Free Republic

At what price will corn be so expensive that the federal government will decide that it is time to stop driving up the price of food? Three years ago, Congress imposed a Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) mandate that has forced the gasoline industry to mix massive amounts of corn-based ethanol into the nation's fuel supply. In 2007, Congress nearly doubled that mandate to require nine billion gallons of ethanol be blended into gas in 2008 and even more in 2009. But, as a safety valve, Congress gave the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the power to waive the new mandates if...

Will Media Remember Gore's 1994 Tie-breaking Vote Mandating Ethanol? By Noel Sheppard | April 22, 2008 As the international disaster of ethanol begins taking its toll across the planet -- and, maybe more important, as press outlet after press outlet finally begins recognizing it -- will media remember that Vice President Al Gore cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate requiring this oxygenate be added to gasoline? After all, regardless of recent reports blaming ethanol for world hunger problems, rising food costs, and increased greenhouse gases, it seems highly unlikely green media will want to tie any of these problems...

World Bank president calls for action as food prices cause rioting Jenny Booth The president of the World Bank has called for immediate action to deal with rapidly rising food prices that have caused hunger and deadly violence and threatened the economic stability of the world's poorest countries. A doubling of food prices over the last two years was potentially pushing 100 million people deeper into long-term poverty, said Robert Zoellick. “We have to put our money where our mouth is now, so that we can put food into hungry mouths. It is as stark as that,” Mr Zoellick said...

PARIS, France (Reuters) -- French oil major Total SA's head of exploration and production Christophe de Margerie is being investigated by a French judge in a probe related to the scandal-plagued U.N. oil-for-food programme in Iraq. Margerie, who is due to succeed Thierry Desmarest as chief executive, was put under formal investigation by a French judge on Thursday after being held in custody for 48 hours in Paris and then released. In a statement released on Total's Web site on Thursday night the group said it would like to "reassure Mr de Margerie of its total support". Citigroup analysts said...

(2006-03-06) — Sen. John Kerry, D-MA, in a landmark speech Sunday on the global dynamics of terrorism, said a ’strong United Nations’, working with ‘moderate Muslim leaders’ could save the world from terrorism if the West stops propping up Arab kingdoms by purchasing oil. The senator proposed putting the French in charge of U.N. military operations, appointing a member of the Hamas Palestinian government to head the U.N. Human Rights Council, and “transitioning the Arab Middle East from an oil economy to an agricultural one, where lush, green acres replace the sand stretching out so far and wide.” “Some say...

BENON Sevan, the former head of the UN oil-for-food program for Iraq, expects to be accused of getting money in oil deals, allegations his lawyer calls "entirely false" and without evidence. In a lengthy statement, the lawyer, Eric Lewis, anticipated a report next Tuesday from a UN-appointed Independent Inquiry Committee, led by Paul Volcker, the former US Federal Reserve Chairman. The panel, Mr Lewis said, intends to say that Mr Sevan received money from a contractor, doing business with the $US67 billion ($86.96 billion) humanitarian program. But the lawyer said, "The charge is categorically untrue and no evidence has been...

WASHINGTON, May 13 (AFP) - In a bid to improve ties with France, Iraq's intelligence service sought to influence top French politicians, including former president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, a US congressional committee said Friday. The Committee on Energy and Commerce of the US House of Representatives said it had obtained memos and letters from files of the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) showing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had personally "ordered the improvement of dealing with France" in early 2002. In a statement, the committee said the documents "reflect a concerted effort on the part of Saddam Hussein's government to influence individuals,...

UN and our schools--forum What's being taught in our schools about the United Nations? Dick Rush and his committee will present their recent findings to members and guests of the Northern Colorado Chapter of the United Nations Association/USA. Saturday, May 7, at 3:00 p.m. at Fort Collins Main Library. Free and open to the public. For information, call..............

WASHINGTON and TORONTO — Canadian Maurice Strong agreed to step aside Wednesday as a special envoy for the United Nations, but vowed to clear his name after being linked to Tongsun Park, a Korean lobbyist charged in connection with the Iraq oil-for-food scandal. At the same time, new details emerged about a Calgary oil company in which Mr. Strong and his son, Fred, were major investors during the 1990s together with Mr. Park -- whom the younger Mr. Strong described as "a spooky guy." Shareholders in Cordex Petroleums Inc. also included CSL Group Inc., the holding company owned by Prime...

Envoy Admits Ties With S. Korea Business A prominent Canadian businessman and envoy for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan acknowledged ties Monday with a South Korean businessman who has been accused of wrongdoing in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal. Maurice Strong, Annan's special adviser for North Korea, said in a statement that he has "continued to maintain a relationship" with Tongsun Park and that Park invested in an energy company he was associated with in 1997. The statement did not identify the company and Strong could not immediately be reached for comment. U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said Strong was in the Dominican...

Canadian coincidences are piling up in the UN’s Oil-for-Food Program. Fox News reported on Tuesday that Annan's #2 Blocks Oil-for-Food Scrutiny. Kofi Annan’s #2 is Canada's Louise Fréchette. Louise Fréchette served under Prime Minister Paul Martin when he held the title of Canada's Minister of Finance. According to Fox News, "Four years into the seven-year Oil-for-Food program with graft and mismanagement by then rampant, Fréchette intervened directly by telephone to stop United Nations auditors from forwarding their investigations to the UN Security Council." Born in Montreal, Louise Fréchette has served directly under UN Chief Kofi Annan since March 1998. According...

With U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (search) next up for review by Paul Volcker’s inquiry into the Oil-for-Food scandal, a crucial question is whether Volcker will expand upon information tying the scandal directly to the U.N. chief’s office — by way of Annan’s second-in command, Louise Frechette (search). Four years into the seven-year Oil-for-Food (search) program, with graft and mismanagement by then rampant, Frechette intervened directly by telephone to stop United Nations auditors from forwarding their investigations to the U.N. Security Council. This detail was buried on page 186 of the 219-page interim report Volcker’s Independent Inquiry Committee released Feb. 3....

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Tareq Aziz, one of Saddam Hussein's jailed right-hand men, was interrogated in Baghdad by representatives of a UN panel investigating corruption in Iraq's oil-for-food programme, his lawyer told AFP. Aziz also made a desperate handwritten and verbal appeal through his lawyer to be allowed to see his family. The meeting with the three investigators lasted almost eight hours and took place at a detention facility near Baghdad's international airport in the presence of US military and government personnel and an Iraqi investigating judge, said defense attorney Badie Aref Izzat. "They had no right to question him like...

WASHINGTON — Two major American figures in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal worked together to ship humanitarian supplies to Iraq through a charity connected to celebrities, The Post has learned. According to documents recently obtained by the House International Relations Committee, Texas oilman Oscar Wyatt and Saddam Hussein's American oil spy, Samir Vincent, worked together to finance shipments of medicines and baby formula for Iraq in 1997 and 1998 through such charities as the Friendship Force Foundation, a group closely connected to former President Jimmy Carter, his wife, Rosalynn, and other luminaries.

I always love the bit on the big international news story where they try to find the Canadian angle. A couple of months back, every time I switched on The National, there seemed to be no news at all and Peter Mansbridge was in the middle of some 133-part series of reports on “Canadians making a difference in the world,” which at least three nights a week seemed to be an “encore presentation” of the same worthy soft-focus featurette about some guy helping with an irrigation project in Sudan. Once upon a time, it didn’t seem such an effort to...

This Washington Post editorial seems to place blame on American and other companies for the UN Oil-for-Food Scandal, revealing an anti-corporate bias. The editorial seems to ignore the role that certain foriegn nations played in the scandal, including France and Russia. The outrage continues as the editorial calls for MORE funding to the UN, since it blames a lack of funding and resources for the failures of the UN - not just in the scandal but in Kosovo and other places in the world where the UN has shown itself a failed institution. The UN has sufficient resources to fulfill...

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post wrote a story the other day about how MSNBC President Rick Kaplan has put more NBC into MSNBC. Since Rick Kaplan was named president of MSNBC a year ago, Kurtz reported, his colleagues say that one of his main achievements has been "forging a tighter partnership with NBC News." The assumption is that NBC is a valuable resource. But on one of the hottest stories around, the U.N. corruption scandal, NBC has been out to lunch. Why? Its U.N. reporter has been on the payroll of the U.N. lobby. Linda Fasulo, the U.N. correspondent...

January 30, 2005 Kofi Annan’s son admits oil dealing Robert Winnett and Jonathon Carr-Brown THE son of the United Nations secretary-general has admitted he was involved in negotiations to sell millions of barrels of Iraqi oil under the auspices of Saddam Hussein. Kojo Annan has told a close friend he became involved in negotiations to sell 2m barrels of Iraqi oil to a Moroccan company in 2001. He is understood to be co-operating with UN investigators probing the discredited oil for food programme. The alleged admission will increase pressure on Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, who is already facing...

Jan. 19 - Former vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp has been questioned by the FBI about his dealings with an Iraqi-American businessman who this week became the target of the first Justice Department criminal indictment in the United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal ...Over several years continuing until 2003, Vincent talked to Kemp roughly once a month about his proposal to improve U.S.-Iraqi relations, according to Kemp and Lanny Davis, a Washington lawyer and friend of Kemp’s who discussed the matter with him and offered to speak for him to NEWSWEEK on this matter. ...Davis confirmed that in 2001, Kemp personally approached...

While barely registering a ripple in the Mainstream Media, several key senior people have been “resigned” by Kofi Annan in the wake of a series of scandals. The sudden departures also follow a Manhattan meeting with liberal friends of Annan’s from the foreign policy establishment, and a meeting between Annan and Bush Administration officials in Washington. There may be more than meets the eye in this sequence of developments. Over the past few decades, the UN has become a playpen for despots and dictators determined to manipulate the organization to achieve their goals: assure their continued rule, frustrate the desires...

Fallen behind on your scandal news lately? Well, don't look now, but the doozy the United Nations has brewed up in its Iraqi oil-for-food program is about to come to full boil. The Treasury Department, the Department of Justice, the Manhattan district attorney's office, five legislative committees, at least three foreign governments, and, oh yes, the United Nations itself are asking who's responsible for the more than $4 billion in illegal kickbacks on Iraqi oil sales and goods from suppliers exporting food, medicine, and other materials to Baghdad. Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker, who is heading the U.N.'s...

Press Release Source: Newsweek NEWSWEEK: Two Related Companies In The Oil-for-Food Business are Believed to Have Handled as Much as $4 Billion in Deals, Reselling Some Crude to Big U.S. Refiners Like Exxonmobil, Says Investigator Sunday January 16, 10:22 am ET # NEW YORK, Jan. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Investigative officials in New York and Europe are looking closely at the dealings of numerous companies and individuals involved in the Oil-for-Food business in an attempt to learn who may have helped Saddam Hussein's regime beat U.N. sanctions. Newsweek reports in the January 24 issue (on newsstands Monday, January 17) that one...

Paul Volcker, head honcho of the "Independent" Inquiry Committee into the Oil-For-Food program, brings new meaning to the term, "conflict of interest". Canada Free Press reported last December that Volcker held a seat on Power Corporation’s International advisory board, that he is a member of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission and has Rockefeller’s granddaughter, attorney Miranda Duncan on the Inquiry Committee’s payroll. The Trilateral Commission is a super-elite cabal of some 300 powerbrokers with the proverbial finger in every pie that does not publish its membership on the Internet. And, of course it was Rockefeller money that built the UN’s Manhattan...

United States President George Bush was tonight accused of trying to undermine the United Nations by setting up a rival coalition to coordinate relief following the Asian tsunami disaster. The president has announced that the US, Japan, India and Australia would coordinate the world’s response. But former International Development Secretary Clare Short said that role should be left to the UN. “I think this initiative from America to set up four countries claiming to coordinate sounds like yet another attempt to undermine the UN when it is the best system we have got and the one that needs building up,”...

Kofi Annan Must Go, headlined Senator Norm Coleman’s December 1st Wall Street Journal op-ed. As calls for UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s resignation grew legs, 77 U.S. Senators drafted the ‘United Nations Oil-for-Food Accountability Act,’ legislation designed to deny partial U.S. funding to the UN until they hand over Oil-for-Food documents to U.S. investigators. Meanwhile, Canadian Foreign Affairs Department spokesperson Marie-Christine Lilkoff told Canada Free Press "no", Canada is not investigating Oil-for-Food. Canada is the 7th largest United Nations donor and contributed north of $130 million in 2004. Canada Free Press has learned to expect Canada in the "near future" to...

UNITED NATIONS -- Secretary-General Kofi Annan won a standing ovation from the U.N. General Assembly, a rare public display of support in response to recent calls for his resignation from several U.S. lawmakers. U.S. deputy ambassador Patrick Kennedy joined fellow diplomats as they rose to their feet Wednesday, despite President Bush's refusal to support the U.N. chief pending the results of an investigation into alleged corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq.[snip]"In 15 years I've spent at the United Nations, this is the second time that the General Assembly had a standing ovation for a leader," he said. The...

Food for Oil Program A. Complete List of Recipients of Oil Vouchers (in alphabetical order by country) (All numbers for barrels of oil unless indicated otherwise) Algeria 1. Abd Al-Majid Al-Attar 6 million 2. Abd Al-Qadr bin Mussa 6 million Austria 1. Hans Kogler 2 million 2. Arab-Austrian Committee 1 million Bangladesh 1. Mawlana Abd Al-Manan 43.2 million Bahrain 1. Kadhem Al-Darazi Company 2 million 2. Ali Al-Muslim Company 3 million 3. Concrete Contracting Company 2 million Belarus 1. Liberal Party 6 million 2. Belarus Communist Party 7 tons 3. Belminal Company 14.2 million 4. Belfarm Company 4 million 5....

Paul Volcker, the man charged with the task of investigating the UN oil-for-food scandal, has by his association with the Montreal-based Power Corporation, a potential conflict of interest as chief scandal investigator. Last April, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan authorized Volcker to investigate the oil-for-food program. Volcker, the former chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve System, pledged "a thorough inquiry" into allegations of impropriety in the administration and management of the UN Iraq oil-for-food program. That pledge was apparently made with an undisclosed conflict of interest. Handpicked for the job by Annan, the secretary...

Good old Norm; it appears there's nothing he won't do for a headline, or for his GOP masters. Minnesota's junior senator made quite a splash this week with his call for the resignation of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, a splendid public servant whom the city Sen. Norm Coleman once governed has considered a semi-native son since his years at Macalester College. Even if he had never set foot in St. Paul, Annan would deserve far better than the stuff Coleman is dishing out. (snip) Note that no one has the slightest whiff of proof that Annan knew about, condoned...

WASHINGTON — The son of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan used his father's worldwide connections to wheel and deal with heads of state — at U.N. gatherings — on behalf of a controversial Swiss company that won a lucrative oil-for-food program contract, The Post has learned. The intense lobbying by Annan's 29-year old son, Kojo, was disclosed in a raft of internal company documents — including Kojo Annan's expense reports — that the company recently turned over to congressional committees under a subpoena. The memos provide the most revealing look to date at the business conflicts that are now at...

When it comes to nepotism, the lofty United Nations, which claims to own the monopoly on finding world peace, is no different than the corporate world where the boss’s son often gets first dibs. Kojo Annan, whose name first appeared in mainline media stories about the UN oil-for-food scandal only to drop out of headlines for a year, is back. It turns out that Kojo, son of UN secretary general Kofi Annan, was on the oil-for-food program payroll right up to 2004. Annan Jr. was the recipient of monthly payments more than four years longer than was previously known, courtesy...

Over 3,500 humanitarian vendors and UN agencies in contracts with Saddam Hussein's Iraq received approximately $32.6 billion in sales for various goods and services during the 1996-2003 UN Food-for-Oil Program according to the Independent Inquiry Committee into the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program released last week. Under Hussein's reign Iraqis were brutalized, denied basic medical care and so far over 256 mass graves have been uncovered. Saddam Hussein has not been questioned by the Independent Inquiry Committee, spearheaded by former U.S. chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker, but remains a possibility. Volcker was appointed last April by UN Secretary-general Kofi...

Charge Of Bribing Russia, France With Oil Silly: Annan New York, Oct. 17 (NNN): United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has dismissed allegations that France and Russia might have been willing to ease sanctions on Iraq in return for oil. Kofi Annan told the Jonathan Dimbleby programme on British TV channel ITV1 the claims were "inconceivable". "These are very serious and important governments. You are not dealing with banana republics," he added. The allegations were made earlier this month in a report by the US-led Iraqi Survey Group. Chief US weapons inspector Charles Duelfer said he had found evidence in...

LONDON (Reuters) - The Iraq war has done little to increase security across the world or halt the activities of international terrorists, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Sunday. Annan said in a British television interview that the international community now had a lot to do to improve security. "I cannot not say the world is safer when you consider the violence around us, when you look around you and see the terrorist attacks around the world and you see what is going on in Iraq," he told the Dimbleby program on ITV television"

If the name of a "Big Money" Political Party Donor with ties to Enron were discovered on the Saddam's Coalition of the Bribed, what do you think would happen to the Candidate of that party? What if that Candidate of that Party was John Kerry? Newsweek drops a bombshell on the Kerry Campaign: Texas Oil Baron and Big-Time Democrat Donor Oscar Wyatt has received perhaps as much a $22 million dollars in profits through oil allocations bought illicity from Saddam Hussein. From MSNBC: United Nations: Oil-for-Food Fiasco?"Law-enforcement sources say Americans who participated in alleged oil-for-food scams also may face further...

Food-for-oil deals under Hussein rife with corruption One of the most prolific purchasers of the oil was Swiss-based Glencore run by onetime fugitive American financier Marc Rich, which the report alleges paid more than $3.2 million in kickbacks to the Iraqi government. Rich, formerly wanted for tax evasion, ..........

Kerry Says He Wouldn't Have Ousted Saddam   Sep 20, 6:10 PM (ET) By RON FOURNIER (AP) Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass, speaks at the Redbook Mothers and...Full Image NEW YORK (AP) - Staking out new ground on Iraq, Sen. John Kerry said Monday he would not have overthrown Saddam Hussein had he been in the White House, and he accused President Bush of "stubborn incompetence," dishonesty and colossal failures of judgment. Bush said Kerry was flip-flopping. Less than two years after voting to give Bush authority to invade Iraq, the Democratic candidate said the president had misused...

MIDI - FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD We'd debate in the U.N....goodness, here we go again All we saw was their stonewalling This one really takes the cake...many had been on the take All those scumbags should be falling Marc Rich had been where he shouldn't have been Thanks to Bill, he would get away clean And we're ready for major league *ss kicking now That is nothing like we've ever seen Food, oil for food...the U.N. was scamming Kofi, you are toast...FOX News says it damning No wonder they voted NO...money had been flowing They hoped that their bank accounts...

Transcripts of secret U.N. Security Council sessions show that U.S. and British diplomats were constantly thwarted by their French, Russian and Chinese counterparts while investigating Saddam Hussein's dirty deals under the oil-for-food program. Minutes of meetings of the so-called 661 Committee — the U.N. Security Council panel that oversaw Iraq sanctions and the oil-for-food program — have been recently turned over to U.S. congressional committees investigating the $10 billion bribery kickback scandal, officials said. According to a top congressional investigator who has read the highly sensitive documents, the minutes confirm that there was widespread knowledge inside the United Nations years...

The Oil-for-Food fraud is potentially the biggest scandal in the history of the United Nations and one of the greatest financial scandals of modern times.1 Set up in the mid-1990s as a means of providing humanitarian aid to the Iraqi people, the U.N.-run Oil-for-Food program was subverted and manipulated by Saddam Hussein's regime--allegedly with the complicity of U.N. officials--to help prop up the Iraqi dictator. Saddam's dictatorship was able to siphon off an estimated $10 billion from the program through oil smuggling and systematic thievery, by demanding illegal payments from companies buying Iraqi oil, and through kickbacks from those selling...

Duane Clarridge is running a private probe, seeking evidence that France took prewar payoffs and that Russia received illegal Iraqi oil. WASHINGTON — After nearly two decades on the sidelines, Duane "Dewey" Clarridge, the legendary CIA officer who played a key role in the Reagan administration's secret war in Nicaragua, is back in the game — this time in Iraq and as a private citizen. Clarridge has launched his own self-financed investigation into alleged prewar financial dealings between Saddam Hussein's regime and France and Russia. And he has arranged to keep U.S. intelligence agencies briefed on what he uncovers. "It...

In the scandal over the U.N. Oil-for-Food program in Iraq, Kofi Annan's main line of defense has been that he didn't know. Perhaps he should take a closer look at internal U.N. Oil-for-Food audit reports, more than 50 in all, produced by his own Office of Internal Oversight Services--the same reports he's declined to share with the Security Council, or release to Congress. One of these reports has now leaked. It concerns the U.N. Secretariat's mishandling of the hiring of inspectors to authenticate the contents of relief shipments into sanctions-bound Iraq. (Obtained by a journalist specializing in the mining industry,...

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 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...

The Iraq Oil-for-Food Program: Starving for Accountability Wednesday, April 21, 2004 10:00 AM Related Documents Opening Statement Opening Statement of Chairman Shays Witness Testimony Testimony of Ambassador Patrick F. Kennedy, United States Representative for United Nations Management and Reform Testimony of Ambassador Robin L. Raphel, Iraq Reconstruction Coordinator, U.S. Department of State Testimony of Michael Thibault, Deputy Director, Defense Contract Audit Agency Testimony of Lee Jeffrey Ross, Jr., Senior Advisor, Executive Office for Terrorist Financing & Financial Crimes, U.S. Department of the Treasury Testimony of Claude Hankes-Drielsma, Advisor to The Iraq Governing Council and Chairman of Roland Berger Strategy...

“Cover-up" may sound farfetched, given the number of hearings and investigations now zeroing in on the United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal. The Iraq Governing Council began its own inquiry back in March. The U.S. Congress has scheduled three hearings this month, the first of them taking place today (Wednesday) before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. At the U.N. itself, where more than 100 audits over the course of the seven-year program apparently managed to miss more than $10 billion in smuggling and graft, Secretary-General Kofi Annan finally gave in last month to demands for an independent inquiry, and is now convening...

Hearing on now.

How would you like to send a message to the corrupt bureaucrats running the U.N.? We all know that the Iraq Oil For Food program was hijacked by greedy U.N. officials and their world leader friends. To protest this, I would like to propose the following: U.N. FOOD FOR OIL PROGRAM Let's start dropping off bags of groceries at the U.N. on Manhattan's West Side. Let's also find out where the embassies of their friends are, and drop off bags of groceries there, as well. Pack some plain brown grocery bags neatly with lots of cheap, starchy foods and canned...

<p>"If there is evidence, we would investigate it very seriously," Kofi Annan insisted last month when presented with allegations that U.N. officials knew about and may have benefited from Saddam Hussein's corruption of the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food Program. Fortunately, Saddam appears to have been a stickler for record-keeping.</p>

<p>When David Kay recovers from his weapons hunt, there's another Iraq-related quest I'd like to send him on. It's time a top intelligence team went scavenging for the real numbers on the United Nations' Oil-for-Food Program--that gigantic setup through which the U.N. from 1996 through 2003 supervised more than $100 billion worth of Saddam Hussein's selling of oil and buying of goods.</p>

Introduction On January 25, 2004, the Iraqi independent daily Al-Mada published a list of approximately 270 individuals and entities who were beneficiaries of Saddam Hussein's oil vouchers. [1] The report evoked reactions from many of those included in the list as well as from the Arab media, among them apologists for Saddam's regime. The fact that so many have opted for silence may give credence to the list's authenticity. A former undersecretary in the Iraqi Ministry of Petroleum, Abd Al-Saheb Salman Qutb, said that the ministry possesses documents proving the authenticity of the list published by Al-Mada. The list was...