Free Republic

<p>May 13, 2004 -- WASHINGTON - U.N. investigators have arrived in Baghdad to look at "smoking gun" files that purportedly document wholesale bribery of U.N. officials and international political figures by Saddam Hussein, The Post has learned. Sources close to the probe said staffers of the U.N. commission, headed by former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker, were in Iraq to open a critical phase of the investigation into the oil-for-food program scandal.</p>

Rory McCarthy in Baghdad Monday September 1, 2003 The Guardian The US-led authority in Iraq suffered its first political fallout from the mounting security crisis yesterday when a senior Iraqi pulled out of the governing council. Mohammad Bahr al-Uloum said he was suspending his membership of the US-appointed council after the devastating car bomb in the holy city of Najaf on Friday which killed up to 125 people, including a leading Shia cleric. He said there was a "dangerous security void in Iraq, especially in Najaf". Last night the governor of Najaf said five suspects - all Iraqis - were...

<p>Iraq's American-backed administration failed in its first week to choose a president, abandoning that mission in favor of a weak, three-man rotating leadership. The top U.S. official in Iraq -- who hand-picked the Governing Council -- returned to Washington while an insurgency killed another American soldier Saturday.</p>