The Present in Light of the UN Oil-for-Food Scandal

The tale of scandal surrounding the United Nations "Oil-for-Food" program makes an interesting backdrop for the current situation in Iraq. It also tells us why several nations did not support the United States in getting rid of Saddam Hussein--hatred mixed with a dash of greed.

The United States is regularly pilloried in the United Nations. Unfortunately, what was once sport only in the UN's unhallowed halls has spilled over into a vitriolic form of American debate. How much of the untruths behind UN hatred of America have many Americans bought? A great deal.

One of the greatest of the untruths, stage managed in great measure by Saddam Hussein himself, was the Oil-for-Food (OFF) scandal.

The total value of contracts under Oil for Food was more than $100 billion -- or $64.2 billion in oil sales and $38.7 billion in humanitarian purchases. Subtract a few billion dollars the U.N. spent in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, and you have some $100 billion worth of business that Saddam was able to steer wherever he wanted.

OFF became the seedbed for Saddam's prodigious appetite for palace building--78 in fact--while his people starved. Saddam's cronies were placed at the head of a series of "front" companies whose primary purpose was to enrich the Baath elite and to further WMD programs. He purchased armaments from 13 countries, including North Korea, China, Russia, and France.

Interestingly enough, the Clinton and Bush administrations looked the other way while a lot of oil was traded for a lot of money outside the confines of the OFF program.

Paul Volcker headed a commission to study OFF and determined that Saddam was as much as $11 billion richer as a result of the UN's ill-conceived program.

One could not work for the OFF program without Saddam's approval. Saddam's friends and family became the bulk of the 3,000 workers who were paid out of OFF proceeds to administer the program. They were also the public relations people. Usually, the United Nations accepted and gave an official stamp of approval for Iraqi lies. Dr. Rehan Mullick, originally assigned by the UN to monitor OFF in Iraq, was demoted and ultimately fired, when he brought such unseemly facts to light.

The worst of the lies was with regard to medical and food supplies for the children. Allegedly, 5,000 children per months were dying due to lack of food and medicine, according to "official reports" fed to the UN by the Hussein PR Agency. Much like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq currently, the Hussein PR Agency was very adept at painting a picture of US and UN malfeasance, when in reality Iraq shared the bulk of the blame with the wily snakes at the UN.

As part of the OFF steal, UN allotted itself 2.2% of the proceeds, which amounted to $1.4 billion. So that's why they never 'noticed' that anything was going wrong in the program, including a faaaaaaat paycheck for Secretary General Kofi Annan--ahem--I mean, his son.

It's easy to blame America's insatiable appetite for oil. But why not blame France, Russia, and China, who benefited enormously from cheap oil during the scandal years?

The United Nations is a broken organization. It is little more than a band of criminals. Can it be saved and rebuilt? Maybe. But while George W. Bush has made a plethora of mistakes with regard to the Iraq War, going ahead without the United Nations was NOT one of them. They still haven't gotten their act together. Unseemly hatred of America spurs on several of its constituent nations in their Gadarene rush to destruction. Unslaked greed propels many of the rest of them.

Bush didn't do himself and the United States any favors by his flimsy excuse for attacking Iraq and his even more silly planning for said windmill tilt. But what dismays me even worse than that is the attitude of some Americans--they've been listening to the crooks and liars in the United Nations too much lately, and their utter hatred of Bush has become irrational.

Why are we surprised that Oil-for-Food was a scandal? It was conceived by one.

Western Support for Saddam

Thanks to BarryLando.com and Barry's work in conjunction with Canal + France, we know more about America's involvement in the support of Saddam Hussein against the Iranians in the 1980's. We also learn more about about how United Nations sanctions against Iraq did not hurt Saddam, but hurt his people greatly.

We all know that Saddam used weapons of mass destruction to kill many of his people. But what is not commonly known is that Donald Rumsfeld met with and shook hands with Saddam Hussein in 1983, and although it is not known what went on in this meeting, only a couple of months later, Saddam used chemical weapons on his people. In an effort to support Iraq against Iran, the US provided satellite imagery to the Iraqis about Iranian troop formations. The Iraqis used nerve gas against the Iranians after receiving this intelligence.



George W Bush cited the village of Halabja, whose residents were killed in 1988 by chemical weapons, as a reason to overthrow Saddam Hussein. But at the time it happened, no western governments wanted to talk about it. Partly because of its support of Iraq over Iran, and partly because what Lando and Canal + France say was western desire to control Iraqi petroleum, the US and other western governments ignored Halabja when it happened. Opposition in the US to legislation to place sanctions on Saddam were orchestrated by Colin Powell, at that time National Security Adviser. French and German companies had sold chemicals and other equipment to Iraq in the 1980s. Records of these sales are kept under lock and key in the United Nations.



Sanctions imposed by the United Nations on Iraq for 12 years is estimated to have caused the deaths of at least 500,000 Iraqis. Despite knowledge of death rates under the sanctions, the UN continued the sanctions. Medications, including rehydration fluids, ran out quickly. Some politicians in Washington accused those warning of the mass deaths of succumbing to Saddam's propaganda. The allegation is made in the following video that the west deliberately targeted water and electrical supplies in Iraq. Untreated water resulted in mass outbreak of disease. The theory was that if the people of Iraq were hurt by the sanctions, they would rise up against Saddam. But in reality, the Iraqi people blamed the west. The embargo is now over, but Iraqi doctors still don't have the supplies they need. The United Nations kept the embargo in place even though it was learned that Saddam was circumventing the embargo and that only the Iraqi people were suffering.




For more information, visit barrylando.com. Barry is the recent author of the book WEB OF DECEIT: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush.

He is Dead

According to al Hurrah television in Iraq, Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging a half hour ago.

Saddam is dead. I'm not sure how I feel right now. Emotional is the word, but what sort of emotions are they? Relief that the wicked witch is dead? No. Glad that he'll no longer be on this earth to torment the people he was supposed to have served? Yes.

Worried?

Yes. Will this be the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning?

"Imposing the death penalty, indefensible in any case, is especially wrong after such unfair proceedings," said Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch's international justice programme, after the appeal failed.

I do know what I think about that statement. There are few people who ever lived whose lives were so remarkable only for their worthlessness and their deserving of the penalty of death.

But these are sentiments I can agree with:

"Saddam is paying the price for murdering tens of thousands of Iraqis. This is an unprecedented feeling of happiness. ... Nothing matches it, no festival or marriage or birth." — Abu Sinan, a resident of Sadr City, Baghdad's impoverished Shiite slum.

"Our respect for human rights requires us to execute him..." — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

My stomach is in knots. I can hardly believe it's true, and now that it's history, I'm not sure that I wanted it this way--this soon. What of all the other trials for which he could have been found guilty--will they continue? Or will the catharsis due to recognition of and penance for American and Western complicity in his debaucheries never occur?

The Guardian reported that

Details of the execution were still emerging early this morning. The authorities had rejected the idea of hanging him before a live audience in a Baghdad football stadium, but senior officials insisted that public confirmation of the success of his execution was "very important". A source in the justice ministry said the proceedings would be recorded by a video-cameraman and a stills photographer. "It is probable that clips and images may be broadcast on national TV," the official said, adding: "Iraqis must see for themselves that the man who oppressed them for so long is dead ... But we will not turn the whole thing into a circus."

I worry and await what hell may be unleashed at the news--or what rejoicing. Whatever the case, I hope that the truth will ensue, a truth that saves Iraq.

Gallows Repentance?

Has Saddam finally seen the light? Is he repentant for all of the rapes, tortures, murders, and other crimes that he has committed? It would appear that way based on words he spoke yesterday. Maybe behind the mask is a coward. Maybe he thinks if he says something nice now, they will spare him the hangman's noose.

Here's my first reaction to Saddam's letter of November 5, 2006, which came out yesterday exhorting his former people to neither hate each other nor commit violence against each other or against the American aggressor--he sees the reality of his impending doom, and he thinks that if he says something nice now that he will get off the hook. Having recently read Between Two Worlds by Zainab Salbi, and based on her contention that millions of Iraqis despise him for all of his rapes, torture, and murders, somehow I think he's on the hook to stay.

By like Ms. Salbi, I have some sense of pity for him as well. What a wasted life--wasted in the wasting of others' lives.

My other thought is, 'Wouldn't it be nice if the Iraqi people actually listened to him?' Because, taken by themselves on this momentous fortnight before his death, they actually mostly make sense.

I call on you not to hate because hate does not leave space for a person to be fair and it makes you blind and closes all doors of thinking. I also call on you not to hate the people of the other countries that attacked us. Remember that God has enabled you to become an example of love, forgiveness and brotherly coexistence.

Okay, so he sort of gets it right, but most Iraqis think that Saddam is to blame for the American presence in Iraq. But just think of the possibilities if the Sunni and Shia could really sit down and forgive each other. This is hard to imagine, except as influenced by divine providence, which makes it entirely possible. It is a bit ironic that Saddam inflamed a lot of the tensions that Sunni and Shia harbor toward each other, which now, in a society of greater openness, have boiled over in to acts of revenge and re-revenge.

Here, I offer my soul to God as a sacrifice, and if he wants, he will send it to heaven with the martyrs.

Zainab Salbi mentions in Between Two Worlds that Saddam could on rare occasions be one of the most courteous people she had ever met, but as a result of most other associations with him, there is no person she is more afraid of in this world. Her book portrays a general sense of intense fear of the man in the lives of the thousands of people she knew or became acquainted with.

It would have been better if--like Mohammed, Moses, or Jesus Christ--The Butcher of Baghdad would have offered his life as a sacrifice to God instead of the physical and mental deaths of thousands upon thousands through his debauchery and perfidiousness. Because of his life of treachery, it is hard to imagine his "soul" containing any substance at all, much less anything worthy of a sacrifice to God.

I suspect God pities Saddam, too.

Note: Click here for further discussion of this issue at A Soldier's Perspective.

The United States of France

It has been customary over the last couple of centuries for other nations to look down on the French, in general, as wussies. But times are a changin'. In our gadarene rush to disfavor George W. Bush, we have nearly become the United States of France. The point about Iraq is that the Iraqi people once trusted the American people, but it seems they would be stupid to trust us now, and I guess we don't care.

Since the victory of the Democratic party in November, the French is coming out in us. The French people as a whole have pretty much always been wimps, but now, it seems, so are Americans.

The French in the last century or so haven't found a fight that they didn't run away from. The French have descended from a people low in morals, high in obsequiousness to their leaders, and even higher in personal aggrandizement and prestige seeking. It is, therefore, no difficult feat to understand why they have so many problems today (unemployment, increasing violence, love for socialism, and fear of Iran, to name a few).

What is more difficult to understand, however, is how a country descended from hearty, self-sufficient, and truth-loving stock could have become so much like the wussy French. I guess most of us are too busy watching CSI, Survivor, and American Idol to make much of our lives, and a significant additional percentage of us hate George Bush so bad that we can't think the current issue through to its logical conclusion.

No matter how much even a majority of us wish it to be true, the main point of the war in Iraq is not oil. Oil is important, and we should open up the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge and the Gulf of Mexico so that we can become independent of foreign oil. But it has never been the primary issue.

We are in a situation now that the main point is also no longer whether or not the Hussein regime possessed weapons of mass destruction. Some democrats and some republicans never thought there were any--including me--but many others thought there were. Saddam had pursued nuclear weapons production and gave a pretty good (although false) indication that he was close to producing them. Saddam used his chemical and conventional weapons too fertilize the vast deserts of Arabia with the bodies of tens of thousands. But that is no longer the point, either.

The main point, unfortunately for some, is also not whether George W. Bush and Dick Cheney lied to the American people. It appears that they jumped to conclusions, but even if they lied, this is no longer the point.

The point of it all, and the only point that matters, is that the majority of Iraqis once trusted the American people, but apparently that trust was as misplaced as if it had been placed in France.

A poll was recently conducted of Iraqis that came to the following conclusions (1) 19 of 20 Iraqis say security was better under Saddam Hussein, (2) 9 in 10 people feel unsafe around American soldiers, and (3) 2/3 will feel safer when US troops leave Iraq.

In a world where people were completely free of fear, the poll numbers might mean something, but these poll numbers are next to useless. Here's why:

1. Security was better under Saddam, because if someone attempted to violate Saddam’s security, he dispatched his angels of death or torture, a strong deterrent.

2. 9 out of 10 people in Baghdad, where Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies is based, probably have something to fear were they to say they feel safe with American soldiers around. After all, is that really a pollster on the other end of the phone line?

3. That 2/3 feel safer could be a feeling that can also be explained by my item number two, or it could be a hope that Sunni and Shia will stop attacking each other when America leaves–a tenuous bet at best, unless…we bring back Saddam to restore security.

The Iraqis don't trust us. After all, they can watch our news and see all the crap that gets reported and the stuff that doesn't. After all, self-centered and Bush-bashing types have been clamoring for at least the last two years for the United States to abandon Iraq. And it looks like we've just about capitulated to these voices of venom and unreason.

So, since we are failing the Iraqi people yet again, I suggest a name change more fitting of our inability to stand for anything--The United States of France.

Would you trust us? I wouldn't. We're wussies!!

A Day to be Memorialized

How will November 5, 2006, the day that Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death, be remembered? I hope very fondly. I hope that it becomes known as a day that the struggle for freedom in the Middle East began to take a dramatic turn for the better.

I remember well, and I think it was a Sunday after I returned from church as well, when I discovered that Saddam had been found cowering in a rat hole on December 14, 2003. As they discovered that it really was Saddam, multitudes of Iraqis celebrated. Their wicked witch had been apprehended.

Hussein and his beefed-up Mukhabarat (secret police) created unpredictable terror. For reasons only explained as illogical, western powers, including the United States, supported Hussein before it became crystal clear what kind of a murderous leader he was. For this we should be forever chagrined, and cannot possibly form a suitable apology to the Iraqi people for our complicity in their lives destroyed by terror.

In a remarkable occurrence, Saddam Hussein was born only a few hundred miles from the birthplace of Josef Stalin. Hussein's bookshelves were filled with the works of the Soviet Communist butcher.

The pictures in the news today say it all, but many had their own words of exultance over tyranny to express as well.

"I would like today to raise my shirt and show the whole world what the regime did to me'" said Abdul Zahara Hatow after hearing the sentence of death for Saddam Hussein. "I feel that this sentence will be like a bandage to my wounds."

"We've been waiting for justice since 1982, but today is great day for the people of Dujail." said another Iraqi.

Tens of thousands of Shia celebrated in Sadr City alone. Abdul Aziz al Hakim put this day into perspective:

"I hope the verdict will bring closure to this tragic and brutal episode in Iraqi history. We must never forget and we must always be vigilant never to let tyranny rise here in Iraq ever again.."

November 5th, 2006 is a day whereon justice has been served. Whether you are Shia, Sunni, or of another religious persuasion, you must agree that Saddam is worthy of severe punishment for his crimes. It's difficult for me to comprehend that Saddam's egregious crimes would not make believers out of a great many who are opposed to the death penalty.

The celebrations of today were as glorious as they were on the day of his capture nearly three years ago. It was expected then that a verdict would require at least five years' time. In less than three, the wicked witch has now been sentenced to a rightful punishment.

There are certainly more trials to come, as Dujail is only one of many incidents for which Saddam is clearly culpable. But it is my hope that today will be memorialized for years to come as the day when Iraq turned the corner and made dramatic strides toward peace and liberty.