YAWWWWWWN,
Fred, i take it you will still be spouting on about this crap in another 20 years, time to move on. Sheesh 
Dissipating? Since when?? It’s about time that we got some real answers to Halliburton, and time for the Bush administration to get out of the way of an independent investigation. Part of a past history of secrecy and fact-fudging:
-
Bush administration does everything possible to prevent a full 9-11 inquiry. Eventually it gets out that they had warnings about Osama bin Laden and the possibility of hijackings. Also becomes apparent that Ashcroft and others were looking to take the money for anti-terror efforts and hand it over to GOP fatcat donors in the way of massive tax cuts. Hmmm… no wonder they were fighting it tooth and nail. When the 9-11 commission comes out with recommendations, the Bush administration fights tooth and nail to avoid implementing them.
-
Bush administration does everything possible to prevent public knowledge of the energy task force. Eventually it gets out that its Bush-Cheney’s best buddies in the energy industry who engineered the whole California electric-power crisis to artificially boost profits.
-
Robert Novak gets info from White House insiders that Valerie Plame is a CIA agent and outs her in print. However, months have gone by, and the White House effort to find the actual leakers has taken on the credibility of OJ Simpson’s effort to find the “real killers”. Instead, other journalists (but not Novak, significantly) are being threatened with jail unless they open up their notebooks.
-
Bush administration hands out major contracts on a no-bid basis a company that’s still paying out massive money to Cheney. They lie about whether Halliburton contracts were vetted through the veep’s office and get caught on that. Then when Ms. Bunny Greenhouse shows that she was over-ridden to ensure that Halliburton would get a multi-year deal (unnecessary under an “emergency” no-bid arrangement), they do everything possible to attack her.
Where there’s been smoke, there’s been plenty of fire. Any one of these would be far more serious to the wellbeing of the country than Clinton’s Whitewater investment or splooge on Lewinsky’s dress, but I suppose the GOP just cares about power and not about good government these days.
As a “shareholder” in American society, I expect better value from my elected officials.
Strange but wasn’t the California power crisis BEFORE Bush took office? I seem to recall it happening because California could not buy forward contracts. How would that have been engineered by Bush before he was even elected?
Second, Valeria Plame outed herself and was certainly not very cautious about lobbying on behalf of her husband, nor was her husband very cautious about putting out a bunch of nonsense and half-truths and total falsehoods. Suddenly, she is outed and the administration is to blame?
Finally, if all these things are of such concern to everyone, why were they not looking at all of these shenanigans during the Clinton administration. Every one of these financial scandals from Tyco to Arthur Andersen to the California power crisis to Enron to Worldcom all started under Clinton as did the dotcom boom/crash.
Sorry this is boring for you Traveller. You do have the option of course of just not reading these posts. But I find it very very surprising that for all the squealing about US$18 million in overcharges that to my mind has been adequately addressed with the release of the diplomatic cable from the US embassy in Kuwait demanding that Halliburton award this contract immediately to the Kuwaiti middleman despite its reservations, that there is no case to be made here. Yet, what about the massive US$21 billion stolen by the UN and Saddam? What about the direct complicity between Saddam and the ambassadors of France and Russia and the UN leadership which would have had a direct bearing on their votes in the UN Security Council in the leadup to the Iraqi invasion? No Kofikakka? No Chiracshenanigans? No Putinputup? Why not?
More good stuff on the scandal and what makes the Bushies so gleeful about the whole story…
[quote]
The oil-for-food scandal is a legitimate one, but recently it’s been driven
Wow Rooftop:
You found the one quote in that whole article that could be taken as supporting your view. I see an article detailing how Kofi Annan had been against the US bombing to deal with Kosovo in 1999 and I also see US$21 billion with all the above officials named as proven to have taken or been on a list of foreign officials being on the take.
Therefore, I am still struggling to understand why Halliburton gets so vilified for US$18 million in overcharges which have since been proved to have been at the behest of the US Embassy in Kuwait and why Bush despite his unproven and at best tenuous connections with Halliburton through his vice president Cheney can be the subject of such endless frontpage speculation in the major media.
Here we have far more important charges and sums involving tens of thousands of times more with the deaths of 500,000 to 1 million directly laid at the door of the agency that stopped and blocked American efforts to deal with Saddam at every turn.
So we have corruption with a US company for US$18 million that has been explained away albeit on page 11 of the NY Times and then we have US$21 billion which directly bought off nations and determined how they voted in the lead up to the Iraq invasion getting explained away. Here, we have a perfect example of where America warned everyone who would listen that the UN was not a credible actor but we were regaled with tall tales of international law and international legitimacy. So maybe there were no wmds in Iraq but the programs and intent were. So maybe if the ever critical left wants to criticize this despite the fact that everyone viewed him as a threat, they should equally admit that Right warned everyone that the UN was a corrupt and unfair actor that would not give the matter a fair and just hearing. I fully understand the outrage against the lack of discovery of wmds in Iraq but then why not equally the outrage over this far more eggregious case involving the UN and corruption that resulted in the deaths of not 24,000 people but 500,000 to 1 million? Hmmm?
Bush simply will not investigate his good buddies. That’s the issue and the problem. An independent investigation will be necessary to get to the bottom of this. Of course, the GOP were plenty happy to use the California brownouts to target former Gov. Davis, when it was the Bush-buddy companies all along that were hosing the public.
Which was it? You’re not being clear on this – this paragraph is a bunch of mush. You claim she outed herself, and then one sentence later acknowledge she was outed. You insert a whole bunch of attack on her husband. Sorry, but just because some GOPsters may not personally like Plame’s husband, it’s not justification for a treasonous act such as divulging the name of a CIA agent. No excuse. Further it is a bit disingenuous to ask why the administration is “suddenly” to blame… the persons divulging Plame’s identity to Novak were from the White House.
Had they come to light during the Clinton administration, perhaps they would have been dealt with in a manner involving far more openness than the Bush adminstration. These scandals didn’t arise during the Clinton presidency. End of story.
Okay MFGR:
You throw the charges out fast and furious back them up.
How was Bush more responsible for California’s power crisis than Gray Davis? Was the US federal govt in charge of those contracts or the ultimate agent in charge of buying them?
Second, why would Valerie Plame be so worried about outing herself or being outed and then give interviews from her house, recommend her husband for a top level job based on her position, etc. etc.
Finally, blah blah blah. All charges and no evidence. Prove anything of what you have said, but stick to the topic and look at what we are discovering about the UN? Is that why you are so desperate to switch the subject to anything else? The topic here is the UN. What do you think of those charges? hahahaha
Wow Fred Smith
Did you read about reasons George Bush wouldn’t want to alienate Annan? Hint: it’s at the bottom of the paragraph “Supporters of Annan and Sevan”.
(edit: while it is at the bottom of this paragraph, nowhere did I or the author of the article assert that this is a ringing endorsement of anything, so not sure what you’re on about in the first paragraph of your post below Fred)
Good paragraph, read it again carefully.
Yes, I read that rooftop but I am wondering how the phrase that Bush wants UN help with the Iraqi elections and realizes that as bad as Annan is that anyone who replaces him would probably be much worse is a ringing endorsement of annan and the UN?!!!
What are we doing in the UN? Why are we involved? Let’s just leave the organization to bumble along. It is an outrage that US$21 billion were siphoned off and if the sanctions were such a “success” why was there so much pressure to end them by France and Russia? Hmmm? Why? And if we now know from the Charles Duelfer report that he had ever intent of restarting his programs after sanctions ended then what does that say about the ability of the UN to influence and control Saddam?
I think this article is the saddest thing that I have written by liberals who are desperate to downplay this for fear of having the debate switch to not why were there no wmds discovered in Iraq but why was the UN treated like a credible entity that should have its approval given in the first place? I think we need to have a very serious rethink about how we submit US Policy to an organization like the UN. I think that given the size of this corruption and its inability to function (look at Iran and North Korea and Sudan and…) why even deal with it at all.
Oh, I see… you’re one of the slow readers. I already wrote above that Bush’s failure was in not investigating his little energy buddies.
Was Plame worried about outing herself? Not really. The Bush administration has a great history of trying to hit its critics below the belt – her husband Wilson didn’t parrot what the Bushies wanted him to say, and so it would appear that they went after him via hurting his wife. Of course, since the Bush administration also has a crappy record on security and intelligence matters, it seems likely that they would forget that outing a CIA agent to the public would also endanger years of covert work, opening up pretty much everyone who knew Plame over her years overseas to immediate investigation.
Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt, Fred. Several very fishy and highly illegal things get done by people either within or very close to the Bush administration, and there is zip being done with regards to a real investigation for any of these. It would seem that no crime, no matter how sleazy or treasonous, is worthy of a serious investigation if it involves any Bush buddy. Given the precedent set in previous administrations (Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, etc.), perhaps it would be good if the U.S. got its own house in order.
Scott Peterson should have taken a cue from this and gotten a job with the Bush campaign before he killed his wife… Karl Rove probably would have shown up with shovels and quicklime.
So no proof. Also no comment on how Bush could possibly have been responsible for the energy crisis when he had absolutely no say about how the power was bought. That was Gray Davis’ decision.
So again, MFGR:
Please supply any proof that
a. Bush knew about, approved or had any authority over the energy deals which took place before he even took office. Second, how is it that Bush would let enron and worldcom fail but then would protect energy companies that had dealings with Democrats in California. Wouldn’t he have wanted to bring this up during the election to win votes in the biggest electoral state in the nation?
b. proof that anyone in the administration outed Valerie Plame. Given that she had given no end of interviews with her husband and their house, I would say that she was begging to be outed. When she was, just how was that Bush’s machination?
c. Any other proof on anything. Denial may not be a river in Egypt but evidence is what is needed and I don’t see you supplyin none. Too bad. You lose. Just as you always will. And we will always win. We will win in the Middle East too. We are winning in AFghanistan. We will win in Iraq. Too bad. Too bad. hahahahaha
You must be aghast that the New York Times is trying to protect the Bush Administration! I, like you, hope that the reporters involved end up in jail for as long as it takes to force them to reveal (1) who “outed” Valerie Plame, and (2) what their reason for doing so was.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal falls back on the old “there was no crime committed!” defense:
opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006047
Piffle. Who cares if there was ever a crime, as long as the issue can be used to attack the Bush Administration, right, Mof? Bush is responsible for everything, after all – he is, of course, the criminal genius mastermind idiot savant. BTW, how is your aunt doing??
For someone who supports the President, Fred, you show remarkably little knowledge of his alleged environmentalist activities.
According to sources at UC Berkeley Greens for an Electricity-Free California, the President not only financially supported the group’s campaign for environmental laws which made California the hardest state in the nation in which to build new power generation facilities, but also attended rallies in support of the ill-conceived restrictions on the state’s refining capacity, which also also contributed to the state’s artificially high energy prices.
So nobody is saying that Gray Davis is not to blame for California’s disastrous half-regulated/half-deragulated power market, but this doesn’t prove that Bush wasn’t also contributorily at fault via his efforts to artificially constrain supply.
You say you want proof? Then I think the only reasonable solution is to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate these alleged environmentalist activities. If he’s innocent then he has nothing to fear right? But the American people deserve to know the truth.
Fred you right-wing capitalist tool, why are you harping on poor Kofi Annan for his mere US$21,000,000,000 accounting goof when the entire world knows that Kofi should be tried for war atrocities as a result of the Rwanda and Bosnia genocides?
opinionjournal.com/editorial … =110006052
[quote]Report From Panel Shows Lapses in U.N.'s Oil-for-Food Program[/quote]
NY Times headline
nytimes.com/2005/01/10/inter … r=homepage
This is what is meant by a “lapse” according to the NY Times…
[quote]The New York Times reported yesterday that a review of 10 of the internal oil-for-food program audits showed significant problems in how the United Nations Office of the Iraq Program administered the program, and specifically a failure to adequately supervise the contractors hired to inspect the oil moving out of Iraq and goods going in under the multibillion-dollar effort.
The briefing paper released last night chronicles numerous shortcomings in the auditors’ activities. The paper cites, among other lapses, the auditors’ failure to monitor in depth the New York headquarters of the office that administered the program, where nearly 40 percent of the $1 billion of the program’s administrative costs were spent. [/quote]
Notice how the NY Times downplays the level of corruption at the UN and then after running headline after headline about Halliburton ends up with this without any major headlines or fanfare
[quote]"The rebuilding of Iraq’s oil industry has been characterized in the months since by increasing costs and scant public explanation. An examination of what has grown into a multibillion-dollar contract to restore Iraq’s oil infrastructure shows no evidence of profiteering by Halliburton, the Houston-based oil services company, but it does demonstrate a struggle between price controls and the uncertainties of war, with price controls frequently losing.
So far this year, Halliburton’s profits from Iraq have been minimal. The company’s latest report to the Securities and Exchange Commission shows $1.3 billion in revenues from work in Iraq and $46 million in pretax profits for the first nine months of 2003. "[/quote]
My favorite quote from the article:
I think the length of posts regarding the UN and its massive $67 billion corruption scandal make it possible to provide several observations:
-
No one really cares about the UN really. This would seem to show that those calling for the US to go through the UN because of the sanctity of its imprimaturs were not really concerned about the UN but in limiting the ability of the US to act.
-
If we see people screaming about $18 or $180 million in possible corruption from Halliburton but saying nothing about the $67 billion in UN corruption we have to guess that their aims are to smear the Bush administration at any and all costs and that the UN is not really important to them. My point is that deep down even those who scream most loudly about believing in the UN do not really, otherwise they would care far more about this especially when you factor in that this slush fund allowed Saddam to continue to kill and enslave Iraq while 1 million of his people died because of UN, Russian and French corruption.
So the very fact that Bush and whether his decision to invade Iraq was right or wrong have spawned threads of such enduring length and activity really go to prove that it is the US and Bush that matter. Ultimately, the lack of interest in the UN is precisely a good measure of how little efffective control or power the UN really has and ultimately a value can be given to show that the UN is really just not worth that much. Those who post have voted whether intentionally or not and their vote says: The UN Doesn’t Matter. I agree. Case closed.
[quote=“fred smith”]No one really cares about the UN really.
… Those who post have voted whether intentionally or not and their vote says: the UN Doesn’t Matter. I agree. Case closed.[/quote]
A fairly non-controversial statement I suppose.
Question for you though: If Clinton does end up getting the job, do you think this will change at all? Would you see it as a positive development?
Is it: “Well maybe with a more politically savvy General Secretary --who knows how US politics works-- perhaps more can be accomplished”;
or
“Oh no, now there’s going to be stronger pressure for nations to turn over funds to be embezzled by the Club of Corrupt Dictators’ Nephews”?
[color=black]
Front-runner for 2006 UN Secretary General post,
William Jefferson Clinton
[/color]
My favorite line is by the new US ambassador to the UN. You could lop off the top 10 floors of the UN building and no one would know. I agree.
Clinton. Hah! and they thought that had serious sexual harrassment and rape problems NOW.
The UN is a fig leaf (I seem to be using the word a lot today) that enables other countries pretend that they have any say in running world affairs when they really do not. Why don’t they? Is it because the US is shutting them out? Nope. They simply are unwilling to spend the money or make the level of commitment that would make them serious players. And for this, we need to cater to their “sensibilities?” F*** that.
What is the UN so afraid of? Why the whitewash? Volker after all was a Carter Era official. Is he involved with covering something up to protect Annan? Why the big fuss about letting the US Congress see these documents? What is the UN trying to hide from the US?
Very very very interesting. I do hope that we all learn a lot more about this in the coming weeks.
[quote]A former U.N.-appointed investigator probing corruption in the Iraq oil-for-food program on Monday defended his decision to retain confidential official documents after he quit the inquiry and give them to a congressional committee.
Robert Parton, the former senior counsel of the Independent Inquiry Committee (IIC), said he resigned last month in frustration with the panel, which is headed by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker, for not providing a tougher account of how U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan handled the $64 billion program.
In response to a subpoena from the House International Relations Committee, Parton turned over several boxes of papers and audio tapes to the committee, one of several that are conducting their own inquiries into the U.N.-administered program.
Parton, a former FBI official, said he had kept the documents to prove that he had disputed the IIC’s findings. Although Parton was subject to U.N. confidentiality and diplomatic immunity agreements, he said he felt “legally obligated to comply” with a congressional subpoena from the committee chaired by Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.).
“I kept my copies of certain materials relating to the areas of the investigation for which I was responsible because of my concern that the investigative process and conclusions were flawed,” Parton said. “Although I sought to avoid any public discussion of these issues, I had repeatedly voiced my concerns internally to the IIC and wanted to retain a record of my efforts so that, if it became necessary, I could establish that I was not associated with the path the IIC . . . chose to take.”
“I had hoped never to release the materials and have made every effort to maintain their confidentiality,” Parton added.
Parton’s attorney, Lanny J. Davis, released the statement after the Volcker committee sought a federal court order blocking Parton from providing two other congressional committees with additional documents or testimony. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), and the House Government Reform Committee’s subcommittee on national security, emerging threats and international relations, chaired by Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.), had set a Thursday deadline for Parton to provide additional documents and testify.
Late Monday, lawyers representing Volcker, Parton, Shays and Coleman agreed to a 10-day delay while they try to reach an agreement that would enable Parton to cooperate with the congressional committees without jeopardizing Volcker’s ongoing investigation.
“The injunction freezes the status quo for 10 days, which gives congressional committees, the U.N. and Mr. Parton time to reach a reasonable agreement on how to proceed,” Shays said in a statement. “I continue to believe that Congress can get the information we need while maintaining the integrity of Volcker investigation.”
The U.N. oil-for-food program was established in 1996 to exempt Iraq’s government from sanctions to sell oil to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian goods. Saddam Hussein’s government abused the program, siphoning more than $2 billion in illegal kickbacks from companies that traded with it.
Annan established the Volcker committee in April 2004 to investigate allegations that U.N. official had engaged in corrupt activities. In February, the committee accused the program’s administrator, Benon Sevan, of improperly steering lucrative oil contracts to an Egyptian businessman.
A March 29 Volcker report cleared Annan of allegations that he had used his influence to direct oil-for-food business to a company that employed his son, Kojo. But the report faulted Annan for not conducting an adequate investigation into reports of possible conflicts of interest in awarding the contract.
Volcker agreed Friday to release Parton, who oversaw the investigation into Kofi Annan, from his confidentiality agreement for the limited purpose of making a public statement on his views of Annan’s role. But the Volcker committee is seeking to block Parton from testifying before Congress and has demanded that he return all his documents to the committee, saying they were obtained unlawfully.
The Volcker committee’s lawyer, Susan M. Ringler, warned in a letter to Davis that Parton has violated U.S. law by providing documents to Hyde’s committee. She also argued that the release of documents “threatens the IIC’s ability to obtain cooperation from witnesses in its ongoing investigation of the oil for food program and may put at risk the lives of witnesses who have already cooperated with the IIC.”[/quote]