May 12, 2005

Senate accuses two in oil scandal

A US Senate report says two veteran French and British politicians were granted potentially lucrative oil allocations by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

It says British MP George Galloway and former French minister Charles Pasqua were given the right to buy oil under the UN's oil-for-food scheme.

Such allocations could be sold on for a commission, although the report offers no evidence either man received money.
[They did it "for the chirren!"--Jen]

Both men deny claims that they were involved in such sales.
[Of course, they deny it--they're hoping the proof has been destroyed and they'll never get nailed.]

"I have never traded in a barrel of oil," said Mr Galloway, formerly a Labour member of parliament but re-elected as a MP for his own Respect party last week after campaigning against the Iraq war.

He told the BBC it was "patently absurd" to think that, as an MP being closely watched by UK security services, he could have become an "oil billionaire" on the sly.
[Absurd to think, perhaps, but yet it could and very likely did happen.--Jen]
[...]
"This is a lickspittle Republican committee, acting on the wishes of George W Bush."
[Galloway was heard to say...
Gee! Nice to know he has such a elevated opinion about our American governmental officials, huh?]

The report by a Senate committe investigating the oil-for-food scandal says Saddam Hussein's regime was keen to gain allies with influence abroad.

It alleged that Baghdad had given Mr Pasqua the right to buy 11 million barrels of oil, while Mr Galloway had received some 20 million.
[And France wouldn't sanction military action against Iraq on the UNSC in 2003 and Galloway did his damndest to keep the UK out, too.]

The committee says it has evidence from documents drawn up by the Ministry of Oil under Saddam Hussein and interviews with "high-ranking Hussein regime officials".

The oil-for-food programme was a $60bn (£32bn) scheme set up in 1996
[...established under Bill Clinton's steady gaze...]
which was supposed to allow Iraq to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies with the proceeds of regulated oil sales, without breaking the sanctions imposed on it after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

The programme aimed to relieve the suffering of Iraqis under the sanctions and was formally ended in 2003 after the US-led invasion of Iraq.

The scandal over the way the programme was conducted emerged in early 2004, after an Iraqi newspaper published a list of about 270 people including UN officials, politicians and companies it alleged may have profited from the illicit sale of Iraqi oil.

US Senate investigators later found that Saddam Hussein's regime made $17.3bn from abuses.
[Very little of which went for food or medicine, but most of which went into "other" humanitarian supplies, for the barely human Saddam, Uday, Qusay and their sycophants.]

About $13.6bn allegedly came from selling oil to neighbour states keen to breach the sanctions.

The programme has already been the subject of several corruption investigations.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has been criticised over his son's work with the programme, but he himself, in an interim report by a UN committee issued in March, was cleared of wrongdoing.
[Uh...not really.
Several weeks ago, I blogged Volcker's statement that he had not cleared Kofi Kup!]

Mr Galloway won a libel suit against London's Daily Telegraph newspaper over an article relating to his alleged role in the oil-for-food programme.
[But they're appealing that decision, as they should.
Find the Telegraph's own very fair reporting of this story

Galloway was elected, in large part, by a heavy Muslim vote in his district;
in the days, since the British election, articles like this one have abounded in the world press:

Galloway win seen as Muslim vote triumph

Galloway won over a black Jewish woman using inflammatory, bellicose, anti-U.S., anti-war, anti-Blair, and if not anti-Semitic then certainly pro-Islamist rhetoric.

George Galloway, a radical expelled from the Labour Party for attacking Tony Blair over the Iraq war, snatched victory on Friday in a Labour stronghold seat where Muslims make up half the population.

Galloway took Bethnal Green and Bow in East London, which is dominated by Muslims of Bangladeshi origin, after one of the most heated battles of the British election.

The win by the flamboyant Scot, nicknamed ‘‘Gorgeous George’’ for his permanent tan and smart suits, over Labour’s Oona King, a black candidate of Jewish origin who had a 10,057-vote majority, was a stunning reverse for the ruling party.

Galloway declared his victory as a victory for Iraq.
[What happened to Britain in his priorities?--Jen]
‘‘All the people you killed, all the lies you told, have come back to haunt you,’’ Galloway said in a message to Prime Minister Blair. ‘‘The best thing the Labour Party could do is sack you tomorrow morning,’’ he said to cheers from the audience.

Could be that Gorgeous George has million$ of reasons he wants to back Saddam's Iraq so badly.
In the past, Muslims haven't been known to vote in numbers large enough to make a difference, probably due to their imams' traditional teachings that democracy is a "heresy," but with freedom on the march in the Middle East (good) and now this development in England (bad), we may seem some horrible new developments in future EUrabian elections given EU countries' growing Muslim populations.

As for Norm Coleman and his Committee, good on you for going full steam ahead with this investigation and not listening to that UN puppet Volcker!