[Jeff Chandler]

Buried in the Saturday online version?

[writer33]

"In its final years in power, Saddam Hussein's government systematically extracted billions of dollars in kickbacks from companies doing business with Iraq, funneling most of the illicit funds through a network of foreign bank accounts in violation of United Nations sanctions."


And yet, liberals still thank he shouldn't have been removed from power. When they do, they still feel that we should've done it through the U.N. And we did. It still wasn't enough.

[spodefly]

Dupe

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1087458/posts

[Fenris6]

No mention of French & Russian diplomats accepting bribes.

[ServesURight]

What? No mention of evil Halliburton?

[CROSSHIGHWAYMAN]

Whatever happened to the investigation of certain middle east entities that shorted American airline and insurance stocks in the months before 9-11?

[DustyMoment]

Saddam? Skimmed money intended for the Iraqi people!!??

I'm so shocked.

[chachacha]

Ahh! Really?

[mewzilla]

The Iraqis should sue the UN to get their billions back.

[WhiteGuy]

Oh, what a surprise.........................

oil profits being redirected to shadowy interests.............

Like that's not going on now................................

It wouldn't make any sense to apply the same logic to the OPIUM trade in Afghanistan now would it?................

War on terror, ............right.

[timydnuc]

Is the NY Slimes trying to get my subscription money or are they guilt ridden. This does not compute. Someone slap me and bring me back to the real world where the Slimes is the liar.

[hgro]

Hussein's Regime Skimmed Billions From Aid Program

Seems like the U.N. managed to skim billions that they refuse to account for too.

[optimistically_conservative]

I couldn't help shaking my head while reading this, thinking they totally missed the point.

Saddam destroyed Iraqi society, turned his government into an international terror supporting thugocracy, and ran an international mafia organization that corrupted other government officials, business and the UN.

He bribed and divided the UN Security Council.

He created an international propaganda campaign against the sanctions and inspections.

He violated the cease-fire in numerous ways including shooting at our aircraft in the "illegal" no-fly zones.

He murdered, starved and terrorized millions of Iraqis.

Oh, and the US/UK was to blame for all the ills in Iraq and the Middle East.

But hey, it's an election year and we can't lose the "Bush lied" and Cheney/Haliburton stole momentum.

In its final years in power, Saddam Hussein's government systematically extracted billions of dollars in kickbacks from companies doing business with Iraq, funneling most of the illicit funds through a network of foreign bank accounts in violation of United Nations sanctions.

Puh-lease, 2000 was just when they put the whole government to work at it.

Iraq's sanctions-busting has long been an open secret. Two years ago, the General Accounting Office estimated that oil smuggling had generated nearly $900 million a year for Iraq. Oil companies had complained that Iraq was squeezing them for illegal surcharges, and Mr. Hussein's lavish spending on palaces and monuments provided more evidence of his access to unrestricted cash.

This is only half the story and it didn't "start" in 2000 as implied in the article. Where did the $ millions paid by Iraq in rewards to Palestinian terrorists and funding for Palestine's terrorist organizations come from? Where did the $10 million paid to North Korea for Scud missiles and manufacturing come from?

Yet his policy of awarding contracts to gain political support often meant that Iraq received shoddy, even useless, goods in return.

To some officials of Iraq's provisional government, what is perhaps most insulting is how little their country got for its oil money. Taking stock of what was bought before the American-led invasion toppled Mr. Hussein last spring, they have found piles of nonessential drugs, mismatched equipment and defective hospital machines.

But, but, CASI and the other anti-sanctions groups were claiming the US and UK were responsible for the deaths of half million or more children because of sanctions. In February 2002 Unicef described the Iraqi government's food distribution system as working "flawlessly". I thought it was sanctions that were causing the shortage of medicine and hospital equipment? Why no explanation for why in April and May 2002 Iraq suspended oil sales for 30 days in protest at the continuing violence between the Israelis and the Palestinians? Were they already that rich they didn't need the skimmed income?

United Nations overseers say they were unaware of the systematic skimming of oil-for-food revenues. They were focused on running aid programs and assuring food deliveries, they add.

The director of the Office of Iraq Programs, Benon V. Sevan, declined to be interviewed about the oil-for-food program.

What, no mention of a Sevan in Panama being listed as receiving 11.5 million barrels of oil vouchers and his denials? The entire article seems to be sympathetic of the business men and government officials that took vouchers and paid kickbacks. Hello? Imagine if Cheney's name was on the list and Haliburton was running the oil-for-food program.

It was kept in place after the Persian Gulf war in 1991, with the provision that sanctions would be lifted once Iraq destroyed its unconventional weapons and ended its weapons program.

That's not accurate. Paragraph 22 of UNSCR 687 actually called for more than destruction of weapons and ending programs. It also called for full disclosure, which Iraq never supplied despite numerous "final" "full" disclosures. It also required an agreement for a system of long-term monitoring. This agreement was not reached. Finally, it required establishment of a Fund to pay compensation for claims from the war and a DMZ between Iraq and Kuwait. These were established.

Paragraph 32 of UNSCR 687 also made the cease-fire conditional on Iraq getting out of and staying clear of international terrorism.

We were looking at the contracts already approved and the U.N. lady said, `Do you mind if we continue with these?'" he recalled. "She was talking as if it was a gift or a favor, with our money of course. I said, `Is it the same contracts to Egypt and China? It is the same cooking oil we used to use in our drive shafts, the same matches that burned our houses down, the same soap that didn't clean?' She was shocked."

After the war and uprisings, we effectively occupied 2/3 of Iraqi airspace and directly assisted the Kurds with humanitarian efforts on the ground. The Kurds faired extremely well compared to Iraqis in central and Southern Iraq. Saddam paid terrorists in Palestine; gave shelter to Abbas, Nidal and Zarqawi in Baghdad; supported Ansar al-Islam; minimally, reached out to al-Qaeda; bribed officials around the world; busted sanctions while forcing Iraqis to suffer; maintained an extensive black market; and thwarted UN inspectors.

But he was no threat. We aren't any safer now. Bush lied. It was Cheney's plan to get Haliburton rich. Blah, Blah, Blah ....

[FairOpinion]

It's a long article and some of the important details are buried.

But here is one:

"After a review of the ministry's spending, he said, he canceled $250 million worth of contracts with companies he believes were fronts for the former government or got contracts only because they were from countries friendly to Mr. Hussein."

THIS is the real reason, why France and Germany opposed liberating Iraq from Saddam.

[JThomas]

Will the antiwar types give a hoot about this? Nope. They care more about the "sins" of Halliburton.

[weegee]

Article was posted twice and unnecessarily excerpted both times? This is hugh!

Hussein's Regime Skimmed Billions From Aid Program
By SUSAN SACHS

Published: February 29, 2004


AGHDAD, Iraq — In its final years in power, Saddam Hussein's government systematically extracted billions of dollars in kickbacks from companies doing business with Iraq, funneling most of the illicit funds through a network of foreign bank accounts in violation of United Nations sanctions.

Millions of Iraqis were struggling to survive on rations of food and medicine. Yet the government's hidden slush funds were being fed by suppliers and oil traders from around the world who sometimes lugged suitcases full of cash to ministry offices, said Iraqi officials who supervised the skimming operation.

The officials' accounts were enhanced by a trove of internal Iraqi government documents and financial records provided to The New York Times by members of the Iraqi Governing Council. Among the papers was secret correspondence from Mr. Hussein's top lieutenants setting up a formal mechanism to siphon cash from Iraq's business deals, an arrangement that went unnoticed by United Nations monitors.

Under a United Nations program begun in 1997, Iraq was permitted to sell its oil only to buy food and other relief goods. The kickback order went out from Mr. Hussein's inner circle three years later, when limits on the amount of oil sales were lifted and Iraq's oil revenues reached $10 billion a year.

In an Aug. 3, 2000, letter marked "urgent and confidential," the Iraqi vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, informed government ministers that a high-command committee wanted "extra revenues" from the oil-for-food program. To that end, he wrote, all suppliers must be told to inflate their contracts "by the biggest percentage possible" and secretly transfer those amounts to Iraq's bank accounts in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

"Please acknowledge and certify that this is executed in an accurate and clear way, and under supervision of the specified minister," Mr. Ramadan wrote.

Iraq's sanctions-busting has long been an open secret. Two years ago, the General Accounting Office estimated that oil smuggling had generated nearly $900 million a year for Iraq. Oil companies had complained that Iraq was squeezing them for illegal surcharges, and Mr. Hussein's lavish spending on palaces and monuments provided more evidence of his access to unrestricted cash.

But the dimensions of the corruption have only lately become clear, from the newly available documents and from disclosures by government officials who say they were too fearful to speak out before. They show the magnitude and organization of the payoff system, the complicity of the companies involved and the way Mr. Hussein bestowed contracts and gifts on those who praised him.

Yet his policy of awarding contracts to gain political support often meant that Iraq received shoddy, even useless, goods in return.

Perhaps the best measure of the corruption comes from a review of the $8.7 billion in outstanding oil-for-food contracts by the provisional Iraqi government with United Nations help. It found that 70 percent of the suppliers had inflated their prices and agreed to pay a 10 percent kickback, in cash or by transfer to accounts in Jordanian, Lebanese and Syrian banks.

At that rate, Iraq would have collected as much as $2.3 billion of the $32.6 billion worth of contracts it signed since mid-2000, when the kickback system began. And some companies were willing to pay even more than the standard 10 percent, according to Trade and Oil Ministry employees.

Iraq's suppliers included Russian factories, Arab trade brokers, European manufacturers and state-owned companies from China and the Middle East. Iraq generally refused to buy directly from American companies, which in any case needed special licenses to trade legally with Iraq.

In one instance, the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American-led administrators in Iraq, found that Syria was prepared to kick back nearly 15 percent on its $57.5 million contract to sell wheat to Iraq. Syria has agreed to increase the amount of wheat to compensate for the inflated price, said an occupation official involved in the talks.

[Just mythoughts]

Of course our very own Maddie Albright knew nothing.....

More INTEL must be on the horizon.