WAR: Iraq Survey Group Conclude, No WMD., page 1

First of all, let me say that none of what I say is politically motivated. Second, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, the media is not even reporting on what they should be, which is the testimony about the Oil for Food program yesterday, which seemed to me, like it should have been on the front page of every paper, but was barely even mentioned. Yesterday, when the media mentioned the Oil for Food testimony, they didn't give hardly any of the specifics that were said in the testimony.

I don't really care about the WMD testimony, but why is the media mainly reporting that there were no WMD in Iraq at the time of invasion and minimizing the fact that Saddam had plans to develop WMD. Example:

WashPost Headline: Report Discounts Iraqi Arms Threat

Quote from article: Duelfer's report said Hussein was pursuing an aggressive effort to subvert the international sanctions through illegal financing and procurement efforts, officials said. The official said the report states that Hussein had the intent to resume full-scale weapons of mass destruction efforts after the sanctions were eliminated, and details Hussein's efforts to hinder international inspectors and preserve his weapons of mass destruction capabilities.

Link: www.washingtonpost.com...

But what the press is not covering for some reason, is yesterday's testimony from:
Patrick F. Kennedy US Rerresentative to UN in Iraq
David L. Smith BNP Peribas-French based bank in charge of
Oil For Food(OFF) transactions
Peter W.G. Boks Saybolt International B.V.-Inspected oil quantities
crossing the Iraqi borders in the OOF Program
Andre E. Pruniaux Cotecna Inspection.-Monitered the goods
bought and sold by Iraq in OOF Program

I watched the complete testimony from these people on CSPAN yesterday and although they were reluctant to implicate anyone involved, the congressmen doing the questioning got them to reveal quite a bit of information.

Peter Kennedy:
-said that the US knew about the OOF corruption back in June of 2000.
-said UN officials allowed Saddam to basically write the final rules of the
OOFP and he did so in a way to allow him to funnel billions to himself
and others
-said Saddam spent over $1 Billion on strengthening his military
-agreed that the French sold Saddam a lot of those weapons and that
at least some of them are being used on our soldiers now, but would
not say that in his own words

The gist of what the other three said was basically that normal operating procedures were, with the authorization of the UN, changed to minimize regulations and oversight. For example, instead of visually verifying a quantity of oil, that instead they would only need to see a piece of paper verifying that the UN had approved it.

Also, the NY Fed is being subeanaed to turn over all information relating to the account opened for the US for transactions of the profits from Iraqi oil sales after the invasion. The was a response to the GAC report that stated that $8.8Billion of that money is unaccounted for.

Doesn't this stuff seem like it was pretty important and incriminating??
Or is it just me? I though it would at least get talked about more. The wide range of corruption involved in this seems more important than the WMD report. That didn't really seem to reveal anything we didn't already know.

I've been trying to get a copy of the full text from the testimony. Does anyone know if they make that available? Here is a link to all of the info about the testimony and if anyone knows how to get the full text, could you please let me know?
reform.house.gov...