Anti-war nations 'took bribes' before war began.

Saddam Skims Billions From UN

News Submission is Down So I Decided On a Thread.


Turns out that our favorite international organization had aided Saddam Hussein amass billions in personal funds from the Oil For Food Program.

Desinged to help feed his starving impoverished people, the Oil For Food program in Iraq became just a cash cow for Saddam Hussein and his cronies.

Millions of Iraqis were struggling to survive on rations of food and medicine. Yet the government's hidden slush funds were being fed by suppliers and oil traders from around the world who sometimes lugged suitcases full of cash to ministry offices, said Iraqi officials who supervised the skimming operation.


With UN help, the provisional Iraqi government reviewed $8.7 billion in oil-for-food contracts and found that 70 percent of the suppliers inflated prices and agreed to pay kickbacks of 10 percent, the newspaper reported. Based on that finding, the Times said, Iraq may have collected as much as $2.3 billion on the $32.6 billion of contracts signed since mid-2000, when the kickback system began.


The suppliers included Russian factories, Arab trade brokers, European manufacturers and state-owned companies from China and the Middle East, the Times said, noting that Iraq generally refused to buy from American companies, which needed special licenses to trade with the nation. Some companies were willing to pay more than 10 percent, the Times said, citing employees of the Iraqi trade and oil ministry.

Maybe the UN was so hostile towards a US invasion because they feared all the dirty little secrets of international policy would come out.

Sources:

www.menafn.com...

www.kansascity.com...


quote.bloomberg.com...


www.iol.co.za...

seattletimes.nwsource.com...

Dem's, anti-war, anti-Bush folks:
"Saddam's oil"
www.azcentral.com...

Excerpts:

"A major theme of the anti-Iraq war movement - patronized nicely by every single Democratic candidate for president other than Joe Lieberman - is that President Bush sent American troops into battle because he coveted Iraqi oil.

It's tough to figure who has been most shameless about it.....

Their theology is demanding: Because Bush is a Republican and because he has ties to Big Oil, he would put American troops in mortal danger, expend enormously from an empty public treasury and knowingly put his re-election prospects at grievous risk. All for Big Oil.

No one ever considered that maybe the reverse might be true. That maybe it wasn't Bush whose attitudes toward Iraq were painted with an oil base. Whoever could have imagined that it might be the opponents of the war who were out there howling against the war in Iraq because they sold out for oil money?

For Saddam's oil money?

If accurate, the list is evidence of bribery, a very real crime. U.S. federal prosecutors have vowed to pursue any Americans on the list. But even beyond that, it is evidence that much - not all, certainly, but much - of the moral outrage stirred up to oppose a war that released 25 million people from appalling bondage may have been purchased by Saddam.

Almost to a candidate, the would-be Democratic presidents argue that the war alienated our international friends, including that bastion of international virtue, the United Nations.

Therein is the worst outrage evidenced by the memo. All of the despicable bribery contracts were let under the aegis of the U.N., which administered the Iraqi oil-for-food program.

Yes, the oil money went through the U.N. to starving children in Iraq. But only after Saddam's chosen war opponents were bought off."


IMHO, who put the "finger" in whose eye?



regards
seekerof