Picking Cherries...
The full article excerpted below is available at:
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041008-122307-7095r.htm
Allies dismiss reports of Saddam payoffs
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
NEW YORK — French, Russian and U.N. officials warned against making hasty judgments yesterday after the U.S. Iraq Survey Group reported that Saddam Hussein had used the U.N. oil-for-food program to buy influence at the United Nations.
The report accused key officials — including former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky and retired U.N. oil-for-food director Benon Sevan — of accepting oil vouchers, which could be exchanged secretly for cash.
[...]
The ISG, headed by former U.N. weapons inspector Charles A. Duelfer, on Wednesday issued a 1,000-page report detailing Iraq's quest for weapons of mass destruction, including the possibility that more than $10 billion had been wrung from oil sales authorized by the U.N. program.
The ISG found a pattern of gifts and bribes to officials of nations serving on the Security Council, in an apparent effort to hasten the crumbling of the already weak sanctions on the regime.
The regime was "using every tool possible, through its deception, front companies or sweetheart deals on oil and other things, to try to suborn the sanctions regime and try to acquire things it was not supposed to be buying under the sanctions regime," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday.
Mr. Duelfer told Congress in releasing the report on Wednesday, "It's pretty clear that the Iraqi strategy and tactics of dividing the Security Council were having a fair amount of success.
"I think that's clear in the report when you see that the amount of conventional military equipment that was being sold to Iraq, being transported into Iraq ... with the help of some Security Council members, there is, in my mind, little doubt that the ... constraints that the U.N. was able to put around Iraq were collapsing."
The report fueled impatience on Capitol Hill over the slow pace of the [former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul] Volcker investigation and the U.N. refusal to make documents available to Congress.
[...]
U.N. officials say privately that they hoped Mr. Volcker could work a little faster, at least to investigate the apparent complicity of their own personnel.
The first phase of the independent investigation, originally expected next month, is not expected to be ready until early 2005, according to a U.N. official.
"Obviously, the secretary-general is keen to get to the bottom of this, get it out in the open and over and done with," an official said. "But I do not think he can put any pressure on him [Mr. Volcker] to speed it up."
----------
It is interesting that the Kerry campaign look at a 1,000 page report and all they find worthy of note is the ONE fact that everyone ALREADY KNOWS---no stockpiles of WMDs.
All you need for a weapon of mass destruction is a few pounds of a nasty substance, and enough explosive to disperse it. It doesn't need to be even the size of a briefcase. There have already been found some several dozen artillery shells full of Sarin LIQUID, which becomes a GAS or cloud of tiny droplets on detonation.
Unfortunately, the pitiful state of American secondary education under DEMOCRATIC PARTY administration over the last half of the 20th century deteriorated to the extent that many high school graduates no longer are given the information they need to be able to assess certain types of data.
It used to be widely understood that manufacturing processes depend on mass-production assembly lines to be efficient or affordable. Consider the ball point pen: Because of the microscopic texture of the ball needed for optimal ink retention, and the critical tolerances between the ball and the conical tip needed to allow the ball to turn and the ink to flow, making a SINGLE ball point pen could cost thousands of dollars. But to set up a factory capable of manufacturing a million pens per 24 hours, ends up bringing the cost down to a few cents apiece.
The discovery of ten Artillery Shells filled with Sarin chemical poison, clearly shows that at some point SADDAM HUSSEIN in fact, had a factory producing such weapons of mass destruction.
Even if the factory were dismantled, and the shells shipped out of Iraq, He still had the industrial know-how, the technicians and scientists and workers, and a United Nations on the take, casting a blind eye on Saddam's flouting of the sanctions.
In the 1920's and 1930's, Germany was secretly building up its military capacity with the aid of sympathetic countries, which shared expertise and manufacturing capacity. Once Hitler came to power he accelerated these programs. By the time he revealed to the world Germany's new armaments, aircraft, ships, and tanks, England and France and the United States were a decade behind the times.
None were willing to actually use military force as allowed by the Treaty of Versailles to compel Hitler to comply with the restrictions imposed on Germany by its surrender at the end of World War I. It has been well established that the Treaty of Versailles imposed burdens on Germany that made her people justifiably resentful of the allies' harshness. However unreasonable the reparations burden were, the problems they caused were allowed to lead to war by the gutless leaders who were unwilling to confront Hitler's growing belligerance.
Similarly, it can be argued that the sanctions on Iraq caused hardships AS THEY WERE MANIPULATED BY SADDAM, which make many Iraqis blame the U.S. Still, it was SADDAM who was the decision maker, the one in charge, the person calling the shots.
Kerry repeatedly stated that Saddam was a threat, that we would be justified in using military force to disarm him. It is only now that he is trying to get elected by the deconstructionist postmodern marxist blow-dried manicured tofu-gnawing left, that he reverses these claims.
His slogan should be “Peace in Our Time!”
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20041008-122307-7095r.htm
Allies dismiss reports of Saddam payoffs
By Betsy Pisik
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
NEW YORK — French, Russian and U.N. officials warned against making hasty judgments yesterday after the U.S. Iraq Survey Group reported that Saddam Hussein had used the U.N. oil-for-food program to buy influence at the United Nations.
The report accused key officials — including former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky and retired U.N. oil-for-food director Benon Sevan — of accepting oil vouchers, which could be exchanged secretly for cash.
[...]
The ISG, headed by former U.N. weapons inspector Charles A. Duelfer, on Wednesday issued a 1,000-page report detailing Iraq's quest for weapons of mass destruction, including the possibility that more than $10 billion had been wrung from oil sales authorized by the U.N. program.
The ISG found a pattern of gifts and bribes to officials of nations serving on the Security Council, in an apparent effort to hasten the crumbling of the already weak sanctions on the regime.
The regime was "using every tool possible, through its deception, front companies or sweetheart deals on oil and other things, to try to suborn the sanctions regime and try to acquire things it was not supposed to be buying under the sanctions regime," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday.
Mr. Duelfer told Congress in releasing the report on Wednesday, "It's pretty clear that the Iraqi strategy and tactics of dividing the Security Council were having a fair amount of success.
"I think that's clear in the report when you see that the amount of conventional military equipment that was being sold to Iraq, being transported into Iraq ... with the help of some Security Council members, there is, in my mind, little doubt that the ... constraints that the U.N. was able to put around Iraq were collapsing."
The report fueled impatience on Capitol Hill over the slow pace of the [former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul] Volcker investigation and the U.N. refusal to make documents available to Congress.
[...]
U.N. officials say privately that they hoped Mr. Volcker could work a little faster, at least to investigate the apparent complicity of their own personnel.
The first phase of the independent investigation, originally expected next month, is not expected to be ready until early 2005, according to a U.N. official.
"Obviously, the secretary-general is keen to get to the bottom of this, get it out in the open and over and done with," an official said. "But I do not think he can put any pressure on him [Mr. Volcker] to speed it up."
----------
It is interesting that the Kerry campaign look at a 1,000 page report and all they find worthy of note is the ONE fact that everyone ALREADY KNOWS---no stockpiles of WMDs.
All you need for a weapon of mass destruction is a few pounds of a nasty substance, and enough explosive to disperse it. It doesn't need to be even the size of a briefcase. There have already been found some several dozen artillery shells full of Sarin LIQUID, which becomes a GAS or cloud of tiny droplets on detonation.
Unfortunately, the pitiful state of American secondary education under DEMOCRATIC PARTY administration over the last half of the 20th century deteriorated to the extent that many high school graduates no longer are given the information they need to be able to assess certain types of data.
It used to be widely understood that manufacturing processes depend on mass-production assembly lines to be efficient or affordable. Consider the ball point pen: Because of the microscopic texture of the ball needed for optimal ink retention, and the critical tolerances between the ball and the conical tip needed to allow the ball to turn and the ink to flow, making a SINGLE ball point pen could cost thousands of dollars. But to set up a factory capable of manufacturing a million pens per 24 hours, ends up bringing the cost down to a few cents apiece.
The discovery of ten Artillery Shells filled with Sarin chemical poison, clearly shows that at some point SADDAM HUSSEIN in fact, had a factory producing such weapons of mass destruction.
Even if the factory were dismantled, and the shells shipped out of Iraq, He still had the industrial know-how, the technicians and scientists and workers, and a United Nations on the take, casting a blind eye on Saddam's flouting of the sanctions.
In the 1920's and 1930's, Germany was secretly building up its military capacity with the aid of sympathetic countries, which shared expertise and manufacturing capacity. Once Hitler came to power he accelerated these programs. By the time he revealed to the world Germany's new armaments, aircraft, ships, and tanks, England and France and the United States were a decade behind the times.
None were willing to actually use military force as allowed by the Treaty of Versailles to compel Hitler to comply with the restrictions imposed on Germany by its surrender at the end of World War I. It has been well established that the Treaty of Versailles imposed burdens on Germany that made her people justifiably resentful of the allies' harshness. However unreasonable the reparations burden were, the problems they caused were allowed to lead to war by the gutless leaders who were unwilling to confront Hitler's growing belligerance.
Similarly, it can be argued that the sanctions on Iraq caused hardships AS THEY WERE MANIPULATED BY SADDAM, which make many Iraqis blame the U.S. Still, it was SADDAM who was the decision maker, the one in charge, the person calling the shots.
Kerry repeatedly stated that Saddam was a threat, that we would be justified in using military force to disarm him. It is only now that he is trying to get elected by the deconstructionist postmodern marxist blow-dried manicured tofu-gnawing left, that he reverses these claims.
His slogan should be “Peace in Our Time!”
posted by Mad Fiddler at 1:47 PM
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