Where’s the Media on Saddam’s Payoffs? (Media Refuses To Report On Bribery of British MP)

One of the most interesting post-war stories for liberal journalists — who love to deplore how Big Money distorts politics — ought to be the way the deposed Iraqi regime bought influence with politicians and journalists. Last week, the London Daily Telegraph began reporting that George Galloway, a Laborite member of Parliament and an anti-war voice featured by several American media outlets, received hundreds of thousands of pounds in the past few years from Saddam’s coffers.

In the May 5 Weekly Standard, Stephen F. Hayes summarized the story and added that American politicians also received cash: Rep. Jim McDermott, so memorably featured from Baghdad attacking President Bush as a liar last fall on ABC’s This Week, accepted $5,000 for his legal defense fund from Shakir al-Khafaji, a Saddam supporter (and contractor with the Ba’athist regime) who arranged his Baghdad trip. Where are the national media on this developing storyline?

Although the Telegraph began reporting on documents showing Galloway’s payoffs on April 22, it’s been blacked out at ABC, CBS, NBC, as well as CNN, NPR, Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report. But the outlets most responsible to follow the money trail to Galloway and other anti-war voices are the outlets who promoted them on American airwaves.

• ABC has publicized Galloway the most on American TV, starting on the February 13, 1991 World News Tonight, as he decried the Allied bombing of Iraq. On the August 12, 2002 World News Tonight, reporter John McWethy reported on his Saddam visit: “Galloway, who vehemently opposes U.S. efforts to overthrow the Iraqi leader, said he found Saddam Hussein to be quote, ‘radiating a Zen-like calm.’”

The January 20, 2003 Nightline featured Galloway (see box), and on February 27, Good Morning America co-host Diane Sawyer highlighted a soundbite of Galloway’s House of Commons remarks as “a wake-up call for me, listening about the view of Americans.” Galloway denounced how “this born again, right-wing, Bible-belting, fundamentalist, Republican administration in the United States wants war.”

• CBS: On the August 14, 2002 Early Show, then-co-host Jane Clayson interviewed Galloway, introducing him as “an outspoken supporter of Hussein.” He protested: “I am an opponent of Saddam Hussein, but an opponent also, of the sanctions that have killed a million Iraqi children and an opponent of the United States’ apparent desire to plunge the Middle East into a new and devastating war.” Clayson asked Galloway if “you feel used in any way” by Saddam, to which he said, “no...not remotely.”

• NBC: On September 24, 2002, an “In Their Own Words” segment on NBC Nightly News spotlighted several British leaders debating Iraq, which included Galloway’s take on Bush: “The British people have seen the President, heard the President, and they think they’re estimating him just about right as not a man that we would want to be at the wheel of the car as we drive along the edge of a cliff with ourselves sitting in the back seat.” On February 26, 2003, Nightly News also used Galloway’s “born-again, right-wing, Bible-belting” crack.

No one faults the networks for featuring arguments from British anti-war leaders as Britain debated the war. But the new bribery revelations show Galloway was a tyrant-paid flack, not a sincere anti-war spokesman. Continued silence suggests journalists care more about protecting what’s left of the anti-war activists’ appeal than they do about investigative journalism in the war’s aftermath.

Kinda makes ya wonder how the Bush administration's going to handle the incriminating evidence they undoubtably already have in their possession, eh??

I mean aside from the 'Rat & quisling Pubbie politicians?
This information cannot be leveraged in quite the same way Clintigula manipulated whateverinthehell it was contained within those 900 FBI files, could they?

Or w/could Dubya possibly cut loose his JD to go after the Americans who're involved??
That'd be a gutsy move on the part of this administration; albeit, a brillant one insofar as Dubya would be employing the peak of his popularity, at the correct moment in time, to "make" the news.
I think this POTUS is pretty damned smart; but, is he that smart is the question.

Still, the Liberal-Socialists -- all of 'em -- be they mediot shills, crooked pols (here or abroad) & any others involved will close ranks on this as tight as any time before; so, that with some spinning & messaging from their mediot outlets if there's any chance a'tall??

...Bush will come outa this with the proverbial black eye. (~wanna bet?)

Saddam's Cash
The Weekly Standard ^ | May 5, 2003 | Stephen F. Hayes

Scores of journalists (and NGOs) throughout the Arab world and Europe were on Saddam Hussein's payroll.

...."For years, the Iraqi leader has been waging an intensive, sometimes clandestine, and by most accounts highly effective image war in the Arab world," wrote Wall Street Journal reporters Jane Mayer and Geraldine Brooks in an exposé published February 15, 1991. "His strategy has ranged from financing friendly publications and columnists as far away as Paris to doling out gifts as big as new Mercedes-Benzes."

....That campaign continued until days before the regime was deposed. "If they're not bought and paid for, they're at least rented," says a top national security official, who adds that the administration has intelligence implicating big-name journalists throughout the Arab world and Europe.

Saddam Stole Billions From U.N.

U.N. Officials Admit They Were Powerless to Stop Iraqi Leader's Skimming
By Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz

L O N D O N, May 20— United Nations officials looked the other way as Saddam Hussein's regime skimmed $2 billion to $3 billion in bribes and kickbacks from the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program, said U.N. officials who told ABCNEWS they were powerless to stop the massive graft.

THE REAL SCANDAL OF IRAQI RELIEF
New York Post ^ | 5/11/03 | JONATHAN FOREMAN

May 11, 2003 -- BAGHDAD
THEY come from all over the world. Their supposed mission is to help the people of Iraq. Their concerned frowns and even their clothes all proclaim the message: "We're the good, caring people . . . and you're not."
But if actions speak louder than words, then many of the international charitable organizations called NGOs (non-governmental organizations) here are less interested in doing good works than in moral posturing and haranguing the army that won a war most of them opposed.
~~~

Mark Steyn: Come on over the water's lovely
The Sunday Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | 06/01/03 | Mark Steyn
Excerpts:

...vast numbers of bureaucrats are running around Iraq with unlimited budgets in search of a human catastrophe that doesn't exist...

...So that's the most basic thing about post-Saddam Iraq: for all the "anarchy", no one's fleeing.

...I had an illegally acquired firearm but, even in Tikrit, I was relaxed enough to leave it in the glove box.

...the Ba'athist buildings, and they're the sole target of highly focused looting. Everything else is untouched - the poky grocery stores piled high with boxes of soda you could boil a lobster in, the ramshackle auto shops with their mounds of second-hand tyres, all these are open for business, and in the end they're more relevant to the future of Iraq than the legions of unemployed Saddamite bureaucrats in Baghdad or the NGO armies in their brand new, gleaming white Chevy Suburbans and Land Rovers cruising the streets touting for business like drug pushers in search of junkies.

...The winsome young Arab boy with a face as lovely as Halle Berry's and a lot less grumpy brought me a whole roast chicken - stringy but chewy - piled with bread and served with a generous selection of salads. I managed to determine that the Oxfam crowd was holding a meeting with the Red Cross to discuss the deteriorating situation. But just what exactly was "deteriorating"? As my groaning table and the stores along Main Street testified, there was plenty of food in town. Was it the water? I made a point of drinking the stuff everywhere I went in a spirited effort to pick up the dysentery and cholera supposedly running rampant. But I remain a disease-free zone. So what precisely is happening in Rutba that requires an Oxfam/ICRC summit? Well, the problem, as they see it, is that, sure, there's plenty of food available but "the prices are too high". That's why the World Food Programme and the other NGOs need to be brought in, to distribute more rations to more people.
...And perhaps that's why I found rather more hostility towards the WFP, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees et al than towards the military. ... the new imperial class are the NGOs. They shuttle across the globe, mingling with their own kind - other SUV users - and bringing with them the values of the mother country, or the mother bureaucracy. Like many imperialists, they're well-meaning: they see their charges as helpless and dependent, which happy condition has the benefit of justifying an ever-growing aid bureaucracy in perpetuity. It will be very destructive for Iraq if the tentativeness of the American administration in Baghdad allows the ambulance-chasers of the NGOs to sink their fangs into the country.

~~~
The mainstream press continues to investigate...the Administration.
The Senate is investigating....the Administration.

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