Free Republic

HIS DENIAL was carefully worded from the first. "I have never seen a barrel of oil, never bought one, never sold one and neither has anyone on my behalf." But this, as George Galloway should have known, was never the accusation. The bribery system set up by Saddam Hussein - and run with the connivance of United Nations officials overseeing the $64bn oil-for-food programme - was never so crude as to require its beneficiaries to trade oil, or ask anyone to do so. It offered vouchers which were handled through trusted local intermediaries and easily converted into cleanly-laundered money. For...