Berkeley CSUA MOTD:Entry 21583
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2025/07/12 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
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2001/6/21 [Uncategorized] UID:21583 Activity:nil 50%like:22540
6/20    Yet another good piece on why Kyoto is a bad idea:
        http://opinionjournal.com/columnists/pdupont
        \_ TEXAS. TEXAS IS THE STANDARD!
        \_ Not another one of these "during my daily anti-environmental
           google searches I came across this URL" postings again. I
           can already point out several things wrong about the way
           this author makes his point: fallacy from ignorance,
           prejudicial language, anonymous authority, false analogy,
           fallacy of exclusion, an so on.
           \_ I wasn't googling, I read this in The Journal (perhaps
              the last honest paper left in the world, even the WP
              has started liberal appeasement).
        \_ beachfront property in nevada
           \_ ever heard of lake tahoe?
Cache (2134 bytes)
opinionjournal.com/columnists/pdupont -> www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pdupont/
Saddam Hussein was to sell Iraqi oil, two-thirds of the proceeds of which would be used to buy food and medicine, generate electricity, build houses and help the country recover. Saddam added a 20-cent kickback fee to every barrel sold, which soon became 30, then 50 and finally 70 cents a barrel. General Accounting Office estimates Saddam's total illegal revenues from the Oil-for-Food program to have totaled more than $10 billion. Perhaps because Iraq and the other nations whose companies were participating in the scam didn't want appropriate procedures and controls applied to their ventures. Teresa Raphael, the editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe, has seen a spreadsheet listing the companies Saddam had approved for oil purchases. It included 11 French middleman concerns, (150 million barrels sold to them), 14 companies in Syria (120 million) and dozens of Russian firms (more than a billion barrels), the president of Indonesia, the Palestine Liberation Organization, "the director of the Russian president's office" and former French foreign minister Charles Pasqua. Sevan was allocated 14 million barrels of oil and disposed of 7 million of them. Iraqi accounts were managed by a French company, BNP Paribas. The Russians didn't much like the idea of an investigation either. Last Friday they blocked a Security Council resolution giving an investigating commission headed by Paul Volcker authority to conduct a complete investigation. All of which may explain why France and Russia so vigorously opposed the liberation of Iraq a year ago: They didn't want their very lucrative and very illegal kickback scheme to come to an end. So the $10 billion at issue is not small time-graft, but big-time corruption. Perhaps because the French and Russians insisted upon it? Sevan to discuss the program he was responsible for running? Most Democrats and some Republicans are for it, the establishment media is for it, and Mr. N are responsible for the corruption and the mismanagement of the Oil-for-Food program and the coverup of its illegalities, how can they be trusted to manage the government of Iraq?