Saddams Oil for Food program paid for suicide bombers

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by Momus--
Have they released the names of the US firms implicated in the so called "oil for food" scandal yet?

Your debate skills need facts and data to be effective.  Try providing some next time instead of using emotion to drive your point.

[Momus--]

Originally posted by Ripsnort
Momus, Germany was not a threat to the U.S. either. But we got involved, didn't we?  Matter of fact, because of our involvement, you exist today.  Your welcome.

1. If the Third Reich had rolled over Britiain and the USSR and linked up with Japan, US interests would have been threatened.

2. It took Japan sinking your boats and Germany declaring war on you to actually get you fully involved.

3. Prior to Lend-Lease you milked the British for all you could, particularly in respect of technology and asset transfer, so spare me the "we saved your tulips in ww2 out of pure altruism" crap.

[Momus--]

Originally posted by Ripsnort
Your debate skills need facts and data to be effective.  Try providing some next time instead of using emotion to drive your point.

No answer then Rippy?

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by Momus--
1. If the Third Reich had rolled over Britiain and the USSR and linked up with Japan, US interests would have been threatened.

2. It took Japan sinking your boats and Germany declaring war on you to actually get you fully involved.

3. Prior to Lend-Lease you milked the British for all you could, particularly in respect of technology and asset transfer, so spare me the "we saved your tulips in ww2 out of pure altruism" crap.

1. If Iraq had gone unchecked, and continued to obtain uranium from black market, World interests would have been threatened.

2.It took Middle East terrorists to dive a few planes in US soil for us to get fully involved. We're in it now, for the long run.

3.Prior to the 2nd Gulf War, France and Britain milked all they could in the oil-for-food program.  So spare me the "Where are the WMD?!?"

NEXT!

[Momus--]

Originally posted by Ripsnort
1. If Iraq had gone unchecked, and continued to obtain uranium from black market, World interests would have been threatened.

Oh you mean the allegation of a uranium acquisition program that was comprehenively debunked? Ok.

2.It took Middle East terrorists to dive a few planes in US soil for us to get fully involved. We're in it now, for the long run.

What does that have to with a non-existant Iraqi threat to the US?

3.Prior to the 2nd Gulf War, France and Britain milked all they could in the oil-for-food program.  So spare me the "Where are the WMD?!?"

NEXT!

Nice non-sequitur. Anyway, where are the WMD?

Source

"Australian, US and other foreign firms paid a secret commission to former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's government to secure contracts under the UN oil-for-food programme, Iraqi and occupation officials said yesterday."

Source

"Five congressional investigations examining the role of U.S. companies and individuals and the program more generally. The Senate Government Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has already issued a dozen subpoenas for individuals affiliated with the program...U.S. companies and individuals received between 2 and 3 percent of the total vouchers—some 111 million barrels out of a total of 4.1 billion. These companies were not named in the report..."

anyway, as I've said before, self righteous indignation from a country with such an illustrious history of corruption when it comes to oil deals is frankly laughable.

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by Momus--
Oh you mean the allegation of a uranium acquisition program that was comprehenively debunked? Ok.

Debunked?  http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=so98hamza

Thanks for playing, try again.

Originally posted by Momus-- What does that have to with a non-existant Iraqi threat to the US?

A threat to the middle east stability as he demonstrated in GW1, and countless UN resolution violations, blocks, and stonewalling makes that a U.S. interest and a threat to U.S. interests. Yes, the flow of oil is important to us, AND our allies.

[Momus--]

Originally posted by Ripsnort
Debunked?  http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=so98hamza

Thanks for playing, try again.

That article is 5 years old and was written by a guy who defected from Iraq in 1994. Is that the best you can come up with?

Source

"The head of Iraq's nuclear programme under Saddam Hussein has said Iraq destroyed its nuclear weapons programme in 1991 and never restarted it."

Source

"...no evidence of any renewed nuclear programme in Iraq in the last 12 years. "

A threat to the middle east stability as he demonstrated in GW1, and countless UN resolution violations, blocks, and stonewalling makes that a U.S. interest and a threat to U.S. interests. Yes, the flow of oil is important to us, AND our allies.

He was no threat after GW1 though, that is the argument. But thanks for the explicit admission that it was an oil war; I guess you're breaking through the denial huh?

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by Momus--

My last post on this subject, then let's return to the subject matter of the post, shall we?

Why are France and Germanyand momus pro-Saddam? Follow the money.
BY KHIDHIR HAMZA
Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, February 11, 2003

My 20 years of work in Iraq's nuclear-weapons program and military industry were partly a training course in methods of deception and camouflage to keep the program secret. Given what I know about Saddam Hussein's commitment to developing and using weapons of mass destruction, the following two points are abundantly clear to me: First, the U.N. weapons inspectors will not find anything Saddam does not want them to find. Second, France, Germany, and to a degree, Russia, are opposed to U.S. military action in Iraq mainly because they maintain lucrative trade deals with Baghdad, many of which are arms-related.

Since the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 we have witnessed a tiny team of inspectors with a supposedly stronger mandate begging Iraq to disclose its weapons stockpiles and commence disarmament. The question that nags me is: How can a team of 200 inspectors "disarm" Iraq when 6,000 inspectors could not do so in the previous seven years of inspection?

Put simply, surprise inspections no longer work. With the Iraqis' current level of mobility and intelligence the whole point of inspecting sites is moot. This was made perfectly clear by Colin Powell in his presentation before the U.N. last week. But the inspectors, mindless of these changes, are still visiting old sites and interviewing marginal scientists. I can assure you, the core of Iraq's nuclear-weapons program has not even been touched. Yesterday's news that Iraq will "accept" U-2 surveillance flights is another sign that Saddam has confidence in his ability to hide what he's got.

Meanwhile, the time U.N. inspectors could have used gathering intelligence by interviewing scientists outside Iraq is running out. The problem is that there is nothing Saddam can declare that will provide any level of assurance of disarmament. If he delivers the 8,500 liters of anthrax that he now admits to having, he will still not be in compliance because the growth media he imported to grow it can produce 25,000 liters. Iraq must account for the growth media and its products; it is doing neither.

Iraq's attempt to import aluminum tubes of higher tensile strength than is needed in conventional weapons has been brushed aside by the IAEA's Mohammed El-Baradei. He claims there is no proof that these tubes were intended for modification and use in centrifuges to make enriched uranium. Yet he fails to report that Iraq has the machining equipment to thin these tubes down to the required thickness (less than one millimeter) for an efficient centrifuge rotor. What's more, they don't find it suspect that Iraq did not deliver all the computer controlled machining equipment that it imported from the British-based, Iraqi-owned Matrix-Churchill that manufacture these units.

Mr. Blix also discounted the discovery of a number of "empty" chemical-weapons warheads. What he failed to mention is that empty is the only way to store these weapon parts. The warheads in question were not designed to store chemicals for long periods. They have a much higher possibility of leakage and corrosion than conventional warheads. Separate storage for the poisons is a standard practice in Iraq, since the Special Security Organization that guards Saddam also controls the storage and inventory of these chemicals.

What has become obvious is that the U.N. inspection process was designed to delay any possible U.S. military action to disarm Iraq. Germany, France, and Russia, states we called "friendly" when I was in Baghdad, are also engaged in a strategy of delay and obstruction.

In the two decades before the Gulf War, I played a role in Iraq's efforts to acquire major technologies from friendly states. In 1974, I headed an Iraqi delegation to France to purchase a nuclear reactor. It was a 40-megawatt research reactor that our sources in the IAEA told us should cost no more than $50 million. But the French deal ended up costing Baghdad more than $200 million. The French-controlled Habbania Resort project cost Baghdad a whopping $750 million, and with the same huge profit margin. With these kinds of deals coming their way, is it any surprise that the French are so desperate to save Saddam's regime?

Germany was the hub of Iraq's military purchases in the 1980s. Our commercial attaché, Ali Abdul Mutalib, was allocated billions of dollars to spend each year on German military industry imports. These imports included many proscribed technologies with the German government looking the other way. In 1989, German engineer Karl Schaab sold us classified technology to build and operate the centrifuges we needed for our uranium-enrichment program. German authorities have since found Mr. Schaab guilty of selling nuclear secrets, but because the technology was considered "dual use" he was fined only $32,000 and given five years probation.

Meanwhile, other German firms have provided Iraq with the technology it needs to make missile parts. Mr. Blix's recent finding that Iraq is trying to enlarge the diameter of its missiles to a size capable of delivering nuclear weapons would not be feasible without this technology transfer.

Russia has long been a major supplier of conventional armaments to Iraq--yet again at exorbitant prices. Even the Kalashnikov rifles used by the Iraqi forces are sold to Iraq at several times the price of comparable guns sold by other suppliers.

Saddam's policy of squandering Iraq's resources by paying outrageous prices to friendly states seems to be paying off. The irresponsibility and lack of morality these states are displaying in trying to keep the world's worst butcher in power is perhaps indicative of a new world order. It is a world of winks and nods to emerging rogue states--for a price. It remains for the U.S. and its allies to institute an opposing order in which no price is high enough for dictators like Saddam to thrive.

Mr. Hamza, a former director of Iraq's nuclear-weapons program, is the co-author of "Saddam's Bombmaker: The Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi Nuclear and Biological Weapons Agenda" (Scribner, 2000).

[Momus--]

Originally posted by Ripsnort
My last post on this subject, then let's return to the subject matter of the post, shall we?

1. US firms are implicated in the scandal but you continually chose to disregard this.

2. You quote yet another article from Khidhir Hamza, who I repeat, defected from Iraq in 1994. How could he be an expert on the Iraqi nuclear program in the 10 years since he left the country?

3. Wanting the truth about the motivation to attack a largely defenseless nation makes me a Saddam lover? Nice straw man and ad-hominem combination. And you have the nerve to criticise my debating skills? Priceless.

[Ripsnort]

Momus, how am I suppose to comment on an allegation like this:

All oil-for-food contracts from 1998 included 10 percent in 'after-sales services', including some with US companies," an official from the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) said on condition of anonymity.



Oh, and those 200 tons of "missing explosives" last month? Some of them were made specifically for denoting nuclear warheads. Have any comments as to why Saddam would have such a thing in his posession?

[Momus--]

Ok Rip, lets take a brief but critical look at Oil for Food

1) The US had joint oversight and a veto on every single oil for food contract via the UN "661" Commitee yet never managed to uncover any wrongdoing in the decade or so it was in operation.

2) The allegations of a scandal are based on statements made by the largely discredited ex-US puppet Ahmad Chalabi, who to this day has refused to share the documents he claims to have that support his contentions.

3) The argument (which I've seen you make ad nauseum) that France, Russia et al opposed the war through fear of losing alleged Oil for Food kickbacks is laughable. Oil for food related revenues for both countries are measured in the 10's of millions. Contrast this with their respective exports to the USA, which are measured in the 10's of billions. You are basically arguing that both nations were willing to risk billions in business with the US in order to protect millions in business with Iraq. Do you realise how stupid pushing this line makes you?

4) The oil for food program largely accomplished what it set out to do. your own GAO is on record as claiming that 93% of revenues were successfully used to feed Iraqis.

[AKIron]

Truly amazes me how many will come to the defense of those blowing up school buses. I used to think that most people would abhor such action, guess I was just naive.

[Momus--]

Originally posted by AKIron
Truly amazes me how many will come to the defense of those blowing up school buses. I used to think that most people would abhor such action, guess I was just naive.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/straw-man.html

[AKIron]

I may be ignoring some imagined nuance in all this but the bottom line is that Saddam did directly support bombing school buses and he did steal money from the oil for food program. Now that's a lit match, you probably oughta run your straw man bellybutton outta here.

[Momus--]

Originally posted by AKIron
I may be ignoring some imagined nuance in all this but the bottom line is that Saddam did directly support bombing school buses and he did steal money from the oil for food program. Now that's a lit match, you probably oughta run your straw man bellybutton outta here.

Yes he supported Palestinian militant groups. Yes he probably siphoned cash from the Oil for Food. However, you're reaching if you're proposing a direct link. Did he support such groups prior to Oil for Food? Yes. Could he have continued to do so if Oil for Food had been suspended? Undoubtedly. Is there a link between the UN sponsored program and suicide bombings? Only if you believe 2+2=5, which is exactly what all the FUD over Oil for Food is intended to get you to do.