STEPHEN HAYES HAS AN EXCELLENT PRIMER on the Oil-For-Food Scandal at The Weekly Standard. Among other things, he notes the strangeness of it's very premise.
AMONG THE MANY BIZARRE ASPECTS of the U.N. Oil-for-Food program is its premise: If we, the international community, allow Saddam Hussein to take in more money by selling oil, we can end the suffering of the Iraqi people even while maintaining U.N. sanctions.
Gosh, when he puts it that way, it does sound pretty ridiculous. Is it possible that the whole program was designed to take advantage of, or is it more likely that the brain surgeons at the UN simply actually thought this was logical? Personally, I'm conflicted as to the answer.
Hayes goes on to note some of the things we know to date, but shhh...don't tell the liberals. Why ruin a perfectly good fantasy world.
Vladimir Putin's chief of staff, Alexander Voloshin, appears to have accepted millions of dollars in oil-soaked bribes from Saddam Hussein. The same appears to be true of the former interior minister of France, Charles Pasqua, a close friend of President Jacques Chirac. And the same appears to be true of three high-ranking U.N. executives including Benon Sevan, handpicked by Kofi Annan to administer the Oil-for-Food program. Oil-for-Food money even went to terrorist organizations supported by the Iraqi regime and, according to U.S. investigators, might be funding the insurgency today.
Then there is more on the wonderful Saddam Hussein, who would still be in power today if the Democratic Party had it's way.
Iraqis were dying because Saddam Hussein was killing them. He was actively killing them, Deutch said, by executing his political opponents and by draining the marshes of central Iraq that provided sustenance to hundreds of thousands of Shiites. And he was passively killing them by refusing to cooperate with U.N. inspectors and stealing food and medicine intended to ease their suffering.
Hayes puts together a pretty substantive history of the failed program (if you can call it that. Those on the take might prefer to refer to it as a huge success.) A worthy read for those of us on the right, and a startling revelation for those on the left.
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