Saddam and the French Connection (good information for both sides)

[igloo]

Saddam and the French Connection

FRASER NELSON, FRASER NELSON AND JAMES KIRKUP

"Just as I have had to accept that the evidence now is that there were not stockpiles of actual weapons ready to be deployed, I hope others have the honesty to accept that the report also shows that sanctions weren’t working" - Tony Blair

SADDAM HUSSEIN believed he could avoid the Iraq war with a bribery strategy targeting Jacques Chirac, the President of France, according to devastating documents released last night.

Memos from Iraqi intelligence officials, recovered by American and British inspectors, show the dictator was told as early as May 2002 that France - having been granted oil contracts - would veto any American plans for war.

But the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which returned its full report last night, said Saddam was telling the truth when he denied on the eve of war that he had any weapons of mass destruction (WMD). He had not built any since 1992.

The ISG, who confirmed last autumn that they had found no WMD, last night presented detailed findings from interviews with Iraqi officials and documents laying out his plans to bribe foreign businessmen and politicians.

Although they found no evidence that Saddam had made any WMD since 1992, they found documents which showed the "guiding theme" of his regime was to be able to start making them again with as short a lead time as possible."

Saddam was convinced that the UN sanctions - which stopped him acquiring weapons - were on the brink of collapse and he bankrolled several foreign activists who were campaigning for their abolition. He personally approved every one.

To keep America at bay, he focusing on Russia, France and China - three of the five UN Security Council members with the power to veto war. Politicians, journalists and diplomats were all given lavish gifts and oil-for-food vouchers.

Tariq Aziz, the former Iraqi deputy prime minister, told the ISG that the "primary motive for French co-operation" was to secure lucrative oil deals when UN sanctions were lifted. Total, the French oil giant, had been promised exploration rights.

Iraqi intelligence officials then "targeted a number of French individuals that Iraq thought had a close relationship to French President Chirac," it said, including two of his "counsellors" and spokesman for his re-election campaign.

They even assessed the chances for "supporting one of the candidates in an upcoming French presidential election." Chirac is not mentioned by name.

A memo sent to Saddam dated in May last year from his intelligence corps said they met with a "French parliamentarian" who "assured Iraq that France would use its veto in the UN Security Council against any American decision to attack Iraq."

Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, last night said again that he was wrong to suggest Saddam had WMD - but asked the British public to accept that Iraq would probably have acquired such weapons if he had not acted.

However, the ISG uncovered millions of pages of documents and, after interviewing scores of captured Iraqis - including Mr Aziz - the report lays out what it says is were plans to end the United Nations sanctions then start to acquire weapons.

Saddam, it says, even fooled his own military chiefs into believing that he had WMD. This was designed to deter uprising from rebel Iraqis, on whom he deployed mustard gas in 1988, and aggressors in the Middle East.

Speaking during his trip to Ethiopia last night, the Prime Minister referred to his speech last week where he admitted being "wrong" in the main part of his case for war but right to see a gathering threat in Iraq.

"Just as I have had to accept that the evidence now is that there were not stockpiles of actual weapons ready to be deployed, I hope others have the honesty to accept that the report also shows that sanctions weren’t working," he said.

[jtk4]

no offence but do you have a link for this

[vicman]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13313-2004Oct6.html

Hussein Used Oil to Dilute Sanctions

Report Says He Gave Valuable Vouchers to Those Who Helped Iraq

By Robin Wright and Colum Lynch

Washington Post Staff Writers

Thursday, October 7, 2004; Page A01

Saddam Hussein made $11 billion in illegal income and eroded the world's toughest economic embargo during his final years as Iraq's leader through shrewd schemes to secretly buy off dozens of countries, top foreign officials and major international figures, according to a new report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector released yesterday.

Oil "vouchers" that could be resold for large profits were given to officials including Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua and former Russian presidential candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky as well as governments, companies and influential individuals in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the report said.

Another recipient was Benon Sevan, the former top U.N. official in charge of humanitarian relief. Sevan ran the former oil-for-food program designed to benefit the Iraqi people in the face of economic sanctions intended to cripple Saddam's regime, the report says.

The report, written by chief U.S. weapons inspector Charles A. Duelfer, indicated that some of the oil vouchers were used legitimately by the recipients. Not all were fully cashed in, and some were not used at all. Companies or individuals from at least 44 countries received vouchers, the report said.

Russia, France and China -- all permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- were the top three countries in which individuals, companies or entities received the lucrative vouchers. Hussein's goal, the report said, was to provide financial incentives so that these nations would use their influence to help undermine what Duelfer called an "economic stranglehold" imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

"At a minimum, Saddam wanted to divide the five permanent members and foment international public support of Iraq at the U.N. and throughout the world by a savvy public relations campaign and an extensive diplomatic effort," the report said.

Hussein's effort to thwart the embargo and divide the nations that supported it has long been known, but the Duelfer report reveals the lengths to which he went in attempting to defy the United Nations. The details could buttress Washington's contention that important players were preventing the U.N. program from squeezing Saddam, forcing the United States to launch a war to topple him.

Several American companies on the list, compiled from 13 documents kept by Hussein's vice president and oil minister, were given vouchers to purchase billions of dollars of oil at discounted prices. The U.S. companies are not named in the report because of privacy laws, U.S. officials said.

The voucher system was particularly clever because the documents were negotiable and could be resold to oil companies or other buyers at profits of 10 to 35 cents per barrel. A voucher for 10 million barrels could generate between $1 million and $3.5 million to the holder.

The report notes that Indonesia's president was the recipient of a voucher that allocated her 6 million barrels. The former French interior minister received a voucher for 11 million barrels. The Russian foreign ministry received a voucher for 55 million, while Zhirinovsky got one for 53 million barrels and the Russian Communist Party's voucher totaled 110 million barrels.

An Iraqi newspaper said earlier this year that Sevan, whose activities are now under investigation for the by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker, received vouchers to purchase millions of barrels of Iraqi crude through several companies. The Duelfer report says that Sevan was allocated 13 million barrels of oil, of which 7.3 million were cashed in.

Sevan has denied the charges and claimed to friends that he is the victim of a smear campaign.

Hussein's multi-pronged strategy also included secret deals with neighboring countries to circumvent U.N. sanctions by smuggling oil, which reaped profits for both sides, and illicit government-to-government trade agreements. The subsequent success in turn "emboldened" Hussein to pursue programs related to weapons of mass destruction as well as conventional arms, the Duelfer report says.

"Despite U.N. sanctions, many countries and companies engaged in prohibited procurement with the Iraqi regime throughout the 1990s, largely because of the profitability of such trade," Duelfer reported. In turn, Hussein sought to make the embargo a "paper tiger," the report says.

Companies in countries closely allied with the United States, including France, Italy, India, Turkey, Jordan and Romania, may have sold Hussein dual-purpose equipment that could be converted for production of unconventional weapons.

Hussein survived the most comprehensive embargo ever imposed by subverting the very U.N. program introduced in 1996 to help the Iraqi people survive it. Hussein's government made an estimated $1.7 billion between 1996 and 2003 by shrewdly but secretly manipulating the U.N. oil-for-food program, the report says.

The humanitarian program was backed by the United States as a means of controlling Hussein's oil revenue, which had to be channeled through the United Nations. The world body then had to approve the spending of profits on basic necessities for the Iraqi people. But the former Iraqi leader ordered his regime to come up with an array of plans to sell oil under the table so he could spend the money as he saw fit.

The number of countries and companies involved in the schemes to undermine or challenge U.N. sanctions increased dramatically from the time the oil-for-food program was introduced until Hussein's removal from power last year, the report added.

The Duelfer report concludes that Baghdad exploited the program "to give individuals and countries an economic stake in ending sanctions." Hussein introduced a system of rewards for illegally dealing with Baghdad, while also playing on international sympathy and "successfully arguing its case that the sanctions were harming the innocent."

The success of Hussein's regime in circumventing the U.N. embargo is "grossly obvious," the report says. "It is also grossly obvious how the sanctions perverted not just the [iraqi] national system of finance and economics, but to some extent the international markets and organizations."

The Bush administration sought yesterday to highlight this aspect of the Duelfer report to counter the finding that Hussein probably had produced no new weapons of mass destruction since 1991, after the U.S.-led coalition forced Iraq to retreat from Kuwait.

***************

seems that few American companies were in the action as well.

[igloo]

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20041007-123838-3146r.htm

Saddam paid off French leaders

By Bill Gertz

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Saddam Hussein used a U.N. humanitarian program to pay $1.78 billion to French government officials, businessmen and journalists in a bid to have sanctions removed and U.S. policies opposed, according to a CIA report made public yesterday.

The cash was part of $10.9 billion secretly skimmed from the U.N. oil-for-food program, which was used by Iraq to buy military goods, according to a 1,000-page report by the CIA-led Iraqi Survey Group.

According to a section of the report on Iraqi weapons procurement, the survey group identified long-standing ties between Saddam and the French government. One 1992 Iraqi intelligence service report revealed that Iraq's ambassador to France paid $1 million to the French Socialist Party in 1988.

The CIA report stated that the Iraqi ambassador was instructed to "utilize [the $1 million] to remind French Defense Minister Pierre Joxe indirectly about Iraq's previous positions toward France, in general, and the French Socialist party, in particular."

In the late 1990s, Iraq also used an oil-purchasing voucher system through the U.N. oil-for-food program, which began in 1996 and ended in 2003, to influence the French to oppose U.S. initiatives at the United Nations and to work to lift sanctions, the report stated.

The Iraqi Intelligence Service paid off French nationals by dispensing vouchers that allowed the holders to make hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions by selling them to oil buyers.

The payoffs help explain why the French government, along with Russia and China, opposed U.S. efforts in the United Nations in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion, U.S. officials said.

Iraqi intelligence agents also targeted French President Jacques Chirac, by giving gifts to a spokesman, two of his aides and two French businessmen, the report said.

One Iraqi intelligence report stated that a French politician assured Saddam in a letter that France would use its veto in the U.N. Security Council against any U.S. effort to attack Iraq.

Iraqi intelligence documents recovered in Iraq showed that the French citizens linked to the influence operation were "ministers and politicians, journalists and business people."

"These influential individuals often had little prior connection to the oil industry and generally engaged European oil companies to lift the oil, but were still in a position to extract a substantial profit for themselves," the report said.

Former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz told the Survey Group that he personally awarded several Frenchmen "substantial" oil allotments.

"According to Aziz, both parties understood that resale of the oil was to be reciprocated through efforts to lift U.N. sanctions or through opposition to American initiatives within the Security Council," the report said.

The report named former French Interior Minister Charles Pascua as getting a voucher for 11 million barrels of oil, and Patrick Maugein, who received a voucher for 13 million barrels of oil. The report said Mr. Maugein, the chief executive officer of the SOCO oil company, was a "conduit" to Mr. Chirac.

Michel Grimard, the founder of the French-Iraqi Export Club, received a voucher for 5.5 million barrels, and the Iraqi-French Friendship Society received vouchers for more than 10 million barrels.

French oil companies Total and SOCAP were granted vouchers for 105 million and 93 million barrels of oil, respectively.

The report stated that Iraq covertly purchased missiles and other military goods from Russia, Belarus, China, North Korea and South Korea.

According to the report, illegal goods used in making weapons of mass destruction were sold to Iraq by companies in Jordan, India, France, Italy, Romania and Turkey.

Conventional arms also were sold to Iraq by China, Jordan, India, South Korea, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Cyprus, Egypt, Lebanon, Georgia, France, Poland, Syria, Belarus, North Korea, Yugoslavia, Yemen, Russia, Romania and the Republic of China (Taiwan).

The report said Saddam's regime obtained $1.5 billion from U.N. humanitarian contract kickbacks and $228.5 million in surcharges on U.N.-approved oil sales.

Other oil smuggling provided the regime with $8 billion in cash outside of U.N.-approved oil sales, the CIA report reveals.

Charles Duelfer, the director of the CIA survey group, told a congressional hearing yesterday that a "sizable portion" of Saddam's cash obtained from the oil-for-food program were diverted to the military, specifically the government-run Military Industrial Commission.

"The funding for this organization, which had responsibility for many of the past [weapons of mass destruction] programs, went from approximately $7.8 million in 1998 to $350 million in 2001," Mr. Duelfer told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Mr. Duelfer said that during the period from 1998 to 2001, "many military programs were carried out — including many involving the willing export to Iraq of military items prohibited by the Security Council."

[igloo]

no offence but do you have a link for this

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1167592004.....as provided by worldnetdaily.com.......oh, does that now diminish its value

[vicman]

Lawmakers Mum on Rev. Moon Event

WASHINGTON — It’s one of the most bizarre incidents to take place on Capitol Hill in a long time: A ceremony honoring the very controversial Rev. Sun Myung Moon (search), with at least a dozen lawmakers in attendance.

During the ceremony, a crown was placed on Moon’s head and he said he would save the souls of everyone on Earth, just as he had done for notorious dictators Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin — whom the reverend said were reborn because of his teachings.

The incendiary reverend has conducted mass weddings for his followers, claimed that the Jews started the Holocaust by betraying Jesus Christ and was sentenced to 18 months in jail in the 1980s for tax fraud.

The scene unfolded in the Dirksen Senate Office Building (search) March 23 before a bipartisan crowd of senators and congressmen. Many have since said they were misled about what would happen during the ceremony, which apparently was billed as a reception to honor the Washington Times — a newspaper owned by Moon.

Many of the lawmakers who were in attendance are saying Moon’s presence at the event took them by surprise. One member even denied being there at all until a Capitol Hill newspaper produced photos of the person at the event. And no one on the Hill is taking responsibility for approving Moon’s appearance.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,123587,00.html

**********

washington times is as credible as its owner.

[jtk4]

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1167592004.....as provided by worldnetdaily.com.......oh, does that now diminish its value

well when someone posts something from a liberal website, you are all over them calling them names and shit like that and pretty much dismiis whatever is said. When you post something comeing from a conservitive website you excpect it to be taken as 100% accurate.

[mursa]

well, atleast we know that Igloo is getting enough fiber in his diet .

[jtk4]

that is the worst picture of a piece of shit i have ever seen. with the size of the www you should of been able to come up with something better then that.

[igloo]

well when someone posts something from a liberal website, you are all over them calling them names and shit like that and pretty much dismiis whatever is said. When you post something comeing from a conservitive website you excpect it to be taken as 100% accurate.

not even close....I call people names and am all over their shit when THEY spew bullshit, or just regurgitate bullshit.....get your facts straight on that ........and I have also continually said that where something is posted should not be judged, but the content itself and the sources used/cited within the content are the benchmarks if you will....

[siceone]

It's all comingout inthe wash

[jtk4]

not even close....I call people names and am all over their shit when THEY spew bullshit, or just regurgitate bullshit.....get your facts straight on that ........and I have also continually said that where something is posted should not be judged, but the content itself and the sources used/cited within the content are the benchmarks if you will....

The problem is the sources, most are un-named bullshit like that. Also even when a source is named 9 times out of 10 we have no way of knowing who that source is, and what their agenda is. Because intel info can be twisted we really have no way of knowing if it is true or not. You have the cia saying one thing the nsa saying something else, navel intel yet another.

[jtk4]

so the source would be the ISG right?

well they are always dead on right? or should i invetigate?

[igloo]

The problem is the sources, most are un-named bullshit like that. Also even when a source is named 9 times out of 10 we have no way of knowing who that source is, and what their agenda is. Because intel info can be twisted we really have no way of knowing if it is true or not. You have the cia saying one thing the nsa saying something else, navel intel yet another.

Understood, but there are sources that can be confirmed, or at least have a high degree of confidence and accuracy.........which is why it is important as everyday schmucks we all try and be as informed and balanced as possible.....I have shit sitting on my shelf from Chomsky to Coulter, and everything in between.....

[mursa]

not even close....I call people names and am all over their shit when THEY spew bullshit, or just regurgitate bullshit.....get your facts straight on that ........and I have also continually said that where something is posted should not be judged, but the content itself and the sources used/cited within the content are the benchmarks if you will....

lol.... now your playing the "victim" role , huh ??!!?..

...If anyone here spews BS , it's YOU ...or better yet , the almost daily copy/pasted conservative articles that are nothing more than rumors & republican rhetoric .

[igloo]

lol.... now your playing the "victim" role , huh ??!!?..

...If anyone here spews BS , it's YOU ...or better yet , the almost daily copy/pasted conservative articles that are nothing more than rumors & republican rhetoric .

Wake me up when you answer the challenge from the other thread mental midget......or better yet, do as I told you, stick your head back into the moveon.org vagina you stapled between your legs....trust me, your idiosy will not be missed....

[italia23]

lol.... now your playing the "victim" role , huh ??!!?..

...If anyone here spews BS , it's YOU ...or better yet , the almost daily copy/pasted conservative articles that are nothing more than rumors & republican rhetoric .

I'm tired of everyone posting these articles on this message board. Mursa is right, almost all of these articles are extremely biased. Nothing is objective, deep down inside each writer has his/her opinions and will unknowingly skew the facts as to fit that opinion. There is no real antitode to this other than to pay attention to both sides and try to glean your own personal opinions from them. But even then, you're bound to have your own preconceived bias.