Annan's announcement came the day after congressional investigators reported that Saddam Hussein had stolen an estimated $10.1 billion from the U.N.-run program.Huh. I wish he an we'd heard of this before... heh heh... [The Beneficiaries of Saddam's Oil Vouchers] Saddam's under the table deals to sell oil inside and outside the sanction limits made him (temporarily) a billionnaire. And I don't think he was paying income taxes, the cheater. ;') Check out what's in bold from the next, quite dead link:
Hey, it's not as if that took place before the WTC bombing- oh wait... yes it is. Here's another old story, sort of a sidebar for this whole issue, coming out of the hard drive here, from 18 months ago, and followed by my comments of that time:Oil-for-Food Deal for Iraq DebatedA counterproposal by Russia for a six-month extension, which included several additions designed to please Baghdad, was not welcomed by the two English-speaking allies. Both France and China said they needed more time to study long and highly technical lists of military-related items which could be kept out if Iraq under the U.S.-British plan. Iraq remains under sanctions imposed after it invaded Kuwait in 1990. But under the oil-for-food program, it can sell oil to buy approved humanitarian goods.
AP
May 31 2001
The US doesn't get that most of its oil from the Saudis, but has imported more than half its supply from non-US sources since the late 1970s.Iraq's oilAmerica's chief interest in going after Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein, is doubtless to save the world from his actual or potential weapons of mass destruction. Another large consideration, secondary as it may be, has attracted less attention than it should have: the effects that would follow from the opening up of the country's enormous reserves of oil.
The Economist
Sep 12th 2002
Iraq's reserves are the second-biggest in the world, after Saudi Arabia's (see table). At present, thanks to UN sanctions and Mr Hussein's attempts to evade them, the country is producing a fraction of its potential. If it were to produce oil at a rate to match its reserves, say some geopolitical strategists, it could end Saudi Arabia's domination of world oil markets.
That would not come too soon for the United States. America is by far the world's biggest oil-user, burning up a quarter of the total consumed. Its imports have risen in recent years, to more than half its total consumption. Since Saudi Arabia is the chief supplier of those imports, successive American presidents have gone to great lengths to cultivate the unsavoury and dictatorial House of Saud.
As a matter of fact, Japan and Europe rely on the Middle East far more than the US does. Last I knew, the largest single foreign supplier of oil to the US is Venezuela, followed by Mexico, and then (indirectly through trans-shippers) various Middle Eastern OPEC countries (occasionally including Iraq), and finally Nigeria (also in OPEC I think).
But the Saudi chokehold on OPEC could end with Saddam's removal, and that has to concern those 2000 corrupt princes. So must the fall of the (Saudi financed) Taliban regime, the horror and instability of which eliminated any possibility of an oil pipeline from deeper in Asia to ports on the Indian Ocean. And if the US were to just pulp Saddam and his regime, and take over those Iraqi oilfields, Europe would be gripped by the short hairs.
I can't imagine why Europe would oppose US overthrow of Saddam Hussein, can you? I'm sure it can't have anything to do with the possible control of their oil supply. And I can't imagine why the Europeans favor reductions in hydrocarbon consumption by the US, can you? [unsnip] And as noted elsewhere, in 2002 European auto sales of new vehicles were 42 per cent diesel. Not hydrogen. Not flywheel. Not hybrid. Not solar. Not battery powered. Not fuel cells...
What happens when you get the support of Moslem voters in America? 19 foreign Arab Moslems hijack four airliners and mass murder more than 3,000 people on US soil. And they went to American flight school on money supplied by Saudi oil sales.Inside OPEC's Surprise CutOPEC surprised the market last week by announcing a 900,000 barrel a day reduction in quotas, effective November 1. The announcement quickly boosted spot oil prices, which jumped $0.89 a barrel to $28.02... OPEC's decision offsets the action taken at the April OPEC meeting, when quotas were raised by 900,000 barrels a day effective June 1 (although the organization announced a simultaneous 2 million barrel-a-day cut in production at that time). However, since June, production by the OPEC 10 -- those OPEC countries that have quotas -- has risen by 70,000 barrels a day, to 25.8 million barrels. Including Iraq, production has risen by 640,000 barrels a day, to an estimated 26.9 million barrels... Through August, only Venezuela (which is still suffering the effects of the oil workers’ strike) and Indonesia are in compliance with current quotas... [W]orld oil supply exceeds fourth-quarter 2003 demand by about 1.1 million barrels a day. OPEC production, meanwhile, is expected to rise further in September -- owing to increased Iraqi production, which has risen to approximately 1.5 million barrels a day... All this boils down to a lower barrel price, which could be $18 for the full-year 2004. Of course, a sharp fall in oil prices will be bad for oil stocks, but good for the broader market.
by Frederick P. Leuffer
September 29, 2003, 8:30 a.m.Why some greens favor energy billBut while environmentalists steam, the surprise is that some renewable energy trade groups are actually excited over the money the bill is likely to send their way. Indeed, the bill threatens to drive a wedge between green power and environmental activists.
by Mark Clayton
Christian Science Monitor
November 21, 2003
For the first time since 1986, there's a 15 percent tax credit, up to $2,000 for homeowners who buy solar electric or hot-water systems - and there's a similar credit for wind power or fuel-cell systems.
By effectively splitting off green-power advocates from the environmental movement, the bill's Republican authors have enhanced its chances of passage (it cleared the House Tuesday and, at press time, a vote was pending in the Senate) and blunted criticism that the GOP doesn't protect the environment.
This year, the Moslem orgs have endorsed the Democratic nominee, sight unseen, Kerry or whomever winds up with the bucket of warm spit, er, nomination. Why? Because Moslem organizations support Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, the PLO...Natural Conservatives"U.S. Muslims come from Pakistan, India, Iran, Africa, and the Middle East, plus American converts. Just one out of six is of Arab descent; of the 3 million Arab- Americans, two-thirds are Christian. The Muslim community is thus not an ethnic bloc, but a faith-based, naturally conservative community. Muslims voted two to one for George H. W. Bush in 1992, then in 1996 went two to one for Clinton. George W. Bush got them back only through a vigorous outreach campaign. Muslims around the globe noticed, for example, that he always speaks of believers who attend 'church, synagogue, or mosque.' He is the first president to utter the word 'mosque' in an inaugural address. In Philadelphia last year, Talat Othman, chairman of the Islamic Institute, gave the first Muslim prayer at a Republican convention. The Democrats scrambled to invite a Muslim to speak to their convention two weeks later.
Muslims deliver for the GOP
by Grover Norquist
June 2001
When George W. Bush condemned the use of secret evidence in his second nationally televised debate with Al Gore, national Muslim groups decided to endorse Bush. Eight national Muslim groups did so on October 23rd. Eighty-five percent of Muslim voters, in a poll commissioned by Muslim leaders, reported that they were aware of the leadership's endorsement. As for claims that Muslims voted for Bush because Joe Lieberman is an observant Jew, Muslim leaders themselves cite Lieberman as one of the most Muslim-friendly Senators, praising his strong faith and co-sponsorship of a resolution condemning anti-Muslim bigotry."
Christianity among local Arabs is something I'd noticed here, but that doesn't necessarily change their politics. The Jew-baiting, pro-Arab, pro-Moslem rag Washington Report endorsed Sore Loserman, which figures considering that the Clinton White House has done much to push the interests of OPEC, Albanian terrorists, and Arabs (but not the Moslem Chechens -- who wanted control over an oil pipeline as well as autonomy) at the expense of Israel (and Turkey for that matter). This shows two things -- the disparity between the interests of the so called left and Moslems, and the crying need for an alternative to Washington Report magazine.
I could plaster in a quote about North Korea, in advance of next week's or next month's emphasis on the situation there and how the partisan media shills say GWB is f-ing it up. I figure that Osama and that other little bitch will be either in custody or on a slab very soon, so the War On Terror will look like a very successful enterprise.Dems undermining U.S. progress...That's every country from the Khyber Pass to the Mediterranean Sea. This is not to say that the Near East has been forever transformed, but because of American resolution and action, there is a historic possibility for such a transformation.
by Charles Krauthammer
July 28, 2003
It all hinges, however, on success in Iraq. And with everything at stake, what is the left doing? Everything it can to undermine the enterprise. By implying both that it was launched fraudulently... and, alternately, that it has ensnared us in a hopeless quagmire.
Yes, the cost is great. But remember that just yesterday we lost 3,000 lives in one day. If this region is not transformed, on some future day we will lose 300,000.
If we win the peace and leave behind a decent democratic society, it will revolutionize the region. And if we leave in failure, the whole region will fall back into chaos, and worse.
Which it is and has been right along. Let's turn again, briefly, to the circumvention of McCain-Feingold by the so-called Democrats. Whoops, it didn't start with all those DNC shadow organizations (nor did it start in 2003; there were a host of them in the late 1970s who were equally desperate to fight against Republican victory in 1980; most of them fell apart by 1981):
If the ballot is stronger than the bullet (att. to Abraham Lincoln), even a "flawed" ballot -- not to mention boxcar loads of www electrons -- must be stronger than the ink by the barrel. The importance of the web as a news source becomes more obvious every day.Candor and Campaign FinanceIn fact, it is arithmetically certain that most Democrats, like most of the rest of the public, dislike public funding of politics. Eighty-nine percent of all taxpayers refuse to use the checkoff provision that allocates $3 to public funding of nomination contests -- even though using the checkoff increases the taxpayer's liability not a penny. Many more than 11 percent of taxpayers are Democrats.
by George F. Will
Sunday, November 23, 2003
Gephardt, who boasts of having "led the fight for" the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation, says, as all reformers do, that there is too much money in politics. Reformers especially abhor big contributions of the sort McCain-Feingold supposedly banished because they are corrupting or create the "appearance" of corruption. But what, then, of George Soros?
That billionaire says he would spend his last nickel to rescue the world from George W. Bush. As a down payment on that dream, he has given, so far, more than $15 million to various like-minded organizations. He can give billions as long as everyone involved cynically pretends that the expenditure of the money is not intended to "influence" a federal election.
This is campaign finance reform, the supposed idealism of today's liberalism: institutionalized cynicism.
When he was asked recently if Soros's spending is "consistent with the spirit of the current laws," Gephardt's honesty did him credit and did him in. He said: "It is not consistent with campaign reform, but it is consistent with what the Constitution says about freedom of speech."The Myth of a Stolen ElectionWhat the story fails to report is that federal law required Florida to count these votes. Following the presidential election of 1980, the U.S. Justice Department brought suit against Florida charging that the state's laws and procedures unduly burdened overseas military personnel seeking to vote. In August 1982, Florida signed a consent decree, acknowledging deficiencies and pledging reform. Through journalistic alchemy, absentee votes required by federal law to be counted have now become "flawed ballots" serving to further delegitimize the victory. We can expect more of the same in weeks ahead when Sen. Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.) takes his Rules Committee on an excursion through election reform. The myth of a stolen election gallops on, impervious to fact, reason and law.
by Bob Zelnick
2001
