THE US, THE UN AND IRAQ VI

At a McCormick Tribune Foundation conference on terrorism on Feb. 26, 2001, Bremer said, ``The new administration seems to be paying no attention to the problem of terrorism. What they will do is stagger along until there's a major incident and then suddenly say, 'Oh, my God, shouldn't we be organized to deal with this?'

``That's too bad. They've been given a window of opportunity with very little terrorism now, and they're not taking advantage of it.''

Bremer made the speech after he had chaired the National Commission on Terrorism, a bipartisan body formed by the Clinton administration to examine U.S. counterterrorism policies.

ican711nm wrote:

hobitbob,
I'll post the more specific evidence when I get back later tonight.

Tanslation: I hope the dicussion will have progressed past this point by the time I return, so I won't have to be reminded that I'm standing on thin air.

I'm actually quite eager to see this "evidence" of yours. You have managed to avoid actually presenting it since at least last November.

It's looking more and more as if one of the best reasons to get rid of Saddam Hussein was that it was probably the only way to get rid of Oil-for-Food. The problem wasn't simply that this huge United Nations relief program for Iraq became a gala of graft, theft, fraud, palace-building, and global influence peddling--though all of that was quite bad enough. The picture now emerging is that under U.N. management the Oil-for-Food program, which ran from 1996-2003, served as a cover not only for Saddam's regime to cheat the Iraqi people, but to set up a vast and intricate global network of illicit finance.

In a world beset right now by terrorist threats--which depend on terrorist financing--it's time to acknowledge that the U.N. Oil-for-Food program was worse than simply a case of grand larceny. Given Saddam's proclivities for deceit and violence, Oil-for-Food was also a menace to security. By letting Saddam pick his own business partners and draw up his own shopping lists, by keeping the details of his contracts and accounts secret, and by then failing abjectly to supervise the process, the U.N.--through a program meant to aid the people of Iraq--enabled Saddam to line his pockets while bankrolling his pals world-wide. In return, precisely, for what? That is a question former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker might want to keep in mind as he heads up the official investigation, finally agreed to by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, into Oil-for-Food.

Why on earth, for instance, did the U.N. authorize Saddam to sell oil to at least 65 companies in the financial lockbox of Switzerland. What was the logic behind approving as oil buyers at least 45 firms in Cyprus, seven in Panama and four in Liechtenstein? At the other extreme, would Mr. Annan care to explain why the U.N. authorized Saddam to sell oil to at least 70 companies in the petroleum-soaked United Arab Emirates?

And, although full information is hard to come by, partial lists leaked from the U.N. show that in 2000-2001 alone, Saddam's regime ordered up from Al Wasel and Babel more than $139 million in construction materials, trucks, cars, and so on. Over Mr. Annan's and Mr. Sevan's protests, the U.S. and U.K. blocked some $45 million worth of those contracts; that still left the Saddam front company of Al Wasel & Babel with about $145 million of Oil-fo-Food business for that two year period alone.

Basically, Oil-for-Food was Saddam--just slightly harder to spot, swaddled as he was in that blue U.N. flag.

I cannot vouch for the truth of these excerpts, but I bet they are true though incomplete. I bet that Saddam used much of his U.N. Oil-for-Food program profits to sponsor world-wide terrorist organizations including but not limited to al Qaeda. Want to bet?

I speculate that a great deal of that money stolen from Oil-for-food is currently being spent on intensive propaganda to convince the people in the UK and in the US to abandon Iraq so as to permit Oil-for-Food to be reinstituted and resume sponsoring al Qaeda et al. Without that money, many actual and would-be terrorist murderers will have to do other work for a living.

_________________
I bet certainty is impossible and probability suffices to govern belief and action. Get over it!

Bet all you want, you have not presented evidence. I wonder if you understand what valid evedence would be? It certainly is not your wishful thinking.

Thank you, Blatham, for this conclusive missive.

Would you mind looking up recent entries at the usual Cafe?

Thanks!

Not the kind of evidence that can be proven in a court of logic.

It's looking more and more as if one of the best reasons to get rid of Saddam Hussein was that it was probably the only way to get rid of Oil-for-Food. The problem wasn't simply that this huge United Nations relief program for Iraq became a gala of graft, theft, fraud, palace-building, and global influence peddling--though all of that was quite bad enough. The picture now emerging is that under U.N. management the Oil-for-Food program, which ran from 1996-2003, served as a cover not only for Saddam's regime to cheat the Iraqi people, but to set up a vast and intricate global network of illicit finance.

And although much debate has focused on the list published this past January in the Iraqi newspaper Al Mada--cataloguing some 270 individuals and entities world-wide alleged to have received illicit oil voucers worth millions from Saddam--the Al Mada list may be the least of it (apart from the last name of the executive director of the Oil-for-Food program himself, Benon Sevan). Dwarfing the Al Mada list for size, scope and menace was the U.N.-piloted mothership, the entire $11 billion U.N. Oil-for-Food Program. Supplied by Iraq's oil wells, the sums involved in Oil-for-Food transactions were so enormous that even routine rounding errors of a few hundred million here or there easily rivaled, for example, the $300 million or so family money believed to have given Osama bin Laden his terrorist start.


In a world beset right now by terrorist threats--which depend on terrorist financing--it's time to acknowledge that the U.N. Oil-for-Food program was worse than simply a case of grand larceny. Given Saddam's proclivities for deceit and violence, Oil-for-Food was also a menace to security. By letting Saddam pick his own business partners and draw up his own shopping lists, by keeping the details of his contracts and accounts secret, and by then failing abjectly to supervise the process, the U.N.--through a program meant to aid the people of Iraq--enabled Saddam to line his pockets while bankrolling his pals world-wide. In return, precisely, for what? That is a question former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker might want to keep in mind as he heads up the official investigation, finally agreed to by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, into Oil-for-Food.

In tallying various leaked lists, disturbing leads and appalling expos^es to date, what becomes ever more clear is that Oil-for-Food quickly became a global maze of middlemen, shell companies, fronts and shadowy connections, all blessed by the U.N. From this labyrinth via kickbacks on underpriced oil and overpriced goods, Saddam extracted, by conservative estimates of the General Accounting Office, at least $4.4 billion in graft, plus an additional $5.7 billion on oil smuggled out of Iraq. Meanwhile, Mr. Anan's Secretariat shrugged and rang up $1.4 billion in Iraqi oil commissions for supervising the program. Worse, the GAO notes that anywhere from $10 billion to as much as $40 billion may have been socked away in secret by Saddam's regime. The assumption so far has been that most of the illicit money flowed back to Saddam in the form of fancy goods and illicit arms.

But no one really knows right now just how much of those billions went where--or what portion of that kickback cash Saddam might have forwarded to whatever he deemed a worthy cause. A look at one of the secret U.N. lists of clients authorized by the U.N. to buy from Saddam is not reassuring. It includes more than 1,000 companies, scattered from Liberia to South Africa to oil-rich Russia. And though the U.N. was supposed to ensure that oil was sold to end-users at market price--thus minimizing the graft potential for Saddam and maximizing the funds for relief--there is an extraordinary confetti of clients in locations known less for their oil consumption than for their shell companies and financial secrecy.

Why on earth, for instance, did the U.N. authorize Saddam to sell oil to at least 65 companies in the financial lockbox of Switzerland. What was the logic behind approving as oil buyers at least 45 firms in Cyprus, seven in Panama and four in Liechtenstein? At the other extreme, would Mr. Annan care to explain why the U.N. authorized Saddam to sell oil to at least 70 companies in the petroleum-soaked United Arab Emirates?

In Oil-for-Food, "Every contract tells a story," says John Fawcett. a financial investigator with the New York law firm of Kreindler & Kreindler LLP, which has sued the financial sponsors of Sept. 11 on behalf of the victims and their families. In an interview, Mr. Fawcett and his colleague, Christine Negroni, run down the lists of Oil-for-Food authorized buyers and relief suppliers, pointing out likely terrorist connections. One authorized oil buyer, they note, was a remnant of the defunct global criminal bank, BCCI. Another was close to the Taliban while Osama bin Laden was on the rise in Afghanistan; a third was linked to a bank in the Bahammas involved in al Qaeda's financial network; a fourth had a close connection to one of Saddam's would-be nuclear-bomb makers.

U.N. secrecy--in deference to the privacy of Saddam and his former clientele--makes it extremely difficult to confirm the many whiffs of sleazy and sinister dealings in these lists. But for an example of how dirty Oil-for-Food could get, take the case of one of Saddam's U.N.-authorized relief suppliers, a company called Al Wasel & Babel General Trading LLC, set up in Dubai, in 1999. The same Al Wasel & Babel was designated by Treasury earlier this month as a front company set up by senior officials of Saddam's to serve as foreign seller of goods to Saddam's regime, through Oil-for-Food (while trying to procure for Iraq a surface-to-air-missile system).

And, although full information is hard to come by, partial lists leaked from the U.N. show that in 2000-2001 alone, Saddam's regime ordered up from Al Wasel and Babel more than $190 million in construction materials, trucks, cars, and so on. Over Mr. Annan's and Mr. Sevan's protests, the U.S. and U.K. blocked some $45 million worth of those contracts; that still left the Saddam front company of Al Wasel & Babel with about $145 million of Oil-for-Food business for that two year period alone.

Basically, Oil-for-Food was Saddam--just slightly harder to spot, swaddled as he was in that blue U.N. flag.

Thank you for Ms. Rosett's post you quote, ICAN

Did it occur to either of you to contact Mr. George Tenet with your information about Saddam ever having helped Al Qaeda?

I'll gloat when Bush and his cronies are sent back to Texas in November. I may even throw a party!

Extermination is a wonderful idea, ICAN, especially if there are volunteers like Arthur Koestler. Do YOU volunteer? This is a simple question answerable by yes or no.