The Smart Marks' Countdown: Iraq

[Guest SP-1]

I'd rather be resented and let them figure out later on that they'll be free and able to take care of themselves politically and to the rest of the world than see them be ruled over by a madman that uses them as pawns.

[Guest NoCalMike]

We aren't going to war with Iraq to liberate the people, that whole notion is quite frankly, a joke.

[Guest SP-1]

We aren't going to war with Iraq to liberate the people, that whole notion is quite frankly, a joke.

Respond how you like but please don't spew nonsense that it's all about oil. But whatever you think it's about I'd like to know.

[Guest NoCalMike]

Well why is the "oil" argument anymore ludicrous then "liberate the iraqis" ? I don't feel oil is the ONLY reason we are going, but I do think it is a big part, a bigger part than most think, but of course like the way things usually work, we won't get all the facts until everything is all said and done(whether I am right or not).

[Guest SP-1]

Tony Blair said in an interview that he would like to see the oil placed in a trust fund that nobody could get to save for, I would think, the Iraqi government to control it how they like. Britain is an exporter of oil and thus has little need to go to war with someone else over it.

 

Iraq doesn't supply the world or the US with as much oil as we would think either. If I recall corerctly I believe they supply us with 10% and the world with 3% overall. Certainly nothing to go to war over. The rising oil prices now have more to do with price gouging and the strike in Venezuela (sp?). Oil isn't much of a factor at all I don't think.

[Guest Tim]

Well why is the "oil" argument anymore ludicrous then "liberate the iraqis" ? I don't feel oil is the ONLY reason we are going, but I do think it is a big part, a bigger part than most think, but of course like the way things usually work, we won't get all the facts until everything is all said and done(whether I am right or not).

Motivations aren't important. Actions are.

[Guest Tyler McClelland]

Resent the fuck out of us = terrorism.

 

They'd feel oppressed by our presence there and it would ignite even more religious hatred.

 

I fail to see how this is worth that.

[Guest SP-1]

The Iraqi people want Saddam gone. He's tyrannical, hateful, and flat out evil. I've seen an Iraqi refugee breakdown on television and damn near BEG Blair to promise him that they would succeed in removing Saddam. There may be a few people that will resent us but they're probably already well on that road for extremist reasons. I think for the most part they'll realize we did them a favor.

[Guest The Hamburglar]

A hypothetical question. What does America do if the invasion of Iraq sparks off the whole Kurdistan thing which degenerates into a massively ugly civil war across many countries? The Kurds hate Turkey even more than Iraq, and pretty much have the right to a homeland of their own.

[Guest Tyler McClelland]

Of course we would be doing them a favor, but regardless, I still think even the moderate citizens would absolutely resent and hate the United States. This, most likely, will allow for more religious anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-Christian and Jew sentiment in the region and the world.

 

There is really NO good solution to this problem. Nobody denies the fact that Saddam is a horrible human being, and nobody denies the fact that democracy is the best system available in the world. However, I simply don't think they'll take to it if we occupy them, and I think the system will be overthrown if we don't.

 

What do you do there?

[Guest Brian]

Tony Blair also said the UN should be in charge of that trust, and the problem with that is were going to go with or without the UN and that pretty much is going to bite them in the balls in terms of power over us.

 

And there must be something more to it if France and Russia are refusing to vote because they want to keep their oil interests in mind too. They must be standing to lose alot.

 

And there's been even more of a press for action since the Venezualan strike.

[Guest Vern Gagne]

Why is France so insistent on vetoing this new resolution. CNN.com had a report that said the US is only 2 votes from getting the needed 9 votes for approval. Know it sounds like it might not be but on the table, because France will stop the resolution in it's tracks.

[Guest DrTom]

Resent the fuck out of us = terrorism.

 

They'd feel oppressed by our presence there and it would ignite even more religious hatred.

Even Usama bin Laden has said that Moslems will follow the stronger horse if given a choice. Let's at least give the people a chance here. Democracy is the opposite of a brutal dictatorship in every way, so they may find themselves greatly enjoying the new way of life it affords. The religious leaders will be the problem, which is why I think you have to kill them in a situation like this. Their religion is so tied into the government and the whole sociopolitical structure that the religious leaders need to go, just like the political leaders do.

[Guest DrTom]

... and the problem with that is were going to go with or without the UN and that pretty much is going to bite them in the balls in terms of power over us.

Their balls have been chopped off for a while in terms of having power over us. We've been the dominant player in the UN for some time, to the point where anyone else's involvement seems token. This is a one-superpower world and we're it, so the UN really holds no sway over us. I hope the war resolution is votoed and we go in anyway, just to show the UN as the irrelevant farce that it has been for years.

[Guest NoCalMike]

And there must be something more to it if France and Russia are refusing to vote because they want to keep their oil interests in mind too. They must be standing to lose alot.

Aren't those same "oil interests" the reason we keep no-selling Saudia Arabia as a terrorist nation? Every country brings their political deck of cards to the U.N. poker table.

[Guest Spicy McHaggis]

And there must be something more to it if France and Russia are refusing to vote because they want to keep their oil interests in mind too. They must be standing to lose alot.

In fact the UN is...

 

Opinion Journal (WSJ) ^ | March 10, 2003 | Claudia Rosett

 

Kofi Annandersen Enron-style accounting at the U.N. Oil-for-Food

Program.

 

BY CLAUDIA ROSETT

 

Who is Saddam Hussein's biggest business partner?

 

The United Nations. The same U.N. whose secretary-general, Kofi Annan, stands as one of the chief ditherers over removing Saddam. Here are the ingredients of a

conflict of interest.

 

Under the U.N.’s Office of the Iraq Program, which supervises the six-year-old Oil-for-Food Program, the U.N. has had a hand in the sale of more than $55 billion worth of Iraqi oil. Iraq ships oil out to U.N.-approved buyers under the terms of the sanctions agreement. The U.N. vets the inflow of “humanitarian” imports into Iraq.

 

The process is simple. Iraq contracts to import goods, and the U.N.  gives the outside vendors cash collected from the oil sales. The U.N. has approved about $34 billion in such deals so far. The money it hasn’t yet doled out—at least $21 billion—sits in U.N.-administered bank accounts. U.N. officials refuse to divulge much information about these accounts—not even the countries in which they’re held.

 

Measured in dollars, this is by far the U.N.’s largest program. The sums involved are large enough—and their handling has been perverse enough—for this program to deserve more attention than it has so far received.

 

Conceived in 1995 as a way to deliver humanitarian aid despite sanctions against Iraq, Oil-for-Food has matured into an unholy union between Saddam Hussein, with his command economy, and the U.N., with its big, buck-passing bureaucracy.

 

By now, the two are effectively partners in what might just as well be called the Oil-for-U.N.-Jobs program. Even with its weapons inspectors barred from the country, the U.N. by now has 10 agencies employing 900 international staffers and 3,000 Iraqi nationals inside Iraq to administer the program, plus another 120 or so in New York. Combining Iraq’s oil exports and aid imports, they oversee a flow of funds averaging about $15 billion a year, more than five times the U.N.’s core annual budget. Even assuming the utmost integrity by the U.N. staff, it is worth asking whether Mr. Annan and his entourage might by now have a stake in the status quo. In which case, listening to Mr. Annan’s views on Iraq makes about as much sense as once upon a time heeding Arthur Andersen’s pronouncements on Enron.

 

Making this picture all the more Enron-like is the extent to which Mr.  Annan and his crew have winked at Iraq’s gross violations of U.N. agreements, and not only on weapons inspections. The U.N. sanctions on Iraqi oil sales were meant to stop Saddam from diverting oil revenues to his own uses. Instead, they provide a facde of control that is dangerously misleading. Saddam has been getting around the sanctions via surcharge-kickback deals and flat-out smuggling, to the tune of $3 billion a year, according to the dossier released yesterday by Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Back in May, The Wall Street Journal’s Alix Freedman and Steve Stecklow gave a thoroughly documented account of how Iraq “has imposed illegal surcharges on every barrel of oil it has sold, using a maze of intermediaries to cover its tracks.”

 

Last week, the Washington-based Coalition for International Justice released an exhaustively researched 70-page report, detailing Saddam’s dodges and how this year alone, despite “smarter” U.N. sanctions, he will rake in billions for his “personal treasury.” When President Bush on Sept. 12 addressed the U.N., he charged that Saddam has “subverted” Oil-for-Food, “working around the sanctions to buy missile technology and military materials.”

 

So the remaining virtue of the U.N.’s Iraq program would have to be the humanitarian relief. Not quite. Under the Oil-for-Food deal, it is not the U.N. but Saddam who decides what is needed, who in Iraq gets what, and which countries he should contract with. He must submit his proposals to the U.N. Security Council, which can turn them down. But the bulk of his requests are approved. The

U.N. then disburses the cash from the “Iraq accounts” and monitors the delivery, trying to ensure it follows Saddam’s plan.

 

The result is that U.N.-approved aid goes to reinforce Saddam’s control over what is already a Soviet-league state-run economy. Part of what helped Saddam rise to power in the first place was Iraq’s embrace in the 1960s of Soviet-style central planning, which by rationing goods and controlling people’s livelihoods serves as a powerful tool for political control. Today, with private business largely smothered, except in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, the only significant source of foreign exchange is oil.

 

All oil in Iraq belongs to the state. Saddam decides who will benefit from its sale, and who will be deprived. “The government of Iraq has the sole responsibility for allocating the money,” says an official of the U.N.’s Oil-for-Food Program. “We cannot tell them, we only advise them.” An author of the Coalition for International Justice report, Susan Blaustein, notes that Saddam has stolen Iraq’s oil from his fellow countrymen. She points out that in accommodating this arrangement, “the U.N. is colluding in that theft.”

 

The U.N. designates that Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq is to receive a share of the Oil-for-Food revenues, with some of that administered on the ground directly by the U.N. It is Saddam, owever, who controls the buying of food and medicine. Though the U.N. has allocated $6.8 billion for northern Iraq since the start of the program, only $4.6 billion has been contracted for. Even less has been delivered. Under the category of medical supplies, for example, only 28% of the total allocated funds have been translated into goods received. While billions sit in U.N.-run accounts, sources in the north report shortages of such staples as surgical gloves.

 

Delving into these matters gets tough, because the U.N. shuns transparency. Given that more than $20 billion from the Iraq program is now sitting in U.N. escrow accounts awaiting some combination of Saddam's planning and U.N. processing, one wonders which banks, and which of those countries now taking part in the Iraq debate, might be getting thick slices of Saddam's business. A few years ago, all Oil-for-Food funds were kept at a French bank, Banque Nationale de Paris. More recently, the funds have been diversified among five or six banks, according to U.N. treasurer Suzanne Bishopric. But the U.N. does not permit her to disclose the names or locations of the banks, or details such as interest accrued. "We don't like to make public where our money is," says Ms. Bishopric. Who audits the program? It's a strictly insider job: The U.N. secretariat, supplemented by a rotating set of member nations, with the task currently delegated to the government of the Philippines.

 

Neither does the U.N. disclose which countries get what amount of Saddam's trade. Oil industry experts say France and Russia--both of which have resisted removing Saddam--have led the pack, with billions in deals. Russia being a big oil producer itself, these purchases are not for home consumption, but for resale at a profit. An official in the U.N. controller's office says he is forbidden to disclose figures on Iraqi trade with individual countries. "If I did, I would get an earful from the countries' missions."

 

In another craven move, the U.N.'s Iraq program even allowed Saddam to dictate in October 2000 that he no longer wanted the Oil-for-Food accounts to be held in the currency of the enemy, meaning U.S. dollars. Obediently, the U.N. switched all Iraq funds from that stage forward to euros, in effect helping Saddam impose his own version of sanctions on the U.S.

 

What helped breed this monstrosity of a program was a system that at its inception sounded worthy enough. To fund most of its operations, the U.N. has to assess its members, rattling the cup for funds. Not so with Iraq. Oil-for-Food aims to make Saddam's government pay for all the evaluating and inspecting and directing meant to ensure that Saddam's oil gains go for humanitarian uses. So the U.N. plan allocates various percentages of the revenues for different parts of the program.

 

Today, that means 59% for Baghdad-controlled central and southern Iraq, 13% to the autonomous Kurdish north, 25% for Gulf War reparations and 0.8% for weapons inspections (what weapons inspections?). And--oh yes--2.2% for U.N. administration of the program, $1.2 billion so far. That's enough that the U.N. secretariat, awash in Iraqi cash, has turned over a surplus $211 million for aid to Iraq. That still leaves a cumulative $1 billion bankrolling U.N. administration of a program that by now, in effect, has the U.N. working, on commission, for Saddam. As a man of integrity, Mr. Annan might want to footnote that in the debate over what to do about Iraq.

 

Ms. Rosett is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. Her column appears Wednesdays here and in The Wall Street Journal Europe.

[Guest JMA]

I think the US will be going after Saudi Arabia next. They are far more dangerous than Iraq, IMO.

[Guest Tyler McClelland]

What does an op-ed piece prove?

[Guest DrTom]

Quite a bit, if you look at the facts behind it. Op-ed doesn't mean "blind screed."

[Guest Vern Gagne]

I seriously wish the war would happen already. It's going to happen so I'd rather get it over with.

[Guest EricMM]

That's how I've felt since January. It seems that all this UN work just dragged this situation out longer, since no amount of proof will sway the French or Germans, as they've bluntly said.

[Guest Vern Gagne]

http://foxnews.com/story/0,2933,81211,00.html

 

Hard to tell if this directed more at Iraq or the UN. Wonder if it's possible for the War to start on Monday. I've read that some of the attack helicopters ued by the 101st hadn't arrived yet.

[Guest Vyce]

We got our ass handed to us by the U.N. We've been utterly embarassed.

 

STILL, though, I think things may have been worse off if we hadn't spent all of these months trying to get a new resolution. If we had just attacked without at least attempting to go through the circle-jerk, things may be even more tense with transatlantic relations.

[The Robfather 0]

ok, WTF?!?

 

Blix says the Azores summit "seems divided."

 

He is clearly an idiot.

 

 

Even Homer's got more brains than this guy.

 

[Guest Vyce]

ok, WTF?!?

 

Blix says the Azores summit "seems divided."

 

He is clearly an idiot.

 

 

Even Homer's got more brains than this guy.

 

It actually may be a smart bit of strategy, if he is attempting to discredit the summit today.

 

Which is what I believe he IS trying to do.

[Guest The Hamburglar]

We got our ass handed to us by the U.N. We've been utterly embarassed.

How so? Once the US commences its attack, it will have proved that the UN, and particularly France, is essentially powerless. Chirac is digging his own hole politically here. The eastern European EU states are going to realise that France and Germany have no real political sway, and will begin to impose themselves more on the EU. There will be a power shift in European politics away from "old Europe", as Rumsfeld so tactfully puts it. The US isn't embarassed just yet, but it potentially could be if things go wrong.

[Guest Vyce]

We got our ass handed to us by the U.N.  We've been utterly embarassed.

How so? Once the US commences its attack, it will have proved that the UN, and particularly France, is essentially powerless. Chirac is digging his own hole politically here. The eastern European EU states are going to realise that France and Germany have no real political sway, and will begin to impose themselves more on the EU. There will be a power shift in European politics away from "old Europe", as Rumsfeld so tactfully puts it. The US isn't embarassed just yet, but it potentially could be if things go wrong.

Embarassed because in the eyes of most of the world, the fact that we cannot get a 2nd resolution passed is a MAJOR failure. Despite the fact that we have unbelievable opposition against us in the form of France.

 

Embarassed particularly BECAUSE it's France doing this. Think about it - we're the greatest superpower on the planet, but our plans for war have been thwarted, in a figurative sense, by "humble" little France there. We can still go to war, and win it, without the U.N., but what does that do for us? Just paints us in the world's eyes to be the bad guy. We're already the bad guys to most of them, but by screwing things up for us and eliminating hope of U.N. support, France / Germany / Russia / China have embarassed us badly.

 

BTW, I hope you're right - nothing would please me more than for Germany & France to be discredited and for "New Europe" to gain power.

 

****

 

As to the gentleman who questioned why France is opposing us.....do you have about 18 hours to listen to the answer?

[Guest spiny norman]

Let's make a little hypothetical situation:

 

In the United States there are claims from Muslims that they are being discriminated against, mistreated on the streets etc. The Muslim countries of the world make complaints and the UN tells Bush he has to look into it. So Bush says "Okay, we'll make sure there's no more racist attacks."

 

He tells the UN it's been looked into and won't happen again. Then, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan etc. all say that Bush has done nothing, and they're going to attack the United States and overthrow Bush as leader for the good of the American people.

 

Not every American person likes Bush. But almost all of them would be willing to fight to keep him in power, because better him than a foreign power who they know nothing of. Better the devil they know and the like.

 

So why do we expect the Iraqi people to be supportive of us going in to overthrow the leader? Nobody wants to be ruled by a foreign power, even if their current leader is awful.

[Guest JMA]

Embarassed particularly BECAUSE it's France doing this. Think about it - we're the greatest superpower on the planet, but our plans for war have been thwarted, in a figurative sense, by "humble" little France there. We can still go to war, and win it, without the U.N., but what does that do for us? Just paints us in the world's eyes to be the bad guy. We're already the bad guys to most of them, but by screwing things up for us and eliminating hope of U.N. support, France / Germany / Russia / China have embarassed us badly.

Now that you mention it, it is kinda funny.

[Guest SP-1]

Let's make a little hypothetical situation:

 

In the United States there are claims from Muslims that they are being discriminated against, mistreated on the streets etc. The Muslim countries of the world make complaints and the UN tells Bush he has to look into it. So Bush says "Okay, we'll make sure there's no more racist attacks."

 

He tells the UN it's been looked into and won't happen again. Then, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan etc. all say that Bush has done nothing, and they're going to attack the United States and overthrow Bush as leader for the good of the American people.

 

Not every American person likes Bush. But almost all of them would be willing to fight to keep him in power, because better him than a foreign power who they know nothing of. Better the devil they know and the like.

 

So why do we expect the Iraqi people to be supportive of us going in to overthrow the leader? Nobody wants to be ruled by a foreign power, even if their current leader is awful.

That's not a very realistic situation or comparison. There's a difference between American people unhappy with a leader we can impeach or simply vote out in a couple years, and a dictator who oppresses his people, a people which account for a vast part of the refugee population of the world.