[Lando Lincoln]

I firmly believe that if the "Oil for Food" scandal is investigated to its complete conclusion, it will reveal that the UN weapons inspections were also compromised by payoffs.

Lando

[FourtySeven]

Bump, good article. And I never thought about the "Oil for Food"/WMD connection, but you may very well be right.

[Cap Huff]

The following snippet from the February MTP interview has always intrigued me:

"There is going to be ample time for the American people to assess whether or not I made a — good calls, whether or not I used good judgment, whether or not I made the right decision in removing Saddam Hussein from power, and I look forward to that debate, and I look forward to talking to the American people about why I made the decisions I made."

I think the Oil for Food program, and possibly its relationship to the WMD is the background for this rather bold statement. It sounded then like he knew something that is not generally known (although the Oil for Food scandal was already percollating at the time).

[Starve The Beast]

I firmly believe that if the "Oil for Food" scandal is investigated to its complete conclusion, it will reveal that the UN weapons inspections were also compromised by payoffs.

That's a big if, Lando. Right now the UN is in obfuscate mode, and there doesn't seem to be any mechanism to force them to open the books. I hope I'm wrong, but right now my money is on Kofi and his thugs keeping a lid on it.

[Wolfstar]

I firmly believe that if the "Oil for Food" scandal is investigated to its complete conclusion, it will reveal that the UN weapons inspections were also compromised by payoffs.

I have no doubt about this whatsoever. The answer to what happened to the WMD is inextricably tied to the oil-for-food scam. At least one of three things happened (if not a combination):

• Hussein moved his WMD out of the country while Annan, Chirac, Putin and Shroeder helped him stall for time.
• Hussen had the WMD buried in backyards, remoted desert areas and/or equally remote mountainous regions while Annan, Chirac, Putin and Shroeder helped him stall for time.
• The weapons had actually been found and destroyed by the UN in the mid-1990's, but Hussein, Annan, Chirac, Putin, and corrupt UN weapons inspectors colluded to keep the fiction going that Iraq still had WMD. Reason: All corrupted parties found it lucrative to maintain the fiction because it kept the oil-for-food scam going.

If the latter is true — and I suspect it may be — it is by far the worst of the three scenarios. If true, they knowingly allowed the Iraqi people to suffer, starve, and be bombed almost daily in the no-fly zones — and they knowingly fed false intelligence to the U.S., Great Britain and others in order to keep up the oil-for-food rationale.

This third scenario fully explains the apparant desperation on the part of Annan, Chirac, and Putin to try to prevent our invasion, and it explains why Hussein seemed to entirely misread the resolve of Bush and Blair. It also explains how someone like Scott Ritter could vehemently insist that Iraq had WMD one day, then turn on a dime and insist they didn't — too late for anyone to believe him.

[lepton]

it will reveal that the UN weapons inspections were also compromised by payoffs.

We already know that it was. That Hussein was offering million dollar rewards to any of the inspectors that would provide certain types of information. It was known that at least one had accepted. This during the 1990s.