Kofi Annan's Oil-For-Food Corruption/Oil, Food and a Whole Lot of Questions

The EIB Network ^ | 2-22-03 | Rush Limbaugh/Claudia Rosett

[jmstein7]

My [wife] caught a report by Fox News Channel's Eric Shawn about the U.N. oil-for-food program. This hasn't been picked up anywhere, but it will come as a blockbuster revelation for anyone wondering why the French, Germans and Russians stood in the way of liberating Iraq. This program was supposed to help the starving Iraqi people. Instead, it was a cash cow.

This is why I always tell you: follow the money. Kofi Annan personally oversaw this program, and okayed requests under this program for things like laser light show equipment and cartoon making apparatus for Baghdad Bob. The United Nations also reaped a tidy 2.2% windfall off every drop of Iraqi oil sold.

Annan operated in secret, accountable to nobody. He's refused all requests to make records of this sweet deal public. The UN thinks of itself as unaccountable to anyone, but who keeps watch on whether they're helping the people where they deploy? Claudia Rosett's New York Times column which you can hear me read below - "Oil, Food and a Whole Lot of Questions" - reports that this program put "a veil of secrecy over tens of billions of dollars in contracts is an invitation to kickbacks, political back-scratching and smuggling done under cover of relief operations."

Rosett: "I found nothing that would seem to contradict General Tommy Franks's comment that the system should have been named the 'oil-for-palace program.'" This is why we don't want Hans Blix or Koffi Annan anywhere near Iraq. The US is pushing to lift 12-year-old sanctions while the same Russians and French who wanted to lift the sanctions they blamed for Iraqi suffering under Saddam want to keep them in place! Reuters reports that Annan is at the Security Council talking about getting oil flowing again. There is no way Annan wants this embargo to end, because that would end the oil-for-food cash pipeline. This is a huge, huge untold story.

[MeekOneGOP]

[PhiKapMom]

Good Morning Dog!

I was listening to Rush yesterday while in my car and even though I thought the Food for Oil program was a sham, it was shocked to hear his show and find out it was much worse than I imagined!

Guess that explains the UN reluctance starting with Annan to have us depose Saddam! Disgusting!

[Dog]

Oil for Food generated $64 Billion dollars since 1996.

[PhiKapMom]

You are so right -- if the UN gets into Iraq the Iraqi people are doomed.

Remember when we first entered Iraq, they started finding tons of food in storage that had never been distributed to the Iraqi people. Just where were the UN aid workers that were supposed to distribute this food?

UN is corrupt, inept, and a farse and should be disbanded starting with the firing of Annan. They are not even a good Humanitarian organization!

[PhiKapMom]

Can you believe that -- $64 billion and the Iraqi people are starving? Something is totally rotten/corrupt starting with Annan and the UN and extending outward like a spider web!

[wordsofearnest]

Get The USA out of the UN and get the UN out of the USA BUMP.

[TLBSHOW]

Fantastic post PhiKapMom

[wordsofearnest]

Get The USA out of the UN and get the UN out of the USA BUMP.

[Grampa Dave]

I feel your pain, Nic. We have the Boxer and ChFi Frankenstein as our senators. I'm sure that they got money somehow from this Oil for Food Fund, from Soddomite Direct or from some French/Chinese company for their support of Soddomite before the war.

[Wphile]

The UN is a joke. It's amazing to me, that despite all this coverage of the UN's failure at peacekeeping, humanitarian aid, inspections, etc., people still continue to worship at its altar. It's a laughingstock if you ask me and why anyone still takes it seriously is just folly.

The Weekly Standard said it best and I paraphrase, "many people have a misconception of what the United Nations is. Many like to believe that it is the nations of the world united in a just cause to better humanity. It is not the nations of the world united. It is an organization in NYC where representatives of nations come to espouse their own nations interest. There is nothing altruistic about it. " It should be scrapped.

[Mo1]

Thanks for the ping PhiKapMom .. I have been emailing these UN articles to everyone I know ... One way or another .. the public needs to know exactly what the UN has been doing

[Grampa Dave]

This UN Oil For Food sham will be just like the China Gate situation.

The mainstream press will ignore it, the DNC will ignore it and of course ABCNNBCBS will ignore it.

However, things have changed since China Gate. The left wing mobsters no longer control all of the news outlets.

Now besides Rush, there are Sean and good regional/local conservative talk show hosts to spread the word. Fox News will get the story out.

Last, but not least will be the internet and good old Free Republic to keep the story blogged and alive.

The Galloway Gate will get the foriegn press involved.

Will this result in massive arrests and the UN closing its doors? NO!

However, we will see changes in the behavior of France, Germany, Russia and other countries who have been sucking off vast amounts of the Oil for Food monies to enrich individuals and their countries. Also, the UN will have to abandon this Golden Goose as a way for their top dogs and the UN to make money.

[nicmarlo]

I'm sure that they got money somehow from this Oil for Food Fund, from Soddomite Direct or from some French/Chinese company for their support of Soddomite before the war.

Yep; the Rats are as complicit with the Iraqi tragedies as Saddam, Blix, Franch, Germany, Russia, China....

[Dolphy]

Thanks for the ping. I have been following this but let me add another reason to why exposing this sham is vital. Last night I caught a BBC debate on CSpan. The topic was WMD in Iraq and why the entire war will be illegal if they are not found. Those taking this side pointed out multiple time that the US and Britain had supplied false information to the security council. (This is true, but in the broad scheme of things these documents did not break the back of the coalition's position.) For some on the left not liberation, not human rights, not pictures of torture chambers or plush palaces, not boxes of money or UNICEF packages and medicines hidden from the citizens or anything else will redeem the coalition.

We saw the millions march, we saw them deface pictures of the President, we saw them blame the United States for starving, ill children, we saw them compare us to Hitler's Germany, we saw the vitriolic hatred and the calls to defer to the UN. We cannot let the shadows of these demonstrations or the foolish leftists who continue to look to villify the coalition frame the debate. The truth must be told in bold, dramatic, challenging ways.

[Grampa Dave]

Hopefully we will be able to see the money trail from the Islamofacists like Soddomite.

If we don't, and a whole bunch of rotten rats decide to retire and spend more time with their families who they hate.

Then, we will know that at least someone has seen the money trail and got the rats to resign/retire.

[ravingnutter]

FYI...related story...found the following in a search earlier this morning...the UN has been aware of the oil for food fraud for quite some time and has done NOTHING to resolve the situation!

November 22 1999

West finds evidence of Iraqi fraud

IRAQ'S President Saddam Hussein is believed to be skimming off hundreds of thousands of pounds a day from the United Nations "oil-for-food" scheme and using the cash to cement his grip on power (James Bone and Michael Theodoulou write). The alleged fraud has been reported by Western envoys and oil experts. "We have some intelligence on some of it - that there is a lot of it going on," a senior Western diplomat said. The US has gone so far as to block UN approval of a number of contracts to sell humanitarian goods to Iraq.

"We have trouble with some companies paying percentages to government officials in Iraq," Peter Burleigh, Deputy US Ambassador to the UN, said. "We go back to those countries in which these companies function and tell them what our problem is." With the price of oil rising rapidly, the five permanent members of the Security Council are now discussing an entirely new oversight system.

Source

Source has links to original article in the London Times, but a subscription is required to retrieve it from the archives...however, given what we know now, the logical assumption must be made that they were fully aware of this in 1999.

[tutstar]

ping

[Reagan Man]

Thanks for the ping, PKM.

I too heard Rush talking about this issue yesterday. Frankly, it should come as no shock to anyone.

>>>"I found nothing that would seem to contradict General Tommy Franks's comment that the system should have been named the 'oil-for-palace program.'" This is why we don't want Hans Blix or Koffi Annan anywhere near Iraq.

They shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the USA either.

[jmstein7]

bttt