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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...

Special investigation -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10 cents a barrel: how Iraqi oil fuelled UK campaigns Secret commissions paid to pro-Saddam middlemen by western oil firms found their way into George Galloway's anti-sanctions drives David Leigh, David Pallister, Brian Whitaker, Owen Bowcott, Rory McCarthy in Baghdad, Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow, Jon Henley in Paris Tuesday February 17, 2004 The Guardian In November 1998, Riad al-Tahir, a businessman of Iraqi origin who lives in Esher, Surrey, arranged a visit to Baghdad by the British Labour MP Tam Dalyell and an Irish delegation led by the former prime minister Albert Reynolds. It was not...

<p>On Dec. 5, during a trip to Baghdad, Claude Hankes-Drielsma faxed an urgent letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Mr. Hankes-Drielsma, the U.K. Chairman of Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, had recently been appointed to advise the Iraqi Governing Council. What he saw in Baghdad left him shocked. "As a result of my findings here, combined with earlier information," he wrote, "I most strongly urge the U.N. to consider appointing an independent commission to review and investigate the 'Oil for Food Programme.' Failure to do so might bring into question the U.N.'s credibility and the public's perception of it. . . . My belief is that serious transgressions have taken place and may still be taking place."</p>

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1068854/posts FRENCH FOR BRIBERYNew York Post ^ | 1/31/04 I wonder if the liberal news network will be reporting this gem of an article. Looks like the jig is up for our some of our fellow liberal 'Americans'.     http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1068867/posts TREASURY PROBES SADDAM'S OIL PALSNew York Post ^ | 1/31/04 | NILES LATHEM   http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1068596/posts IRAQ OIL: Mother OF All Scandals: List of all Business DealsHealing Iraq ^ | 1/29/2004 07:47:23 PM | zeyad     http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1068518/posts Did ABC tamper with Iraqi bribe list? Protect Kerry?abcnews.com ^   Saddam bribed Chirac.. ( 1 2 )     http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1067968/posts Document:...

Iraq's Governing Council on Tuesday launched an investigation into alleged bribes by the former dictator Saddam Hussein when it asked oil minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum for an official report on the subject The request followed allegations in the Iraqi press that scores of senior officials and organisations from around the world had received crude oil in return for political support for Mr Hussein's regime. "They're going to ask the Ministry of Oil to come and explain what was going on," said a participant at a Governing Council meeting on Tuesday. "If the coupons [for oil] are bribes, they are illegal...

Why No WMDs? Saddam Was Playing A Shell Game A key question raised in the big political brouhaha over the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: Why didn't Saddam just come clean? Had he opened up fully to U.N. inspections and proved he had no WMDs, he would still be in power rather than behind bars facing the gallows. There is a simple, one-word explanation: stupidity. Saddam thought he was playing quite a clever game with the funds he derived from the United Nations oil-for-food program, namely by purchasing support from France and Russia. He believed their...

<p>Who is Saddam Hussein's biggest business partner?</p> <p>The United Nations. The same U.N. whose secretary-general, Kofi Annan, stands as one of the chief ditherers over removing Saddam. Here are the ingredients of a conflict of interest.</p> <p>Under the U.N.'s Office of the Iraq Program, which supervises the six-year-old Oil-for-Food Program, the U.N. has had a hand in the sale of more than $55 billion worth of Iraqi oil. Iraq ships oil out to U.N.-approved buyers under the terms of the sanctions agreement. The U.N. vets the inflow of "humanitarian" imports into Iraq.</p>

The calling into question of French having profited by gifts from Saddam Hussein recalls how much the marketing of oil was a political stake. The publication, Sunday January 25 by Iraqi daily newspaper Al-Mada, of a list of 270 people or companies being allotted barrels of oil by the regime of Saddam Hussein creates a sharp polemic. Eleven French, such as Charles Pasqua and Patrick Maugein, are quoted by name. "the list of recipients comprises several types of actors, explains an Iraqi oil specialist, who speaks under condition of anonymity. Legitimate contract holders, signatories of contracts which were in negotiation,...