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Good Morning Dog!

I was listening to Rush yesterday while in my car and even though I thought the Food for Oil program was a sham, it was shocked to hear his show and find out it was much worse than I imagined!

Guess that explains the UN reluctance starting with Annan to have us depose Saddam! Disgusting!

Oil for Food generated $64 Billion dollars since 1996.

Thanks for the ping. I have been following this but let me add another reason to why exposing this sham is vital. Last night I caught a BBC debate on CSpan. The topic was WMD in Iraq and why the entire war will be illegal if they are not found. Those taking this side pointed out multiple time that the US and Britain had supplied false information to the security council. (This is true, but in the broad scheme of things these documents did not break the back of the coalition's position.) For some on the left not liberation, not human rights, not pictures of torture chambers or plush palaces, not boxes of money or UNICEF packages and medicines hidden from the citizens or anything else will redeem the coalition.

We saw the millions march, we saw them deface pictures of the President, we saw them blame the United States for starving, ill children, we saw them compare us to Hitler's Germany, we saw the vitriolic hatred and the calls to defer to the UN. We cannot let the shadows of these demonstrations or the foolish leftists who continue to look to villify the coalition frame the debate. The truth must be told in bold, dramatic, challenging ways.

FYI...related story...found the following in a search earlier this morning...the UN has been aware of the oil for food fraud for quite some time and has done NOTHING to resolve the situation!

November 22 1999

West finds evidence of Iraqi fraud

IRAQ'S President Saddam Hussein is believed to be skimming off hundreds of thousands of pounds a day from the United Nations "oil-for-food" scheme and using the cash to cement his grip on power (James Bone and Michael Theodoulou write). The alleged fraud has been reported by Western envoys and oil experts. "We have some intelligence on some of it - that there is a lot of it going on," a senior Western diplomat said. The US has gone so far as to block UN approval of a number of contracts to sell humanitarian goods to Iraq.

"We have trouble with some companies paying percentages to government officials in Iraq," Peter Burleigh, Deputy US Ambassador to the UN, said. "We go back to those countries in which these companies function and tell them what our problem is." With the price of oil rising rapidly, the five permanent members of the Security Council are now discussing an entirely new oversight system.

Source

Source has links to original article in the London Times, but a subscription is required to retrieve it from the archives...however, given what we know now, the logical assumption must be made that they were fully aware of this in 1999.

Thanks for the ping, PKM.

I too heard Rush talking about this issue yesterday. Frankly, it should come as no shock to anyone.

>>>"I found nothing that would seem to contradict General Tommy Franks's comment that the system should have been named the 'oil-for-palace program.'" This is why we don't want Hans Blix or Koffi Annan anywhere near Iraq.

They shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the USA either.