Who's Behind Oil-for-Food?

In the comments to this post, Peter K. (who has a great blog, by the way) points out this Aljazeera article by a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. Read the whole thing, but I'm going to pull out a few quotes that just don't measure up to my smell test.

Their [the Bush administration] intent all along was no secret: They wanted "regime change" to fit their plans for an American empire, with a permanent outpost in Baghdad.

"American empire"? We're back to the age old lefty argument of imperialism? Question: Has America kept the land they "won" in ANY modern-era war? Who has done that? Europeans mostly.

France, Germany, Russia and China had become obstacles to regime change in Baghdad, either at the UN Security Council or at Nato, or both.

To neutralise them with American public opinion, the neo-cons used their contacts in the news media to broadcast the argument that these countries were pursuing selfish interests related to Iraq's oil.

Out of this soup came the "oil-for-food scandal" which now threatens to bring down UN General-Secretary Kofi Annan and besmirch the UN and its affiliated institutions.

You heard it here, folks, its a Zionist plot! Neo-con is, afterall, code for the Jooooooooooos.

Don't let any evidence get in the way of a good smear, Mr. Wanniski. The reality is that the UN got swindled by a shrewd Saddam ploy to get the sanctions lifted. Oil-for-Food was a convenient way for him to make some cash and buy some influence.

It is further alleged that UN officials looked the other way as Saddam Hussein arranged kickbacks of billions of dollars that went into foreign bank accounts, with inferences that he was using the cash to finance his military machine and international terrorism, build palaces to aggrandise himself, all the while diverting money from the intended recipients - the poor Iraqi people.

That's because that's what happened...

To put all this in perspective, remember that Saddam was the duly constituted head of state in Iraq, his government not only officially recognised by the US during the Iran/Iraq war, but also was given palpable support in the war.

Why he invaded Kuwait in 1990 is another story, but it is now absolutely clear his dispute was only with the emir of Kuwait and not any other country in the Middle East.

We have arrived at the rationalization part of the article. I'm sure this plays well on Aljazeera, but when you apply a healthy dose of reality you see things a bit more clearly.

As I have said repeatedly, the first thing you learn in any International Relations class is that nations do what is in their best interests at the time that action is taken. There are no crystal balls involved; no way to look ahead twenty years and see exactly who you're dealing with... You may have suspcions, but ultimately, a nation has to do business with the lesser of two evils in order to accomplish goals.

I find it outrageous that Mr. Wanniski would attempt to dismiss the Kuwait invasion. Talk about imperialism...

It has now also been shown that Iraq had met the conditions of the UN Security Council post-Gulf war resolution which demanded he destroy his unconventional weapons before economic sanctions could be lifted and the Iraqi government could resume the sale of oil.

The problem, Mr. Wanniski, is that the resolution actually required Iraq to submit to open inspections in order to verify that the weapons were in fact destroyed. Are we supposed to just take Saddam at his word?

Saddam failed to cooperate with the inspectors on multiple occassions. Why would he do that? All he had to do was produce evidence that he destroyed the weapons. He never did that. Could it be, that Saddam actually intended to get the sanctions lifted and then pick up on those programs where he left off? Let's come back to that in a minute.

By rough reckoning, I find that if the sanctions had been lifted in 1991 (when they should have been lifted), Iraq would have earned enormous amounts of money from the sale of their oil. At an average of $10 a barrel of oil (bbl) over 14 years, they would have collected $126 billion.

Anyone care to hazard a guess what the great humanitarian, Saddam Hussein, would have done with all that fat cash? Just asking...

Back to the fever swamp conspiracy theories:

It is perfectly obvious that Coleman saw a chance to make a splash with assertions that corruption at the UN was already a known fact.

His "smoking gun" was the news that Kofi Annan's son received payments of $150,000 over several years from a company that was a contractor in the oil-for-food programme.

Where did this news come from? The New York Sun, a tiny newspaper founded by Canadian mogul Conrad Black four years ago as a mouthpiece for the neo-cons.

Richard Perle, the most prominent of the neo-con intellectuals who misled Bush to war with Iraq, has been a long time partner of Conrad Black and a director of the Jerusalem Post, one of Black's many media holdings.

Perle is also the guiding light for Rupert Murdoch's Fox News media empire, plus the National Review, and a galaxy of staff members of both political parties in the US Congress.

Claudia Rosett, who writes for the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, was assigned to take on Volcker and in several articles has practically painted him as a lapdog of Kofi Annan, at the very least a foot-dragger who should already be able to condemn the UN for corruption.

The game plan is of course to force Volcker to issue a report that smears the UN and threatens it with a cut-off of US funds unless there is a house cleaning.

Mr. Wanniski, your black helicopter is ready to take you to the Illuminati Headquarters at HALLIBURTON! Forgive me, if I don't take any of that seriously.

What about the damning report of Charles Duelfer and his Iraqi Survey Group, which announced last month that Saddam Hussein destroyed all of his weapons of mass destruction and their programmes in 1991?

In his report, he also brought up the oil-for-food programme, which was never part of his mission when he was appointed by Bush to check further into Iraq's WMD intentions.

Duelfer, who could not pretend to have found WMD when none existed, clearly used the oil-for-food programme to distract attention from his central finding.

The report gratuitously contained the thesis that if Saddam someday wanted to rebuild his WMD capabilities, he could be using the programme to that end, with the complicity of the French, Russians, Chinese, United Nations and major oil companies.

Logic should tell you, though, that the neo-cons have been behind this hoax from the start, that they never intended to lift the sanctions on Iraq even while knowing back in 1991 that Saddam almost certainly had complied with that first UN resolution.

The Deulfer Report indicated that Saddam was prepared to restart his weapons programs as soon as the sanctions were lifted. Logic, let alone the evidence, should make that perfectly clear. Saddam wasn't interested in being a good guy world leader ready to sing Christmas carols at the drop of a hat.

These neo-cons are indeed all powerful, not only do they control the Bush administration, but the entire world community through the UN. Amazing! If so, why is it that the UN passes so many anti-Semetic resolutions? Just asking...

His [Volcker] report to the UN will be made public and judgments can then be made. It may be there is no scandal at all. Just another trick of the neo-conservatives to blow away anyone who gets in the way of their plans for a global empire.

Of course, the desire to wait for the Volcker report didn't stop Mr. Wanniski from publishing his conspiracy theory... Just another trick of the...oh, jeez, it's just not worth it...

Islamofascism Delenda Est!