[Rhodes22-list] More Politics

[Steve]

Very interesting, Paul.  You know, I figured it was
only a matter of time before this came out.  A country
such a French putting monetary issue before the safety
of the world.  We should all get down on our knees &
thank God that we have our President (and a GREAT
President at that) & Tony Blair over in England that
was willing to take a stand for whats right!!!!!!!!!! 
Where me a flag; I feel like saluting it:-)  
Steve



--- pdgrand at nospam.wmis.net wrote:
> Forgive me if you receive this twice.  I
> accidentally left out the subject 
> on the first try. - Paul 
> 
> 
> April 28, 2004 -- ANYONE who pines for genuine
> international 
> multilateralism would do well to follow the bribes
> now being uncovered in 
> the United Nations' Oil-for- Food scandal. 
> Why did France and Russia oppose efforts to topple
> Saddam Hussein's regime? 
> And why did they press constantly, throughout the
> '90s, for an expansion of 
> Iraqi oil sales? Was it their empathy for the
> starving children of that 
> impoverished nation? Their desire to stop the United
> States from arrogantly 
> imposing its vision upon the Middle East? 
> 
> It now looks like they it was simply because they
> were on the take. Saddam 
> was their cash cow. If President Bush has suffered
> some discredit over his 
> apparently false - but not disingenuous - claims of
> Iraqi weapons of mass 
> destruction, the lapse is minor compared to the
> outright personal 
> selfishness and criminality that appears to have
> motivated many of those 
> who opposed his efforts to rid the world of one of
> its worst dictators. 
> 
> Throughout the '90s, France and Russia badgered the
> United States and 
> Britain to increase Iraqi oil production. President
> Bill Clinton and Prime 
> Minister Tony Blair fought them at each step, but
> then reluctantly gave 
> way. First Iraq was allowed to sell 500,000 barrels
> daily. Then, on Franco-
> Russian insistence, it was raised to 1 million, then
> to 2 million and, 
> finally, to 3 million barrels a day. 
> 
> Each time, America and Britain - the nations now
> accused of coveting Iraqi 
> oil - resisted the increases in Iraqi production and
> urged tighter controls 
> over the program. Each time, the French and the
> Russians prattled on about 
> the rights of Iraqi sovereignty and the need to feed
> the children. 
> 
> Now we know why the French and Russians were so
> insistent. Iraqi government 
> documents (leaked to the Baghdad newspaper Al Mada)
> list at least 270 
> individuals and entities who got vouchers allowing
> them to sell Iraqi oil - 
> and to keep much of the money. These vouchers, and
> the promise of instant 
> great wealth they carried with them, bought vital
> support in the United 
> Nations to let Saddam stay in power. 
> 
> The list of those receiving these bribes includes
> France's former French 
> Interior Minister Charles Pasqua (who's a leader of
> Chirac's party) and 
> Patrick Maugein, the head of the French Oil firm
> Soco International. 
> France's former U.N. ambassador, Jean-Bernard
> Merimee, got vouchers to sell 
> 11 million barrels. 
> 
>   
> 
> In Russia, the payoff chain reached right into the
> "office of the Russian 
> president." President Vladimir Putin's Peace and
> Unity Party also got 
> vouchers, as did the Soviet-era Prime Minister
> Nikolai Ryzhkov and the 
> Russian Orthodox Church. Nationalist leader Vladimir
> Zhirinovsky shared in 
> the largesse. 
> 
> Not to be left behind, the Rev. Jean Marie Benjamin
> of the Vatican got the 
> rights to sell 4.5 million barrels as recompense for
> setting up a meeting 
> between Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz and the
> pope. 
> 
> Indeed, the list indicates that Benon Sevan, the
> United Nations official in 
> charge of the Oil-for-Food program. received
> vouchers. He denies the 
> charge, but has decided to retire next month anyway.
> 
> 
> At the start of the Oil-for-Food program, America
> and Britain proposed that 
> the money flow only to accounts entirely controlled
> by the United Nations. 
> Soon this standard was lowered to include accounts
> not actually controlled 
> by the United Nations, but only monitored by it. 
> 
> Then-Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) warned that
> "oil is fungible" and 
> noted that once Iraq was allowed to pump and sell
> it, Saddam could sell all 
> he wanted outside of officially sanctioned channels
> and nobody could tell 
> which black liquid was legal and which not. But
> nobody imagined that there 
> were actual bribes going to specific French, Russian
> and U.N. officials as 
> part of the program. 
> 
> Now it appears that Secretary-General Kofi Annan's
> sanctimonious posturing 
> may have concealed oil bribes which reached high up
> in the ranks of the 
> U.N. organization itself. 
> 
> The defect of international coalitions is that they
> include the just and 
> the unjust, the bribed and the honest, the
> democratic and the autocratic. 
> And their members cannot be trusted equally. The
> group that stood up and 
> backed the invasion of Iraq was nicknamed "the
> Coalition of the Willing." 
> Now it appears it was also "the Coalition of the
> Honest." 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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