This is really worth digging into. Check out these nuggets and follow the story:
“WASHINGTON (AP) — Saddam Hussein’s regime made more than $21.3 billion in illegal revenue by subverting the U.N. oil-for-food program — more than double previous estimates, according to congressional investigators.”
and
“Saddam Hussein attempted to manipulate the typical oil allocation process in order to gain influence throughout the world,” Mark L. Greenblatt, a counsel for the Senate panel’s permanent subcommittee on investigations, said in prepared testimony obtained by The Associated Press.
“Rather than giving allocations to traditional oil purchasers, Hussein gave oil allocations to foreign officials, journalists, and even terrorist entities, who then sold their allocations to the traditional oil companies in return for a sizable commission.”
The reference to terrorist groups referred to evidence that the regime had allocated oil to such organizations as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Mujahadeen Khalq, a group seeking to overturn the government of Iran, Greenblatt said.”
I wonder what else we’ll discover.
Twenty-one Billion. 21,000,000,000. Damn.
I can’t wait to see how people try and spin this.
But since he had no connection to Al Qaeda, we should have left him in power, or at least asked the French (who were presumably some of the beneficiaries in the scandal) for permission to get rid of him. Yeah, right.
It would not shock me if 50 years from now, Bush is hailed as a visionary for getting rid of Saddam and stunting the expansion of terrorism.