Posted on 04/14/2005 12:52:42 PM PDT by Dominick
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Thursday the United States and Britain bore part of the blame in the Iraq oil-for-food debacle by allowing unsupervised oil exports that Saddam Hussein exploited.
Annan, addressing a seminar on the United Nations and the media, said most of the money Saddam earned was by oil sold to Jordan and Turkey outside of the $67 billion U.N. program.
Only countries like the United States and Britain had interdiction forces that could have stopped it. But he said they "decided to close their eyes to Turkey and Jordan because they are allies."
(Excerpt) Read more at story.news.yahoo.com ...
""Only countries like the United States and Britain had interdiction forces that could have stopped it. But he said they "decided to close their eyes to Turkey and Jordan because they are allies."
Interdiction forces are not just limited to shipments by sea. We had the air and land power to stop it if we wanted to, the same way we established the northern and southern no-fly zones in Iraq."
Interdiction forces can not stop smuggling on land unless there are boots on the ground on that land. We did not have boots on the ground in Iraq, Turkey or Jordan that had any authority to stop land shipments.
There are places where we could stop land smuggling like, here in the USA, we could help other countries if they agreed, but only if they agreed or if we were to go in with the force to occupy the land. When we asked the UN to join us in doing that in Iraq they told us NO.
Naval and air forces would not have been able to stop this kind of smuggling because it was all done by land and we did not have near good enough intelligence. The only reason that we can stop it today is because we sent troops in and took over the country of Iraq. But now that we have done that, we do not need to stop the shipments.
First, some oil shipments were sent by sea to Jordan.Hussein's illicit oil sales detailed
Second, most of the oil shipped to Turkey was through an existing pipeline, which could have been severed by air power.
Finally, you keep dancing around the subject. The US did not want to stop these shipments as a matter of offical policy. We knew they were going on and I can say that from firsthand knowledge. I don't have a problem with our policy, but to make up some cock and bull story as to why we didn't take any action is just false. We didn't cut our aid to Jordan and Turkey for breaking the sanctions.
"Placke said most of the oil was trucked across the Iraqi border to Jordan's refinery in Zarqa, about 30 miles north of Amman. But several weeks before the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003, Jordan began loading massive quantities of oil from Khor al-Amaya. "They could see they were likely to get caught in an oil squeeze," Placke said."
Notice that the vast majority was done by land?
In fact, the only oil smuggling that you have cited that involved shipping via sea to Iraq was one month before we went to war. In that case, we may have not known where the shipment was going, but were not going to be decoyed away.
Either way, the majority of the smuggling took place over land and we did not have any interdiction forces in place to stop it, regardless of what our policy was then or before.
Yep. First it's 'let the U.N. do their job.' Then it's 'The U.N. did their job.' Then it's 'Kojo lied to me!' Now it's 'The U.S. could have solved the problem like it did in Iraq by not letting the U.N. do its job!'
We need to dig a deep trench around the U.N. after we herd its bureaucrats and ambassadors onto the island, and let them all play 'Survivor' for real.
Actually there already is an international group which could be the replacement.
If we had the cojones we could transfer UN responsibility to G7. It makes a lot of sense from the standpoint that these are the countries who end up paying for almost everything the UN does.
All of the third world countries who do nothing but endlessly debate the faults of the US and the wealthy countries could be given observer status on the condition that they STFU and accept the handouts we give them on our terms instead of demanding them on their terms.
Plus, we could yank the diplomatic immunity of all the observers and make them learn to park their cars in legal spots--just like those of us who pay for those cars.
The G7 is an interesting suggestion!
If you have not already done so, please sign the petition to get the stinking, corrupt to the core UN out of the USA. Let's help relocate these anti-American thugs to some 3rd world shithole where they belong.
http://moveamericaforward.org/?Page=Petition
Thanks, Jarhead. I hope we get a lot of petitions.
Me? I would just close it down, and hose it down.
Everyone needs to remember the French participated in enforcing the No Fly Zones and sanctions until 1998 when they became opposed to them ($$cha-ching$$).
By Kofi's logic, we should attack UN troops in the Congo immediately to stop the raping of women and children by UN troops over there..
Good grief! Annan sure is crying in his beer over HIS problems and trying to shift the blame to others. What a little creep! Lock him and his son in jail and throw away the key.
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