Wow, the U.N. Oil For Food scandal keeps growing (now up to 21.3 billion in illegal revenue to Iraq - double previous extimates) and still not one mention of Cheney or Halliburton. How could this be?
Previous estimates - one from the General Accountability Office and the other by the top U.S. arms inspector Charles Duelfer - concluded that Saddam's government brought in $10 billion illicitly from 1990 to 2003, when sanctions were in place.
But congressional investigators found that vastly more oil, totaling $13.7 billion, was smuggled out of Iraq than previously thought. Investigators also raised the GAO's estimate of $4.4 billion in oil-for-food kickbacks by $200 million, and said the regime made $2.1 billion more through a scheme where foreign companies imported flawed goods at inflated prices.
According to the documents, the Iraqi government signed deals to import rotting food and other damaged goods with the full understanding of the exporting companies, who accepted payments for top-quality products while kicking back much of the price difference to the Iraqi regime.
France, Russia, China
The new documents offer examples of how Saddam's regime, sometimes the former Iraqi president himself, awarded lucrative oil allocations to garner political favors.
In one document, Russian ultra-nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who campaigned for the lifting of sanctions on Iraq, invites an oil company to negotiate a price for an oil allocation the Iraqi government awarded him.
Zhirinovsky and other foreign officials and political figures implicated in the scandal so far - mostly from Russia, France and China - deny any wrongdoing.
In Zhirinovsky's case, the Russian allegedly used his political party's letterhead to invite an international oil company to Moscow to negotiate a deal to buy oil allocated to him.
The Iraqi government allocated 80 million barrels of oil to Zhirinovsky and his party, according to the panel, at a time when the Russian politician was backing Baghdad publicly.
My oh my. I wonder how Dan Rather missed this one.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/11/15/134858.shtmland
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,138617,00.html
