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The List I finally found a listing of the Oil for Food bribes, I am still checking out who these guys are, but it is enough to make me ill.
We should never allow the UN to have authority over our troops, we should withdrawal funding if they do not show the internal audits and we should take the case straight to the people of France and Germany and even Russia through whatever media channels we have open.
Here is how the UN funded terrorism. Here is the trusted hope of the do-gooders turned to death and blood.
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Without a doubt, the Oil for Food situation was exploited and corrupted. And the Secretary General of the UN was involved through his son.
But that doesn't mean we should throw up our hands and bring down the UN. What we should be doing is marshalling the nations to turn the crooks out.
We, the world, need to clean the house, not tear it down.
But the people of France, Germany and Russia do need to be made aware of what their governments were doing. We were not blameless in Saddam's rise to power, but we've borne the brunt of the criticism while other countries were much more involved with keeping the man in power over the last decade or more.
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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And you should withdraw from the UN completely.
Oh, hey! Maybe you can write the people of those three countries E-mails including this information and then at the end tell them who to vote for! That'd be the awesome.
Although, I'm a bit confused as to why only those 3 countries get your philanthropy.
Posts: 3243 | Registered: Apr 2002
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The Story Saddam paid cash to the families of people who blew themselves up to kill Jews, Saddam's money went to terrorist, Oil for food money went to Saddam, clear enough?
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The SaudiArabian government also sent payment to families of suicide bombers. So SaudiArabia sponsors terrorism? Israelis made a habit of bulldozing the homes of suicide bombers. I doubt that the families were better off.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Actually, I think Saddam sent a handful of checks to the suicide bombers' families to the tune of about $25,000 apiece. But, if memory serves, the number of checks sent was way, way less than the amount of air time this got.
I'm pretty sure that Saddam made much more from the oil for food scam than any terrorist group did. Just like the WMDs, his "support" for the terrorists was many times more a matter of style over substance.
Posts: 472 | Registered: Aug 2004
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I'm still confused on why this is such a big deal. The oil for food program was corrupt. It's institutionally corrupt. *chuckles*
There is even a seperate set of accounting procedures-- outside of GAAP-- in order to account the mid-east oil industry. Because bribery is institutionally ingrained in the practices.
The sanctions were starving the people, not the oil for food program. The oil for food program just wasn't helping the problem as much as some people thought. If we are going to lay blame. Blame Saddam and blame the sanctions. The oil for food program was just a placebo, or in this case, a red herring.
Posts: 5600 | Registered: Jul 2001
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If you do not understand by now the significance of this you are either too stupid for me to try to influence or deliberately obtuse.
The accusation out there is that the war by the United States in Iraq overruled the world community AKA the UN, now you sit there and chuckle surprised that anybody is surprised the UN is corrupt and ineffectual while half the population of the US is out there calling Bush a warmonger for overriding the will of this august body which you seem to think is worthless by common opinion...
So are you pro Bush/War in Iraq/Iraq Terror Connection? or are you thinking this halfway through and running out of the gray matter to connect the dots?
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I don't tolerate it when people say the war was a bad idea fouoght for the wrong reasons because Haliburton made a lot of money, and I'm not prepared to let people say the war was a good idea because people who opposed it were getting rich off the status quo.
The arguments for the war are the arguments for the war. The arguments against the war are the arguments against the war. The people who made the arguments is not the issue.
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I think that the significant fact is that while the war is killing the snakes, the sanctions killed an estimated 500,000 of the weak, young and elderly in Iraq. So the US for all our vicious violence in creating a regime change has proved itself to be more merciful to the weak then the 'enlightened' UN.
When the World decided to 'relieve the suffering' with the Oil for Food Program all they did was line Saddam's pockets and allow him to buy influence.
Sanctions attack the weak, at least the Marines have the courage to attack the strong and break them! Do-godders make me crazy, do you know that we sent milk to Somalia, a 90% lactose intolerant population! They got sick and many became convinced we were trying to kill them with poison, Do-gooders... fagh! Posts: 117 | Registered: Nov 2004
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I happen to think invading Iraq made us "do-gooders." I know many here disagree, but undeniably it was a case of us deciding something needed to be done for someone else's good.
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I want to know what ever became of the notion of "spoils of war."
Where are our 22 million new tax-paying citizens?
Where is our 51st state?
Where is our oil?
Where are our Tigris/Euphrates water rights?
If our motivation in first sponsoring Sadaam and then going to war against him was money, then where are the spoils of war?
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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You are just a Rush fan too! OR G Gordan Liddy, I miss hearing Femanazi, and Lesbian Mafia, I bet you even say shedual instead of schedual! I was calling them do-gooders when you thought hair on your wiener was pretty cool. Posts: 117 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Yes I often long for the days of Pillage, plunder and .... well you know, wouldn't want to trample any toes. Course if we made it a state we would have 18 million new welfare recipients.
Posts: 117 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Because the wherewithal has existed for over a hundred years for everyone on the planet to have enough food and medicine, our movement along the social evolution line can be measured in the equity of these numbers.
Even enough for people who sit on their fat bums all day and spend Friday night getting drunk and making babies?
I always thought the great equalizer that put food on tables was upright living and hard work intelligently applied.
Do you really want to assign the job of equalizing the food and medicine distribution to some donut hole in Washington or at the U.N.?
I seem to remember somebody proposing a plan whereby everybody was guaranteed a successful life, free of pain and suffering. I wonder whatever happened to good ole what's-his-name.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote: The accusation out there is that the war by the United States in Iraq overruled the world community AKA the UN, now you sit there and chuckle surprised that anybody is surprised the UN is corrupt and ineffectual while half the population of the US is out there calling Bush a warmonger for overriding the will of this august body which you seem to think is worthless by common opinion...
So are you pro Bush/War in Iraq/Iraq Terror Connection? or are you thinking this halfway through and running out of the gray matter to connect the dots
BC, it's not as black and white as you are painting it. There are other options.
I know the UN is ineffective, infuriating, blind, corrupt and frequently anti-American. Anyone who was shocked at the corruption of the UN/Iraq oil for food program knows nothing about foreign policy.
Yet I was against the Iraq war for the simple reason that I never thought it was in the best interest of the United States--not because Bush went against the UN.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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The world seems to think we got all the great things we have by taking them from everyone else, so instead of trying to learn 'the secret to our success' they scream about what we have taken.
The one exception is Japan, and from them the baby tigers of Southeast Asia. The funny thing is, the people at the top know, educated in the US and Europe. They fear the power that might sweep the Middle East, the power that would see the end of totalitarianism and the beginning of democracy. It is little wonder that Saudi Arabia is also funding instability.
It is clear that when religion and affluence collide affluence and the choices it brings becomes the greater force. Look at birth rates in Italy, lots of Catholics using birth control.
We are causing a shift in power and we are attacking their fundamental power structures, tribalism, misogyny, religious intolerance, institutionalized bigotry, is it any wonder we have to shove it down their throats? Look at the way the south fought to protect slavery institutions in the US.
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God I hope they do not fight as hard as the South! I sure as hell hope they do not have a Robert E Lee up their sleave. We are just the enemy a leader might use to unite the countries into one religious dictatorship. It was the dream of Saddam to be that leader, Iran and Iraq fought for a decade to figure out who would sieze the power and it is clear Iran thinks they are it now. Makes me glad Pakistan still has India to fear.
Posts: 117 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote: Yet I was against the Iraq war for the simple reason that I never thought it was in the best interest of the United States--not because Bush went against the UN.
The thing is, there were a lot of people who believed that we should have had UN aproval and support in Iraq. This scandal proves without much doubt that we didn't get that support because the countries in question are nearly if not exactly as corrupt as Saddam was. In fact, if I remember correctly, one of the very first reasons I heard for us not going into Iraq was the lack of UN support. That argument is gone now. Even if we could have proven without doubt that there were WMD's in Iraq, we still wouldn't have gotten support from the UN, because they were getting more money from the OFF program than before the sanctions were in place.
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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