approved $350,000 in " Additional Costs" to the contract just 4 days after the proposition was signed." @ From...

The governments of France, Russia, China and Syria blocked U.S. efforts within the United Nations to stop Saddam Hussein from misusing the oil-for-food program, a State Department official told Congress yesterday. Patrick F. Kennedy, a State official who is a representative to the United Nations for management and reform, told a House hearing that other U.N. member states "resisted" U.S. efforts to end bribery and contracting corruption under the program aimed at providing humanitarian relief from anti-Saddam sanctions. "We began pushing for a system to bring this under control," Mr. Kennedy said. "It was resisted by other nations. We were...

A LEAKED report has exposed the extent of alleged corruption in the United Nations’ oil-for-food scheme in Iraq, identifying up to 200 individuals and companies that made profits running into hundreds of millions of pounds from it. The report largely implicates France and Russia, whom Saddam Hussein targeted as he sought support on the UN Security Council before the Iraq war. Both countries were influential voices against UN-backed action. A senior UN official responsible for the scheme is identified as a major beneficiary. The report, marked “highly confidential”, also finds that the private office of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president,...

In 1996, after brutal sanctions had wreaked enormous hardship on the Iraqi people, the international community found a better way. Under the watchful eye of the United Nations, it launched the oil-for-food program, which would allow Iraq to sell limited amounts of oil, as long as the proceeds were used to buy food and medicine for the Iraqi people. The oil money would flow through the UN, which would monitor the spending. It was to be the largest humanitarian-aid effort ever undertaken. So much for theory.  In reality, the oil-for-food program was one of the larger rip-offs of all...

<p>BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 28 (UPI) -- Documents from Saddam Hussein's oil ministry reveal he used oil to bribe top French officials into opposing the imminent U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.</p> <p>The oil ministry papers, described by the independent Baghdad newspaper al-Mada, are apparently authentic and will become the basis of an official investigation by the new Iraqi Governing Council, the Independent reported Wednesday.</p>

The U.N. oil-for-food program was supposed to help the Iraqi people acquire the food and medicine they needed while U.N. sanctions against Iraq were in place, sanctions that could have been lifted had Saddam Hussein complied with the resolutions that the U.N. Security Council adopted following the first Gulf War. Incredibly, the deposed leader was able to bribe a global network of international power players and turn the oil-for-food program into a massive charade. Saddam orchestrated this operation so successfully that over seven years he may have collected up to $10 billion in illegal cash kickbacks while officials at the...

The cover-up in the office of the U.N. secretary general of a multibillion-dollar financial fraud known as the Iraqi oil-for-food program is beginning to come apart. The scandal has been brewing for years. The first I learned of it was in a New York Times Op-Ed article last April by the journalist Claudia Rosett charging that the U.N.'s secretive oversight of more than $100 billion in Iraqi oil exports and supposed humanitarian imports was "an invitation to kickbacks, political back-scratching and smuggling done under cover of relief operations." After checking with Kurdish sources in Iraq, I reported that half the...