www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10741.html
Spotlight For many conservatives, the UN's oil-for-food scandal was an assault on all that is good and holy. In a nutshell, Saddam Hussein took advantage of a UN program in which Iraq would sell oil and use the revenue for food, medicine, and humanitarian goods, as exceptions to a trade embargo imposed after the first Gulf War. Saddam, however, received illegal kickbacks on the oil sales, which he transferred to private accounts.
Chevron, the second-largest American oil company, is preparing to acknowledge that it should have known kickbacks were being paid to Saddam Hussein on oil it bought from Iraq as part of a defunct United Nations program, according to investigators. The admission is part of a settlement being negotiated with United States prosecutors and includes fines totaling $25 million to $30 million, according to the investigators, who declined to be identified because the settlement was not yet public. The penalty, which is still being negotiated, would be the largest so far in the United States in connection with investigations of companies involved in the oil-for-food scandal. As part of the deal under negotiation, Chevron probably won't admit that it was violating UN sanctions, but would instead acknowledge that the company should have been aware of the illegal kickbacks to Saddam. If only Chevron had some kind of internal policy committee, as part of the company's board of directors, with a knowledgeable expert responsible for looking out for these kinds of problems. According to the Volcker report, surcharges on Iraqi oil exports were introduced in August 2000 by the Iraqi state oil company, the State Oil Marketing Organization. At the time, Condoleezza Rice, now secretary of state, was a member of Chevron's board and led its public policy committee, which oversaw areas of potential political concerns for the company. Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman, referred inquires to Chevron. Rice wasn't just on Chevron's board when the company was paying kickbacks to Saddam Hussein, she was in charge of the company's policy committee, which existed to look for potential political problems. It doesn't take too big a stretch to narrow the options down a bit: Rice either knew about the kickbacks or she wasn't particularly on the ball when it came to leading Chevron's public policy committee.
Hullabaloo is proud to present another episode of "Imagine If This Were A Democrat" this week starring Condoleezza Rice.... Our show will take you back in time to a world where the entire political and media establishment rose up in horror at the merest rumor of impropriety among the president's advisors and cabinet -- to a time when editorial writers would have thundered about the unacceptability of a former National Security Advisor and current Secretary of State having even been remotely associated with such illegality and malfeasance. Indeed, in that era, it would have been considered inconceivable that someone under such a cloud could possibly be allowed to continue to represent the nation abroad in times of such great peril. But as of this morning, the story has barely registered a blip.
In it, there was a document found in Iraqi government files listing alleged voucher recipients, including several US citizens and firms. The Duelfer report redacted the names of US citizens and firms, but the redacted entries indicate "US Company." So the question then was and the question now is, will we get to know ALL the US citizens and firms?
I'll bet that "the Con" knew all about the kickbacks from the very beginning--and it wouldn't surprise me one bit if someone "con"nected to the current administration got a wee bit o' the green from those kickbacks, as well. One question bothers me, though--wouldn't violations of UN sanctions be considered a criminal offense?
It seems to me the fix was in, and since Saddam would not be cowtowed by the Bush internationalists, war was the only option. After the 2000 Supreme Court appointed president took office, the only question became how to finesse such a war.
Dems either need to take down the wurlitzer or build their own version of it to push back with. Meantime stop being surprised that the MSM whores work on behalf of the right.
Interestingly, ex-Illinois Governor James "Big Jim" Thompson is on the hot seat in the trial of Conrad Black (ex-Hollinger CEO, on trial for embezzlement among other things) for similar lack of oversight. Big Jim sat on Hollinger's (ex-parent of Chicago Sun-Times) compensation committee. He either knew about the skimming arrangement Black had and did nothing or he didn't know because he wasn't exercising oversight. Either she knew and didn't do anything about the oil purchases, or she didn't know and is guilty of poor oversight.
the person who was responsible for the oil kickbacks is none other than our Secretary of State! Then you add madmen like Osama who broadcast video messages of destruction and world domination over the Internet. I tell you, modern reality is playing like a mish-mash of early James Bond movies, comedy duds like "Spies Like Us" and the loveable shenanigans of "Scooby Doo."
I would like to announce the title of my (as yet to be written) unauthorized bio of Condi Rice "Reverse Turd Blossom: Condi Rice, what have you touched taht isn't f'd up?" I really want a chance to ask Senator Norm "finger in the air" Coleman about this. He has had a rod for the Oil for Food and UN "abuses" for years. He was the chairman of the perminant subcommittee on investigations and this was his number one priority.
funny story from November 2005: India's foreign minister, Natwar Singh, was fired Monday amid charges that he reaped illegal profits Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh has been stripped of his post after allegations that he benefited from the UN oil-for-food programme in Iraq. Premier Manmohan Singh assumes his role pending an inquiry.
wasn't the end of the matter: Named by UN Independent Enquiry Committee (popularly known as Volcker committee) as a beneficiary of illegal payoffs in Iraqi oil scam, (Natwar Singh) was forced to resign from the Cabinet on December 6, 2005.
How do you make sure your kickback doesn't get noticed, kickback a couple of bucks to the people assigned to notice. I'm not saying Condi took them, but someone at Chevron was looking the other way and you don't look the other way unless it benefits you in some form.
So not only do we know Saddam at one point had WMDs because Rumsfeld has the receipts to prove it, but now we know Saddam got kickbacks from Oil-For-Food because Rice has the receipts to prove that too. It's okay to be chummy and break the law all over the place with third-world dictators, and it's even better to use that behavior later as grounds for war.
Really, I hate to sound so bored about it, but this is, what, the 500 millionth scandal surrounding the presidency the difference here is that conservatives are the ones who are so hot and bothered by the so-called Oil-for-food scandal. IIRC, William F Buckley penned several screeds about it. As mentioned up thread, Norm Coleman has been particularly exercised about this. In the other scandals, the conservatives didn't have any fundamental problem with what was happening (torture, walter reed, katrina, wiretapping). Now that its implicated Rice, they hopefully will be between a rock and hard place. Assuming the MSM actually holds their feet to the fire, of course.
The problem isn't that the media aren't covering the story the same way they would if it was a Democrat involved. The reason the media are so hard on Democrats is because Republicans make so much noise and are so good at manipulating the media. Don't try to hold the zombies in the MSM responsible for raising a ruckus about this. Train your fire on the spineless, money-grubbing, corporate ass-licking toadies in the Democratic party. I'm sick of liberal blogs whining about how the media doesn't hold Republicans responsible. Why aren't the holding media-friendly events to publicize Rice's absolute incompetence and hypocrisy? Why hasn't everyone in the Bush administration been impeached and sent to Guantanamo under the pro...
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