Recommended course of action

[red states rule]

someone has no idea as to the scope of the ENRON scandal. That is certain!

Oil For Food has it beat

Much to the dismay of the left and the UN worshippers

 

[maineman]

link showing the value of oil for food scandal?

 

[red states rule]

link showing the value of oil for food scandal?

so now there was no fraud and no cost to the US taxpayer?

 

[maineman]

so now there was no fraud and no cost to the US taxpayer?

that isn't what I said. I asked you for a link that would show the value in dollars of the oil for food scandal.

If you claim that it was bigger than Enron, you must have some ability to make that determination. You show me a link that has the cost of the oil for food fraud, and then, I will show you a link that shows the cost of the Enron collapse.

OK?

or....of course...you can keep tapdancing. that always seems to work well for you!

 

[red states rule]

that isn't what I said. I asked you for a link that would show the value in dollars of the oil for food scandal.

If you claim that it was bigger than Enron, you must have some ability to make that determination. You show me a link that has the cost of the oil for food fraud, and then, I will show you a link that shows the cost of the Enron collapse.

OK?

or....of course...you can keep tapdancing. that always seems to work well for you!

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-11-17-oil-for-food_x.htm

 

[Larkinn]

I love it. I made a GC comment and you asked for proof. With me so far? Good. I provided an excerpt from the GC. I got mine from the UN Human rights website if memory serves. But GC Texts are common and easy to check and so didn't think to link it. You made the assertion that my excerpt was not the one signed by the US. The burden of proof shifts at that point. IOW, for those who are slow (not necessarily you) readers...... You assumed the burden of proving your assertion that my GC wasn't the "real" GC. The "real" GC being the one that we are signatory to. Do you get it yet? I sourced my assertion, now you must source yours.

Err its not that the Protocol isn't the "real" GC. Most countries are signatories to it, its just the US is not. I didn't know what assertion you wanted me to prove...I figured since it is very simple to look up the details of Protocol I, you could just do it yourself. But since not...here you go.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_I

As of 14 January 2007 it had been ratified by 167 countries, with the United States, Israel, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan and Iraq being notable exceptions. However, the United States, Iran and Pakistan signed it on 12 December 1977 with the intention of ratifying it.

If you want a link to the "real" GC, well I'm afraid you will have to do your own searching. I believe we are signatories to the other two protocols and the all 4 conventions, but I'm not sure. Feel free to search through there for something that supports your pov.

Umm they've been held for 4 years without a trial. That violates that clause. What was the time limit specified in that clause BTW? Since you are legal oriented (I'm not a lawyer and so am not stuck in that particular rut) I would assume you found a time stipulation I overlooked? The only time constraint I noted was "at the earliest date consistent with the security of the State or Occupying Power, as the case may be." Now, I know you have asserted that this particular quote is invalid. But, until you prove me wrong and post the "real" one....... this is what we have to go with.

I didn't look to see if this part falls under Protocol I or a different part of the convention. But if we assume that it does fall under, the "earliest date consistent with the security of the state" is for all the other rights inherent in the document. Full PoW rights. The rights to a trial is " In each case, such persons shall nevertheless be treated with humanity, and in case of trial, shall not be deprived of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed by the present Convention." I can't find which convention you pulled this from, but there is no set definition of a "fair and regular trial". However, that there is no set definition does not mean we can't rule out things that are definitely NOT in the definition. Would you really say taking 4 years to bring someone to trial conforms with the ideal of a "fair and regular trial" ?

 

[Chips Rafferty]

Allow me



Lid Off Oil-for-Food Scam
By Claudia Rosett for FOX Fan Central

One of the first things that got my attention was Oil-for-Food’s goal of supervising almost the entire economy of Iraq. The world had only recently emerged from a century that pitted the devastating and dictatorial system of Soviet-style central planning against laissez-faire capitalism. Markets had won — but not, it seemed, in Iraq, where Oil-for-Food actually helped consolidate Saddam’s control and strengthen his grip.

The next shock was learning that under the U.N. setup it was not even the U.N. but Saddam himself who got first rights to draw up the shopping lists for what the people of Iraq were presumed to need. That was disturbing given that it was Saddam who was responsible for the wars, oppression and deprivation of Iraqis in the first place.

Then I learned that the U.N. let Saddam pick his own oil buyers and relief suppliers and negotiate his own deals, subject to U.N. approval — which, as it turned out, he routinely got on thousands of contracts blatantly laced with graft. When I asked who those contractors were, the Oil-for-Food staff said the U.N. preferred to keep the identities of Saddam’s dealers confidential. The U.N. also kept secret the dollar amounts of individual deals, and just about all other details that would have allowed any third party to judge the integrity of a business. Oil-for-Food was run as a secret, privileged bargain between the UN and Saddam. To this day, the U.N. has not released such basic information. It is only through leaked documents that the most incriminating details of Oil-for-Food can begin to be gleaned.

Ah, but then came the showstopper. I learned that to cover the costs of administering this program Kofi Annan’s Secretariat collected a 2.2% commission on Saddam’s oil sales, totaling $1.4 billion over the course of the program, plus another .8%, or $520 million, for weapons inspections (though for four of the program’s seven years, Saddam did not allow any weapons inspections). In other words, the U.N. Secretariat was being paid richly by Saddam to supervise Saddam; the U.N. had, in effect, become Saddam’s business partner, playing Arthur Andersen to Saddam’s Enron. The incentives were for the U.N. Secretariat to hush up Saddam’s graft, and keep expanding the program. And that’s what happened.

Following Saddam’s overthrow, the U.N. finally shut down Oil-for-Food last November. But the U.N.-condoned mess it created it still with us. Billions in funds grafted out of the program by Saddam have yet to be accounted for. Oil-for-Food tainted the Security Council debates over Iraq, in which the U.N. never disclosed that fat deals under Oil-for-Food had gone to such pivotal U.N. Security Council members as France, China and Russia. To whatever extent Oil-for-Food corrupted politicians and businesses who dealt with Saddam — and that was evidently part of the problem — some of the figures involved may now be ripe targets for blackmail by anyone with inside information on Saddam’s U.N.-condoned secret deals. And tucked away in those confidential records are enough overlaps between Saddam’s network of dirty finance and Al Qaeda to warrant worries that money he filched from Oil-for-Food may be funding terrorists today.

This is the legacy of a U.N. that over the years has become accustomed to treating some of the world’s worst despots as privileged clients. In the end, the most alarming aspect of Oil-for-Food is not that it became the biggest financial scandal ever to bubble through the U.N., but that it was the natural product of a U.N. steeped for decades in its own culture of privilege, immunities and secrecy, accustomed to guarding the interests of despots at the expense of subjugated peoples, and — as Oil-for-Food so richly exemplified — more absorbed in its own venal interests, payrolls and power than in such matters as the world peace, freedom and prosperity it was founded to promote.

Claudia Rosett is a consultant to FOX News and Journalist-in-Residence at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

WHAT A STEAMING LOAD OF AMERIFASCIST FROG SHIT!

Fancy listening to a mercenary flack from Fox Chunder – possibly a baby-eating Librul and demonic Commumuslim when he isn’t hawking his whoring arse to Roger Aisles - who is paid to present fascistic slants on everything?

We have saying in my hometown, “If you can be conned you can, and oughta be, fucked!”

Christ Almighty, RSR, your arse must be the diameter of the Channel Tunnel!

Before you even attempt to defend this utter fucking drivel, know that the officials in charge of the “Oil for Food” programme resigned in protest at America’s GENOCIDAL treatment of Iraqi Untermensch

In September 1998, Halliday resigned after 34 years with the UN, describing US and British policy towards Iraq "genocidal". Halliday, who managed the UN 's 'oil for food' programme in Iraq, had first- hand knowledge and was unequivocal that Western-led sanctions truly were responsible for the deaths of fully 500,000 Iraqi children under five. In an interview last year, Halliday said:

"Washington, and to a lesser extent London, have deliberately played games through the Sanctions Committee with this programme for years - it's a deliberate ploy... That's why I've been using the word 'genocide', because this is a deliberate policy to destroy the people of Iraq. I'm afraid I have no other view at this late stage."

Five months after Halliday resigned, his successor at the UN, Hans von Sponeck, also resigned, asking, "How long should the civilian population of Iraq be exposed to such punishment for something they have never done?" In December 1999, von Sponeck told a British audience:

"My friends, your country is trying to cage a wild tiger. But you are killing a rare and beautiful bird. In twenty years your fine universities will be using the sanctions on Iraq as an example of how +not+ to pursue foreign policy."

Two days after von Sponeck's resignation, Jutta Burghardt, head of the World Food Programme in Iraq, also resigned, saying privately that what was being done to the people of Iraq was intolerable

Zmag

During the Gulf War, coalition forces bombed Iraq's eight multipurpose dams, destroying flood control systems, irrigation, municipal and industrial water storage, and hydroelectric power. Major pumping stations were targeted, and municipal water and sewage facilities were destroyed.

Article 54 of the Geneva Convention prohibits attacks on "drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works."

Gowans

The Entitled States government(s) then calculatedly applied sanctions to materials and chemicals that Iraq direly needed to repair its water and sanitation systems.

Knowing full well that their actions would result in the deaths of at least 4 times more than average of Iraqi children from preventable disease.

I'll say it again. The United States governments knew and planned that the bombings and sanctions would prevent Iraq from rebuilding their water and sanitation sytems, and that the ensuing epidemics would kill hundreds of thousands of civilian, MOSTLY CHILDREN

So, OFFICIAL U.N sources said – and OFFICAL U.S. sources didn’t deny - that about 500,000 kids had died from preventable disease as a direct result of U.S. sanctions, years before the current Iraqi turkey shoot.

Then there is....

Ah what’s the use….

Is it wonder desperate (insert George Bush’s nationality du jour for the 9/11 t-u-u-rusts here) crash planes into New York skyscrapers?

 

[Gunny]

So, in real English you're trying to say there was no Oil for Food scam?

I bet just like France didn't have under-the-table deals with Saddam for cheap oil if France would get UN sanctions lifted, right?

 

[Chips Rafferty]

So, in real English you're trying to say there was no Oil for Food scam?

I bet just like France didn't have under-the-table deals with Saddam for cheap oil if France would get UN sanctions lifted, right?

What's that got to do with genocide?

What if I proved to you that American companies also profited from Oil for Food?

What if I proved to you that many nationalities profited from the "Suckee-Fuckee for Rice" programme during the Vietbam war.

Stick with the script, Gunman.

 

[maineman]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-11-17-oil-for-food_x.htm

you link talks about the oil for food fraud, and lists the fraudulent amount for that program to be a little over $1.7B. The lion's share of the money talked about in your article was contained in this quote:

"Jordan, Turkey and Syria circumvented the program, smuggling $10 billion in Iraqi oil after the Gulf War — $8 billion from 1996 to 2003"

that money has nothing to do with the UN's oil for food prograam. So...what you have is a total of $1.7B in potential fraud from the program in question.

But even if you DO toss in the smuggled oil through Turkey, Jordan and Syria, you have, at MAX.... $12B

compare that to:

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/nw/...rcharges+in+California+May+Exceed+$40+Billion


ready to retract your idiotic claim that "Oil for Food has Enron beat"?

 

[Gunny]

What's that got to do with genocide?

What if I proved to you that American companies also profited from Oil for Food?

What if I proved to you that many nationalities profited from the "Suckee-Fuckee for Rice" programme during the Vietbam war.

Stick with the script, Gunman.

I am with the script, Chips. The script is "Course of Action," not "genocide." And if you were addressing genocide, it'd work a LOT better if you'd address such things in plain English, and I've seen a post where you have, so I know you can.

American companies may very-well have profitted from Oil for Food. I don't own one, so what is your point?

Without the politician moneychangers, the companies that provided goods wouldn't have a sale. The greater evil therefore goes to those UN/European leaders playing middleman.

 

[pegwinn]

See Chips I knew you liked me. Observe.

As I do with your prejudiced cherry-picking of the GC’s, and your subsequent sophistic parsing of the results, to construct strawman arguments to suit your own culpable purposes.

And yet you have no counter. Excepting Gibbering nonsense of course

I find it absolutely gobsmackingly farcical that you waffle on about your right to murder and maltreat the utterly destitute Afghan/Iraqi equivalent of America’s original Minute Men - because they have no uniforms!

When an accessory to war crimes like you condones the worst crime known to mankind, i.e. waging a groundless war of aggression.

In short, I couldn’t give a Biafran rat’s arse about what YOU want to craftily confine the dispute to.

It is you who have hijacked the thread, not me.

Remember this?

Your very poor imitation of Lewis Carrol notwithstanding, was there a point in the above?

Clearly the thread is about CRIMINALLY killing another million or so innocent Iraqis “over there” to stop them, apparently, from “nooking” the permanently panic stricken Chicken Little’s of Um-er-iKKKa.

So get the cart back behind the horse, Peggy Spew.

First deal with the illicit invasion that motivated those impecunious malnourished Mujhadeen in mufti to justifiably attack your occupation forces before you laughably try legitimizing your country’s inexcusable crimes against them.

Yeah, that deposing a dictator who paid the families of Terrorists, and assisting the people of that nation in a shot at democracy is really criminal. C'mon Jabberwocky, I am still pointing and laughing.

You and your mates should stop snivelling like a bunch of fucking big sheila’s about being beaten YET AGAIN by a bedraggled bunch of raggedy-arsed guerillas and start a national inoculation drive to give all Merkin men an free injection of thruppence worth of bullock’s heart.

Maybe then they will really be able to “kick ass” instead of miming Sly Stallone Movie lines from some impregnable Camp Bongspiel (Bondsteel) in yet another defenceless ****** nation

So which is it, ass kicking troops who are criminals, or crying shielas hiding. Can't have it both ways ol bean.

Accordingly, YOU come back to ME when you come up with an interpretation of Cpt. Underpant’s post that is remotely consistent with the rest of the world’s opinion of his pants-shitting paranoia. Not some more of your expediently simplistic, self-serving Seppo interpretation of the world’s laws and conventions; that the US only abides by when it is to its own avaricious advantage.

Awww, you are starting to break my heart. Now why should I care about world opinion? After all most of the world is still living in safety simply because we protect them or deter them.

Here, start by arguing your national innocence with YOUR man in Nuremberg,

Look, an opposing view worth discussion. You should try it sometime. IN the future please confine your land of the lost concession rambles to a hundred words or less. It's easier to skim your post and move on to the serious discussions of the moment.

SNIP

Err its not that the Protocol isn't the "real" GC. Most countries are signatories to it, its just the US is not. I didn't know what assertion you wanted me to prove...I figured since it is very simple to look up the details of Protocol I, you could just do it yourself. But since not...here you go.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_I

As of 14 January 2007 it had been ratified by 167 countries, with the United States, Israel, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan and Iraq being notable exceptions. However, the United States, Iran and Pakistan signed it on 12 December 1977 with the intention of ratifying it.

If you want a link to the "real" GC, well I'm afraid you will have to do your own searching. I believe we are signatories to the other two protocols and the all 4 conventions, but I'm not sure. Feel free to search through there for something that supports your pov.

Thanks, I'll do that. If it turns out that I am mistaken, then I'll post it here.

I didn't look to see if this part falls under Protocol I or a different part of the convention. But if we assume that it does fall under, the "earliest date consistent with the security of the state" is for all the other rights inherent in the document. Full PoW rights. The rights to a trial is " In each case, such persons shall nevertheless be treated with humanity, and in case of trial, shall not be deprived of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed by the present Convention." I can't find which convention you pulled this from, but there is no set definition of a "fair and regular trial". However, that there is no set definition does not mean we can't rule out things that are definitely NOT in the definition. Would you really say taking 4 years to bring someone to trial conforms with the ideal of a "fair and regular trial" ?

I know you won't like this. But, yeah I would say that since we are not summarily executing the prisoners but instead housing them comfortably (for the most part) and affording many standing in American courts of law, they are being treated very fairly. I realise that four years is a long time. But, the alternative is killing them out of hand once any intelligence value is milked from them.

 

[Larkinn]

I know you won't like this. But, yeah I would say that since we are not summarily executing the prisoners but instead housing them comfortably (for the most part) and affording many standing in American courts of law, they are being treated very fairly. I realise that four years is a long time. But, the alternative is killing them out of hand once any intelligence value is milked from them.

It doesn't say treat them fairly. It says the rights of fair and regular trial. That is...a fair and speedy trial.

And no...I don't think that is the only alternative. Try them, sentence them, or if there is no evidence against them let them go.

 

[Chips Rafferty]

I am with the script, Chips. The script is "Course of Action," not "genocide." And if you were addressing genocide, it'd work a LOT better if you'd address such things in plain English, and I've seen a post where you have, so I know you can.

American companies may very-well have profitted from Oil for Food. I don't own one, so what is your point?

Without the politician moneychangers, the companies that provided goods wouldn't have a sale. The greater evil therefore goes to those UN/European leaders playing middleman.

What came first, America’s PREMEDITATED INTENT to commit genocide, or the cheese-eating surrender monkeys doing deals with your main man in the Middle East?

 

[Chips Rafferty]

See Chips I knew you liked me. Observe.

Go pull a cows \!/ over yer head and get a bull to fuck some sense into ya, Chocolate Soldier.

 

[red states rule]

you link talks about the oil for food fraud, and lists the fraudulent amount for that program to be a little over $1.7B. The lion's share of the money talked about in your article was contained in this quote:

"Jordan, Turkey and Syria circumvented the program, smuggling $10 billion in Iraqi oil after the Gulf War — $8 billion from 1996 to 2003"

that money has nothing to do with the UN's oil for food prograam. So...what you have is a total of $1.7B in potential fraud from the program in question.

But even if you DO toss in the smuggled oil through Turkey, Jordan and Syria, you have, at MAX.... $12B

compare that to:

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/nw/...rcharges+in+California+May+Exceed+$40+Billion


ready to retract your idiotic claim that "Oil for Food has Enron beat"?

the only thing idiotic is how libs like you still think the UN still serves a useful purpose despit its corruption, waste of taxpayer money, and the endless fraud and deaths it is responsible for

 

[maineman]

"Oil for Food has Enron beat"

total bullshit.

disproven.

now...run away, or change the subject.

 

[red states rule]

"Oil for Food has Enron beat"

total bullshit.

disproven.

now...run away, or change the subject.

Yes, you are total bullshit

For once, you spoke the truth

Snow is forcast for most on Maine today

 

[maineman]

Yes, you are total bullshit

For once, you spoke the truth

Snow is forcast for most on Maine today

Enron was bigger than oil for food. My point...which I proved. You lied. no surprise. now either admit it and we can move on to other issues - like the subject of the thread, for example - or run away. But you got proven wrong. be a big boy and just admit it ...be a big boy and admit that Enron cost a lot more than Oil for Food. Go ahead....you can do it...I know there is some integrity in there somewhere!

 

[red states rule]

Enron was bigger than oil for food. My point...which I proved. You lied. no surprise. now either admit it and we can move on to other issues - like the subject of the thread, for example - or run away. But you got proven wrong. be a big boy and just admit it ...be a big boy and admit that Enron cost a lot more than Oil for Food. Go ahead....you can do it...I know there is some integrity in there somewhere!

Keep lying MM - it is all you have left on so many topics

snip

Oil-for-Food was established a decade ago with the admirable goal of providing humanitarian aid to the Iraqi people. But it didn’t work.

While his people continued to starve, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein embezzled billions from the program through oil smuggling and systematic thievery. He also demanded illegal payments from companies buying Iraqi oil, and pocketed billions of dollars in kickbacks. The U.S. General Accounting Office estimates Saddam’s illegal take exceeded $10 billion.

But he wasn’t the only one who allegedly profited from this supposed humanitarian program. Some U.N. employees stand accused of rank incompetence and mismanagement. In fact, some may even have worked along with the Iraqi regime to defraud the program.

And this is a scandal, like those involving corporate CEOs, that goes right to the top. Benon Sevan, the former executive director of the Oil-for-Food program, appeared on an Iraqi Oil Ministry list of 270 individuals, political entities, and companies allegedly receiving oil vouchers as bribes from Saddam Hussein’s regime.

That doesn’t prove that Sevan did anything wrong, of course. But he raised additional suspicions when American congressional committees opened investigations of Oil-for-Food. Sevan -- who retired from the United Nations at the end of May -- wrote letters on official U.N. stationery warning some of the companies implicated in the scandal that they must first seek U.N. approval before releasing documents to investigators. In the corporate world, we might call that suppression of relevant documents.

Investigators also will have to puzzle out what U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan knew and when he knew it. For example, an internal U.N. office audited the Oil-for-Food program in 2003, before the liberation of Iraq. That investigation reportedly criticized the world body’s dealings with the Swiss company Cotecna Inspection SA.

Annan’s son Kojo worked for Cotecna in the 1990s, and was a consultant for the company until just before it was awarded a $4.8 million contract to oversee the operations of the Oil-for-Food program. Even after the critical report, Cotecna captured another $9.8 million contract. Was Kojo Annan a factor in the awarding of those contracts?
http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed082004d.cfm