Posted on 05/17/2005 8:14:11 PM PDT by Cornpone
George Galloway arrived in Washington today to rebuff accusations that he profited from Iraqi oil sales as a Senate investigation found that the US government turned a blind eye to millions of dollars of sanctions busting.
The Bush administration knew about the illegal oil sales and kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime but did nothing about them, according to a report from Democrats on a Senate committee.
The report found that US oil purchases accounted for 52 per cent of kickbacks paid to the regime in return for sales of cheap oil under the UN's food for oil programme - more than the rest of the world put together.
The scale of the shipments is understood to dwarf those alleged to have been made by UN staff and European politicians such as Galloway and the former French minister Charles Pasqua.
Mr Galloway, the newlyelected MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, has demanded an apology from the Senate subcommittee-which has named him as a beneficiary of Iraqi oil allocations. Mr Galloway, who overturned a 10,000 majority to win the seat for the anti-war Respect party, arrived in Washington yesterday and immediately demanded an apology from the subcommittee for what he called their "schoolboy dossier" against him. He said: "It was full of holes, full of falsehoods and full of value judgments that are apparently only shared here in Washington.
"I have no expectation of justice. I come not as the accused but as the accuser. I am going to show just how absurd this report is."
The new report accuses the Bush government of failing to take action against a Texas oil company which facilitated payments of "at least $37 million in illegal surcharges to the Hussein regime".
It also states that the State Department and the US military agreed to the shipment of nearly eight million barrels of oil bought by Jordan outside the Oil For Food programme.
It was not clear whether the Democrats' report would be accepted by the Republicans on the committee. The Pentagon declined to comment.
My my! A report from the Democrats on a Senate committee.
"The report found that US oil purchases accounted for 52 per cent of kickbacks paid to the regime in return for sales of cheap oil under the UN's food for oil programme - more than the rest of the world put together."
Notice how the time period under which this occurred is not mentioned.
"The report found that US oil purchases accounted for 52 per cent of kickbacks paid to the regime in return for sales of cheap oil under the UN's food for oil programme - more than the rest of the world put together."
This is no secret. But the accounting was. Yet, the paper fails to mention that.
"The scale of the shipments is understood to dwarf those alleged to have been made by UN staff and European politicians such as Galloway and the former French minister Charles Pasqua."
Our own Senators are protecting the UN and the corrupt European politicians with this report. The American people will see right through this.
"The new report accuses the Bush government of failing to take action against a Texas oil company which facilitated payments of "at least $37 million in illegal surcharges to the Hussein regime".
It also states that the State Department and the US military agreed to the shipment of nearly eight million barrels of oil bought by Jordan outside the Oil For Food programme.
It was not clear whether the Democrats' report would be accepted by the Republicans on the committee. The Pentagon declined to comment"
I bet it is not clear! The dems need to be outed.
Ping...for a friend and fellow patriot:)
Is this the best they can do?
What did the Democrats do? They were in power longer than Bush? I suppose Clinton never received a contribution from a single oil man.
Yep. Galloway has followed the canned American Democrat script by first denial and then making counter-accusations, and the Dems have seen it as a jolly chance to smear Bush. It's essentially a risk-free plan, but nobody who isn't already a True Believer will see this as anything but an evasion.
Any of this would have had to have been mostly under Clinton, heck Saddam didn't last that long after Bush took office!
I'm beginning to think that he and Howard the Cluck Dean were separated at birth.
If the sales were approved by the UN program, the US had no power to say they were illegal. Well, the US actually did complain about these things going on, but the UN pretty much told the US to STFU.
This is the second British news report that I've seen on this. The one from the Guardian was similar.
Funny, on the one hand you have sales to an oil company & on the other we have vouchers being handed out to politicians & the Brits are not able to tell that there's any kind of difference?
Doesn't matter which of our Presidents it was under. This was all done under the control & "watchful eye" of the UN.
Um, the Bush administrationremoved Hussein, thus stopping the oli-for-palaces program, and isn't the head of Bay Oil, David Chalmers, now been arrested on these very charges? Sounds like nothing happened UNTIL Bush came into office.
I hope the stupid DNC/media do put this in the news cycle because the American people are too smart to fall for this BS.
But I doubt they will at least not now because it will get blown full of holes, plus it will be hard to convince Americans President Bush did nothing when he had the military remove Saddam from power.
This is fodder for the lefty wackos.
oil for food resolution was passed in 1995 and enacted 12/96, it ended in 2003.
ALL Bush's fault.
All of this came to light because of papers found in Iraq after the war, right? That is what I thought--is so, Bush is the hero, not the scoundrel.
Ah, but its the seriousness of the allegations, not the facts!
Gee, ya kow, when the DOJ asks Bill & Hill about ther oil kickback, why, ya know, they (DOJ) could ask them to return the FBI files, couldn't they? Harry Ried can be of help too.
We cannot forget 'Mark Rich'. . .and his last minute pardon from Bill Clinton. . .
We can be sure, that his was not the first 'oil for food' dollar; to find it's way to Clinton, Inc.'s private bank accounts. . .
ALL Bush's fault.
Mais certainement
We're supposed to believe that the U.S. decided on a whim to frame an obscure, leftwing pissant member of parliament by planting forged documents in a bombed-out building in Baghdad and arranged for them to be found by a foreign journalist. Simultaneously, US agents broke into the UN and placed several boxes of forged documents that tied MP Galloway to Kofi Annan and Saddam Hussein, showing that Galloway received Iraqi oil vouchers worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. We're also to believe that Galloway's luxury villa in Portugal was purchased with money that he saved selling Ginsu steak knives on a streetcorner in London.
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