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A vehicle for venting on philosophy, religion, and the general state of things. Proprietor: C. W. Powell

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

From the Wall Street Journal

"And oh what a lot of business the U.N. did. Mr. Annan's Secretariat collected more than $1.4 billion in commissions on Saddam's oil sales, all to supervise the integrity of Saddam's $65 billion in oil sales and $46 billion in relief purchases. The official aim of this behemoth U.N. aid operation was solely to help the people of Iraq, while the U.N. waited for sanctions to weaken Saddam enough so he would be either overthrown from within or forced to comply with U.N. resolutions on disarmament. Instead, Saddam threw out the U.N. weapons inspectors for four years, and, by estimates of the U.S. General Accounting Office, fortified his own regime with at least $10.1 billion grafted and smuggled out of Oil-for-Food.

"But of all the abuses of Oil-for-Food committed by Saddam--and not only allowed but in effect approved and covered up by Mr. Annan's U.N.--the most cynical has to have been the trade in baby formula. This was one of Saddam's imports that few even among the U.N.'s critics dared question. Who could be so heartless as to object to food for hungry children? And given the secrecy with which Mr. Annan ran Oil-for-Food (as hapless servant of a Security Council packed with big-time business partners of Saddam, such as France and Russia), no one outside the U.N. except Saddam and his handpicked contractors knew much in any event about Baghdad's traffic in baby formula."
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FYI

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