Posted on 04/29/2003 10:08:10 AM PDT by knighthawk
Not that it should come as a surprise to anyone, but it turns out some of the staunchest international opponents of invading Iraq -- on principle, you understand -- were up to their eyeballs in secret deals with the now deposed regime of Saddam Hussein. Since the fall of Baghdad earlier this month, documents found at the Iraqi Foreign Ministry, at the headquarters of the Iraqi intelligence service, Mukhabarat, and elsewhere around the capital have revealed just how deeply involved were those who sided against the war at the United Nations -- France, Germany, Russia, China and the UN itself -- in propping up Saddam's murderous government. Others suggest at least one prominent critic of the Anglo-American coalition may have taken millions in bribes to parrot Baghdad's virtues in the West. And all this inside of three weeks.
Yesterday, London's Daily Telegraph published documents showing how France's Foreign Ministry conspired with the Mukhabarat to disrupt the Paris meetings of a prominent anti-Saddam human rights group in 1998. France pressured the group, Indict, to accept delegates who turned out to be Saddam's agents. It also encouraged pro-Saddam demonstrations outside the meeting hall, discouraged French media from reporting on the atrocities uncovered by Indict and may even have staged a bomb scare to disrupt proceedings. The French also routinely informed Baghdad of secrets Jacques Chirac learned in talks with Tony Blair or George W. Bush.
Other documents have shown how, last spring, German spies approached Saddam's regime with a plan whereby the German government would oppose any and all military action proposed at the UN in return for "lucrative contracts" for German companies in Iraq's oilfields. The Russians spied on Mr. Blair during an EU summit on a possible war in February and passed their intelligence on to Saddam. They also gave the Iraqi Information Ministry advice on how to make it appear the regime was co-operating with UN weapons inspectors, when it was not.
While this was going on, George Galloway, a British Labour MP, is alleged to have championed Iraq's cause in the British and European press, in Parliament and in the Labour caucus in return for US$3- to US$4-million in clandestine payments from the Iraqi Foreign Ministry. Mr. Galloway, who was an enormous thorn in Mr. Blair's side during the run-up to the invasion, denies the charges. But still more documents, whose authenticity has yet to be definitively established, indicate payments may have stopped recently only because Mr. Galloway upped his demands beyond what even the corrupt Iraqi regime was willing to pay.
Then there is the UN's oil-for-food program. Since 1996, it has helped sell US$55-billion in Iraqi oil, but authorized just US$34-billion in aid shipments back into Iraq. The US$21-billion surplus is thought to be sitting in UN accounts, mostly in French banks. In 2002 alone, the UN is believed to have sold US$16-billion in oil, turned a blind eye to a further US$5.3-billion in illegal sales (the proceeds of which likely went into Saddam's pockets and those of his Russian and French oil brokers) and pocketed US$483-million in commissions in the process.
With more than 1,000 UN employees and 3,000 Iraqi workers -- mostly chosen by the regime -- oil-for-food is the UN's biggest and most profitable single project. Still, details are sketchy because Secretary-General Kofi Annan's office is not required to (and doesn't) disclose the details of the contracts it signs. Nor are the French overseers of the surplus accounts required to provide external audits.
But we know where Saddam's share of the take went. China and France are believed to have sold "precursors" for chemical weapons to Iraq in the weeks just before the invasion began, and shipped them through Syria. Russia sold night-vision goggles to the Republican Guard. New revelations turn up every day.
It is more than likely the secret documents discovered to date are just the tip of an enormous, scheming iceberg. In the coming months, still more direct connections are likely to be discovered between the anti-war governments on the Security Council and Iraq's economic and intelligence agencies. But what has been revealed to date is staggering. If anyone's position on this war was "all about oil," it was France and Russia's, not that of the United States. While affecting such public concern for peace and international law, the anti-war powers have been exposed as having acted out of self-interest of the most venal kind. To call this performance hypocritical would not begin to do it justice.
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