No there scandal was relatively minor. U.S. companies were involved in the scandal as well. It isn't too hard when every single intel agency said Saddam wouldn't use the WMD's if they did have them, and certainly wouldn't sell them to anyone else. It is especially easy when at the time Saddam had his largest stockpile of WMD's he never once sold them to anyone. US sovereignty had nothing to do with Iraq. You can't on one hand claim to go in to Iraq because of UN resolutions that were supposedly being violated and on the other hand claim that it is ok to invade because of US sovereignty.
1. I believe you have stumbled upon the essential difference: you cite US companies while I cite France, Germany and Russia-- their governments. 2. Every single? What Saddam didn't do in 1994 is irrelevant to what he might do post 9/11... especially when you are charged with safe-guarding the people of this nation. 3. You can if you feel the UN is compromised or corrupt or weak or just plain wrong...
1. and yet their involvement was very minor, and certainly not large enough to merit basing entire policies around. 2. Yes all of the U.S. intel agencies came up with that conclusion except for one. That one said the only way Saddam would use or sell his WMD's was if attacked. That intel finding as well a proven track record is much better evidence to base a war on, than a fear based on absolutely nothing. The basis to believe Saddam would sell WMD's if he had them was based on exactly nothing. There was no track record of such, and there were no intel agencies findings that concluded that would happen. They all pointed in the opposite direction. History and present day circumstances proved them right. I might be misremembering but I believe there are about 15 different intel agencies and they all had the same conclusion. Add to that the fact that weapons inspectors were in Iraq with all the access they needed to find out about any WMD's anyway. 3. If the U.S. believed that about the UN then there was no reason for them to uphold the resolutions. Furthermore if that belief is a basis, then conversely Saddam could have used your exact same reasoning to not comply with resolutions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil-for-Food_Programme Lowlights: In addition to criticism of the basic approach, the programme suffered from widespread corruption and abuse. Throughout its existence, the programme was dogged by accusations that some of its profits were unlawfully diverted to the government of Iraq and to UN officials. These accusations were made in many countries, including the US and Norway. [2]... he stonewalled efforts to review and investigate the programme. [3] He ordered his staff that complaints about illegal payoffs should be formally filed with the whistleblower's country, making them public and allowing Iraq to bar any whistleblowers. In 2000, Dileep Nair, the UN corruption watchdog, wanted to determine the programme's level of vulnerability. Sevan, along with UN Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette, rejected any such investigation, claiming that it would be too expensive to be worthwhile. Curiously, Sevan ordered the shredding of years' worth of documents concerning the program. ...Starting in April 2004,[4] accusations were made that skimmed profits were being used to buy influence at the UN and with Kofi Annan himself. According to an interim report released on February 3, 2005 by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker's commission (see #Investigations below), much of the food aid supplied under the program "was unfit for human consumption". The report concluded that Sevan had accepted nearly $150,000 in bribes over the course of the programme, and in 2005 he was suspended from his position at the United Nations as a result of the investigation of fraud in the programme. [5] Peter van Walsum, the now-retired Ambassador of the Netherlands to the United Nations and chairman of the Iraq sanctions committee from 1999 to 2000, speculated in a recent book that Iraq deliberately divided the Security Council by awarding contracts to France, Russia, and China but not to the United Kingdom and the United States. He also stated he encountered a number of cases in which he felt the lack of Iraqi cooperation was designed to exacerbate the suffering of its own people. He also claimed that it was his opinion that the sanctions were not an effective deterrent. Until 2001, the money for the Oil-for-Food program transited through the BNP Paribas bank, whose main private share-holder is Iraqi-born Nadhmi Auchi, a man estimated to be worth about $1 billion according to Forbes, and ranks 13th in Britain according to The Guardian. Auchi received a 15-month suspended sentence for his involvement in the Elf scandal, which has been qualified by the British newspaper as "the biggest fraud inquiry in Europe since the Second World War. Elf became a private bank for its executives who spent £200 million on political favours, mistresses, jewellery, fine art, villas and apartments".[1] Elf, an oil company, merged with TotalFina to become Total S.A. in 2003. The Duelfer report, released on 30 September 2004, described in a key finding the impact of the Oil-for-Food Programme on Saddam's regime: • The introduction of the Oil-For-Food program (OFF) in late 1996 was a key turning point for the Regime. OFF rescued Baghdad’s economy from a terminal decline created by sanctions. The Regime quickly came to see that OFF could be corrupted to acquire foreign exchange both to further undermine sanctions and to provide the means to enhance dual-use infrastructure and potential WMD-related development.[vol. I, p.1] The final official version of the report cites only France, Russia and Canada (countries who were also strongly anti-war) as violators who paid kickbacks while at the same time, by CIA order, specifically censoring out companies from the US originally included by Duelfer. [11] However, the full version of the report, before the U.S. names were removed, was sent to congressional committees and some of it made publicly available. The U.S. companies implicated include Exxon Mobil Corp., ChevronTexaco Corp. and El Paso Corp. [12] ...The scandal engulfing the United Nations Procurement Department and the Oil for Food Programme involved IHC Services and Al-Qaeda finance operations. ...After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq and subsequent Coalition victory over the Iraqi army, the US General Accounting Office (GAO) was given the task of finalizing all Oil for Food related supply contracts made with the now-defunct regime as well as tracking down the personal fortunes of former regime members. [24] During the execution of this task, the GAO found weaknesses in the program that allowed kickbacks and other sources of wealth for Saddam Hussein. The GAO estimates that the Saddam Hussein regime generated $10.1 billion in illegal revenues. This figure includes $5.7 billion from oil smuggling and $4.4 billion in illicit surcharges on oil sales and after-sales charges on suppliers. The scale of the fraud was far more extensive than the GAO had previously estimated. A US Department of Defense study, cited by the GAO, evaluated 759 contracts administered through the Oil-for-Food Programme and found that nearly half had been overpriced, by an average of 21 percent [25]. Unlike the 661 committee, members of the Security Council had the authority to launch investigations into contracts and to stop any contract they did not like. The British and the Americans had turned down hundreds of Oil for Food contract requests, but these were blocked primarily on the grounds that the items being imported were dual-use technologies. To quote the GAO report, in its summary: Both the U.N. Secretary General, through the Office of the Iraqi Programme (OIP) and the Security Council, through its sanctions committee for Iraq, were responsible for overseeing the Oil-for-Food Programme. However, the Iraqi government negotiated contracts directly with purchasers of Iraqi oil and suppliers of commodities, which may have been one important factor that allowed Iraq to levy illegal surcharges and commissions. ...It has also been alleged that the American government was fully aware of the scandal, but opted to close its eyes to smuggling because their allies Turkey and Jordan benefited from the majority of the smuggled oil. US Senator Carl Levin (D-Michigan) is quoted in an interview for the New York Times as saying, "There is no question that the bulk of the illicit oil revenues came from the open sale of Iraqi oil to Jordan and to Turkey, and that that was a way of going around the oil-for-food program [and that] we were fully aware of the bypass and looked the other way." [citation needed] The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations assigned to investigate the scandal has also concluded that "The United States (government) was not only aware of Iraqi oil sales which violated UN sanctions and provided the bulk of the illicit money Saddam Hussein obtained from circumventing UN sanctions. On occasion, the United States actually facilitated the illicit oil sales." The report also found that individuals and companies in the United States accounted for 52% of all oil-voucher kickbacks paid to Saddam Hussein.[40] The largest of these recipients, Houston-based Bayoil and its CEO, David Bay Chalmers Jr., have been indicted by the US Department of Justice for their actions.[41][42]. Is this myth provable? In the end they didn't although they tried to encourage the UN to see the bigger picture. I think that was part of Saddam's thinking; you do agree that he did not comply with the resolutions, don't you?
1. Oil for food - Yes there were scandals and as the article you posted said the largest beneficiaries were Jordan and Turkey. The total amount was 10 billion which would have been over 8 years. So a minority of 10 billion over eight years was split between Russia, France, and China among others. So if the majority went to Turkey and Jordan and it was a small majority say 6 billion to 4 billion, then that would avg. to half a billion a year. That half a billion a year was then split up between at least Russia, France, and China. So do you believe that with all the money involved in running those nations that less than 200 mil a year is all it costs to set a nations policy and thwart other nations from doing good work? 2. It isn't a myth. It is provable just read the reports from the weapons inspectors who were in Iraq. 3. The U.S. tried to get the UN to see the picture they wanted them to see, which actually wasn't the big picture. GW Bush, could have looked strong and like a real leader if he had stopped after getting the UN to send back in the inspectors. They would have verified that Saddam had no WMD's and Bush would have been seen as someone who held tough and got the UN to their job. But when it appeared that the inspectors weren't finding WMD's(which wouldn't have been a threat to use or sell according to every Intel agency even if Saddam had them) then Bush refused to give the inspectors anymore time, and got his wish of an invasion. I believe Saddam was violating some resolutions such as providing the record keeping showing that he had destroyed all of his WMD's. But the fact is that the major components were being complied with as Hussein had no WMD's. Starting a war because of some record keeping violations(which were being verified anyway) is absurd.
I apologize to post and run and not address all of your points, which others have addressed already, but I did want to respond to this. You can't claim to be acting on behalf of they UN and also claim that the UN has control over the issue. If your argument is that Iraq had to be invaded because of the UN you cannot come around and say that the UN is weak because invading Iraq without UN authorization further diminishes the UN. You are undercutting your own argument.
Even if the surge is successful, then what? We will have to pull out at some point and they will just continue killing each other. I tend to agree with Olbermann that this is a waste but he is hard to read. Reads like a high school essay.
