Free Republic

Mount St. Helens Victims' Kin Sound Off By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 13 minutes ago MOUNT ST. HELENS NATIONAL MONUMENT, Wash. - The four, their lungs filled with ash, were found inside their car after Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980, with the force of a hydrogen bomb. Rescuers also discovered a cassette recorded by Ron and Barbara Seibold's children, ages 7 and 9, as the family drove toward the volcano. "They were goofing around — asking whether or not they would see lava coming out of the mountain," said Jim Thomas, an emergency worker...

Even as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sent John Bolton’s nomination as our next ambassador to the United Nations to the Senate floor last week, rumors began emanating from the United Nations that Secretary-General Kofi Annan may just hang it up before his term ends in December 2006 and head home to Ghana either to raise tomatoes or run for president. Things do change. Just a few weeks ago it appeared that Annan had a better chance of surviving the spring than Bolton. Annan bristled at the suggestion that he would consider resigning even in the face of mounting evidence...

Saddam Hussein's government provided senior Russian officials with oil rights worth millions of dollars under the oil-for-food program in an effort to lift U.N. sanctions against Iraq, according to a U.S. Senate Committee report released on Monday. The oil allocations were "compensation for support," Vice President Taha Yasin Ramadan told the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The report, based on documents as well as interviews with Ramadan and Tareq Aziz, the former deputy prime minister, pointed to Alexander Voloshin, former chief of staff to President Vladimir Putin in the Russian Presidential Council, and ultranationalist parliamentarian Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Both men had...

Kofi Annan is not a crook. Or, to be more precise, the United Nations Secretary-General has not been convicted of criminal activity. If that's so, however, Mr. Annan has to be the most negligent and incompetent manager ever to lead a major international organization. Yet through the cloud that hangs over Mr. Annan, a ray of sunshine has found its way to him. Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania, that prestigious Ivy League seat of learning, has invited Mr. Annan to serve as this year's commencement speaker. And that's not all: In what can only be seen as...

BNP Paribas, the bank associated with the Oil-for-Food scandal, is doing brisk business in Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s golden state. According to its website, "BNP Paribas acts as the sole agent for the State of California’s economic recovery bonds, the largest municipal bond sale in the United States." Active in the municipal bond market for over 10 years, BNP is providing credit enhancement and liquidity support for the State of California’s sale of $2.97 billion of variable-rate Economic Recovery Bonds ("ERB’s"). The bank also boasts that it will be a proud partner of San Francisco in financing the rebuilding of the...

London: Women find it more difficult to switch off than men after a hard day's work or a family rift. They lie awake sulking about work or family problems and are reported to lose an average of 90 minutes of sleep a night. According to a study by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, women are significantly worse sleepers than men. Eighteen per cent of women reported a minimum of five bad nights' sleep in a week compared to only eight per cent of men. Seventeen per cent women were disturbed by the presence of their partners in bed...

Dems' Own Social Security Road Show Kicks off in NYC Sens. Clinton and Kerry Dispute Need To Privatize Social Security Mar 4, 2005 4:20 pm US/Eastern (WCBS/AP) As President Bush visited Westfield, N.J. to tout his Social Security reform plan, the Democrats kicked off their own Social Security tour at New York City’s Pace University. Sen. Hillary Clinton blasted the President’s plan as risky and said recipients would face benefit reductions of one-third. “I don’t think it’s right to saddle the students her at Pace and future generations of workers with over five trillion dollars worth of debt that we...

Billionaire Marc Rich has stiff-armed investigators of the U.N. oil-for-food scandal, declaring he had a limited role in the program and knew nothing about Saddam Hussein's bribery schemes, The Post has learned. Rich, who lives in Switzerland and is suspected of being a central figure in the scandal, personally replied to written questions submitted to him by the House International Relations Committee through the Swiss Embassy.......... A copy of his first official response to the scandal to a congressional committee was provided to The Post by investigators who expressed skepticism about his answers. "Mr. Rich's answers were non-responsive, which is...

February 15th, 2005 - Washington, DC - In the second hearing by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) on the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program, Chairman Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) said new evidence suggests Benon Sevan, former Executive Director of the U.N. Office of the Iraq Program, personally received oil allocations worth $1.2 million and called for the United Nations to waive Sevan’s diplomatic immunity from criminal prosecution immediately. The Oil-for-Food program (OFF) was instigated in 1996 to provide food, medicine and humanitarian goods for the Iraqi people through the controlled sale of Iraqi oil, but ultimately generated an estimated...

Breaking Point: U.N. Blood Money Kofi Annan Under Fire Airing on Sun., Feb. 13 at 9 p.m. ET Hosted by David Asman The United Nations' Oil-for-Food program was supposed pay for food and medicine for the Iraqi people. But corruption allowed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to steal billions of dollars, while his people suffered. Now, as the facts are coming to light, the question remains: How was this colossal scandal allowed to happen? This weekend, the network that has been on top of the investigation into the scandal from the beginning brings you an all-new "Breaking Point" investigation.

NASA 2006 Budget Presented: Hubble, Nuclear Initiative Suffer While NASA fared better than many federal agencies in U.S. President George W. Bush's 2006 budget request, the White House is not seeking as much money for the U.S. space agency as previously planned. The White House is seeking $16.45 billion for NASA in the 2006 budget. That's an increase of 2.4 percent over what the U.S. space agency has in its 2005 budget, but still about $500 million less than what the agency had been expecting. When Bush gave NASA a new space exploration vision last year, he also pledged to...

WASHINGTON — A blistering letter written by former vice-presidential candidate Jack Kemp to congressional leaders, criticizing the 1998 U.S. bombing of Iraq, has raised new questions about whether he was promoting a secret agenda on behalf of Saddam Hussein's oil spy in the United States, The Post has learned.[snip] In a statement issued by Kemp's office, Empower America, over the weekend, the former upstate GOP congressman and Buffalo Bill football star said he believed Vincent was "motivated by the national security of the United States and thought the Iraqi government believed the sanctions could never be lifted, which he...

Jan. 19 - Former vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp has been questioned by the FBI about his dealings with an Iraqi-American businessman who this week became the target of the first Justice Department criminal indictment in the United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal ...Over several years continuing until 2003, Vincent talked to Kemp roughly once a month about his proposal to improve U.S.-Iraqi relations, according to Kemp and Lanny Davis, a Washington lawyer and friend of Kemp’s who discussed the matter with him and offered to speak for him to NEWSWEEK on this matter. ...Davis confirmed that in 2001, Kemp personally approached...

With all the focus on corruption in the UN’s Oil for Food program, there is yet another scandalous development at the UN, that has been barely noticed: how Syria, which served as a member of the UN Security Council from early 2002 through the end of 2003 decided that it could continue to back international terrorism and even turn itself into the main line of supply for the current insurgency in Western Iraq. How a Security Council member decided that such a dangerous line of policy would not compromise its special UN status raises serious questions about what kind of...

Paul Volcker has made common knowledge officially official. The UN did a really poor job of auditing it's accounts involved in the Oil For Food Program. This led to widespread abuse and allowed Saddam Hussein to pocket millions of Euros, Pounds and Dollars worth of kickbacks and bribes. When describing the financial brigandage, Volcker's panel left us this chestnut of a summation. "More comprehensive monitoring" of the contracts could have prevented the massive rip-off, the U.N.-appointed panel said. That and one or two honest employees. It gets better. Volcker also found the following fraudulent payments in connection with the activities...

WASHINGTON — A panel investigating the scandal-plagued Iraqi oil-for-food program has blasted the U.N. for failing to audit thousands of key contracts — allowing Saddam Hussein to skim billions of dollars. The panel — headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker — said that the United Nations' auditors never looked into contracts involving the centerpiece of the program, which permitted Saddam to sell oil and use the proceeds for humanitarian supplies. Congressional investigators have estimated that Saddam pocketed $21.3 billion through oil-smuggling schemes and by demanding kickbacks from suppliers of aid. "More comprehensive monitoring" of the contracts could...

As 2004 ended I thought back and was still puzzled about many things, like: What was Sandy Berger really hiding in his underwear, perhaps he was just glad to see someone? What mysterious illness really killed Yassir Arafat? Perhpas his personal 'AIDS' or his 'wife' could shed some light on this. And what about Bill Clinton's delayed 'emegency bypass' surgery and his unreleased (social disease) medical documents, perhaps his 'AIDS' or his 'wife' could shed some light on this. Then we have the 60 minutes investigation on how amateurs could get their forged documents on a national 'news' magazine, but...

Bill Clinton pardons Marc Rich in the final minutes of his presidency, after Rich's ex-wife had donated to Hillary Clinton's senatorial campaign. And, of course, Rich immediately goes into business with Saddam Hussein in the Oil-for-Food scam. Now Hillary is running for president and Bill is looking to become the next U.N. secretary general.......... When Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich in 2001, that made it easier for Rich to participate in the Oil-for-Food scandal. Therefore, it can be fairly said that Bill Clinton himself bears partial responsibility for the deaths of more than 1,000 soldiers in Iraq, since the reason...

Annan End-of-Year Briefing Every year the Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan holds an end-of-year news briefing for the world press accredited to the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan. On Tuesday morning he holds his briefing for 2004 and gives his annual summary of events.

Kan. Woman Said to Show Off Stolen Baby 24 minutes ago By JOHN MILBURN, Associated Press Writer MELVERN, Kan. - A woman charged with killing an expectant mother and cutting the baby from her womb was showing the child off to people at a cafe and to her pastor hours before she was arrested, residents said Saturday. Lisa M. Montgomery, 36, was charged Friday with kidnapping resulting in murder and was expected to appear in federal court Monday. The baby, whose mother had been eight months pregnant, was in good condition. Hours before her arrest, Montgomery and her husband showed...