Scandal at the U.N.

NY Times ^ | March 17, 2004 | WILLIAM SAFIRE

[mewzilla]

No offense to Safire, but where's he been? This info's been available around here for quite a while.

[blanknoone]

Office of Internal Oversight Services

A blind deaf mute illiterate sheikh currently on sabbatical to a madrassah on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border.

[OESY]

The Big Question is, Did Kerry take money from Saddam like like other foreign leaders who demanded UN participation in Iraq and continuance of the corrupt Oil-For-Food program such as British Labour MP George Galloway and French Premier Jacques Chirac?

[kcvl]

more than $100 billion in U.N.-approved contracts for Saddam to sell oil and buy humanitarian supplies

Annan's own son, Kojo Annan, to the Switzerland-based firm, Cotecna, which from 1999 onward worked on contract for the U.N. monitoring the shipments of Oil-for-food supplies into Iraq. These were the same supplies sent in under terms of those tens of billions of dollars worth of U.N.-approved contracts in which the U.N. says it failed to notice Saddam Hussein's widespread arrangements to overpay contractors who then shipped overpriced goods to the impoverished people of Iraq and kicked back part of their profits to Saddam's regime.

Cotecna was hired by the U.N. on December 31, 1998. Shortly afterward, press reports surfaced that Kojo was a partner in a private consulting firm doing work for Cotecna, and that just 13 months previously he had occupied a senior slot on Cotecna's own staff. Asked about this in 1999 by the London Telegraph, a U.N. spokesman, John Mills, replied that the U.N. had not been aware of the connection, and that "The tender by Cotecna was the lowest by a significant margin."

Cotecna — while employing Kofi's son in any capacity — put in the lowest bid by far for the job of authenticating Saddam's Oil-for-Food imports, is not necessarily reassuring. Cotecna, which got paid roughly $6 million for its services during that first year (the U.N. will not release figures on Cotecna's fees over the following years)

Oil-for-Food was run out of the U.N. Secretariat, reporting directly to Annan, who regularly signed off on the six-month phases of the program.

Kofi Annan's official U.N. biography notes that shortly before his promotion to Secretary-General "he led the first United Nations team negotiating with Iraq on the sale of oil to fund purchases of humanitarian aid."

[oldironsides]

It is time for the United Nations to move to Paris.

[RippleFire]

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[Doc-Joe]

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[kcvl]

Timmerman, who worked as a journalist in France for eighteen years and knows the players on both sides, lifts the veil of Jacques Chirac's scandalous love affair with Saddam Hussein, beginning in 1975, when he took him on a tour of top-secret French nuclear facilities. The French attitude toward the dictator, which seemed to baffle American politicians, was in fact entirely predictable. Put bluntly, it was all about money, oil, and guns. Chirac needed Saddam's oil and Saddam's money, and Saddam needed French weapons and French nuclear technology.

Despite this, the relationship between France and America was not only amicable but at times very mutually beneficial. That was until the most recent war on Iraq, where France turned the tables, engaging in dirty diplomacy and helping to sway other European countries to their side. French war coverage was not merely one-sided: It was viciously inaccurate, skewed, and openly anti-American. Timmerman also presents incredible new evidence of France's duplicity, including the fact that the French stood to gain $100 billion from secret oil contracts they had concluded with Saddam Hussein.

Shocking new revelations in The French Betrayal of America

The French president lied to Bush and to the public about the war in Iraq.
President Jacques Chirac had personally told President George W. Bush well ahead of time that France would be at America's side.

France urged Saddam to commit genocide.

Saddam launched his genocidal campaign against the Marsh Arabs in southern Iraq to make their region "safe" for French oil engineers.

France helped build Saddam's long-range missiles and nukes. Based on exclusive access to new documents, provided by Iraq to the United Nations -- that French defense companies were key partners in helping Saddam Hussein perfect the long-range missiles that killed U.S. soldiers in Saudi Arabia in 1991 and rained terror onto Israel.

Chirac has blocked cooperation on a high-profile terrorism case.
France's top counter-terrorism judge was ordered to stop cooperating with the United States in the prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui despite mounds of documents that would have helped the United States to convict Moussaoui of conspiracy to commit mass murder.

France illegally sold U.S. military secrets to Saddam Hussein.
A prominent French defense company shipped U.S.-designed laser designator pods to Iraq in the 1980s that compromised the most high-tech weapons in the U.S. arsenal.

President Mitterrand, a Socialist, became Ronald Reagan's best ally in Europe.

The French Betrayal of America reveals the extent of French strategic and intelligence cooperation with the United States at the peak of the Cold War, in areas that will surprise readers on both sides of the Atlantic. The French ran a key agent inside the KGB, whose "cosmic" reach -- right up to the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union -- hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union.

President Chirac almost went to jail for corruption.
Chirac was on the verge of getting indicted on corruption charges in 1999 until he cooked up an immunity deal with the head of the French Supreme Court, former Socialist foreign minister Roland Dumas. While the French corruption scandals are well known in France, they have rarely been reported in the United States and will alternately shock and amuse American readers.

[pax_et_bonum]

Go away UN ping

[kcvl]

The war in Iraq was indeed a “war for oil” – waged by France, not the U.S.

THE FRENCH BETRAYAL OF AMERICA reveals that Saddam had promised the French $100 billion in exclusive oil contracts if they succeeded in keeping him in power.

Saddam paid off French politicians with suitcases of cash
THE FRENCH BETRAYAL OF AMERICA reveals for the first time how arms dealers made cash payments in Switzerland to French politicians on behalf of Saddam Hussein, in exchange for their support.

[katana]

Hope this gets published in France under the simpler title of Trahison! (Betrayal!). We are not entirely without friends there.

[B4Ranch]

Scandal at the U.N.

Scandal IS the U.N.

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

This is why I will never buy into UN-backed anything!

[McGavin999]

Oh Korrupt Koffi will not be fired. He'll be allowed to "retire" to spend more time with his family. But there is no doubt he is going to have to go, and it will be in total disgrace.

The Iraqi people are going to make this public, and this is exactly why the UN and the Security Council didn't want us going in there. They were sucking the blood of the carcass of Iraq and getting fat and happy off the backs of starving people.

[nutmeg]

ping!

Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my infrequent ‘miscellaneous’ ping list.

[Freedom2specul8]

Thank you for the ping...wonder how the dems will respond..

[Bonaparte]

Well said by both of you!

[Shermy]

Ping.

[Moonman62]

It is now obvious why the UN would have never backed an invasion. Bush should be on this like white on rice.

We'll see how committed he is to his "new tone in Washington," which would dictate that he look the other away at government corruption, if possible. Is there any way this can be pinned on Martha?

[baltimoreman]

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