October 8, 2004
AS THE STORY SLIPS AWAY FROM THE LEFT:
1,300 Oil Vouchers Begin to Tell Story: Hussein Courted A World of Nations, Firms, Individuals (R. Jeffrey Smith and Colum Lynch, October 8, 2004, Washington Post)
The immense scope of an Iraqi effort in the late 1990s to curry political support for ending an international trade embargo is reflected in a list of more than 1,300 oil "vouchers" that then-President Saddam Hussein gave to more than a hundred corporations, foreign officials and political parties stretching from North America to Asia, according to a report issued on Wednesday by the CIA's Iraq Survey Group.The vouchers, which provided selective rights to buy Iraqi oil at a discount and to resell it for a huge profit, were provided to both mainstream and opposition political parties in countries such as Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Yugoslavia; to oil companies in Turkey, Japan, Belgium, Italy, Canada and France; to an arms conglomerate in China; and to individuals in Switzerland, Jordan, the Netherlands, Russia, Malaysia and Burma, among others.
Each of the oil sales was approved by the United Nations, which was monitoring Iraqi oil transactions in an effort begun in 1996 -- known as the oil-for-food program -- to ensure that the resulting revenue was used for humanitarian projects. But Iraq saw the program differently, as a key part of a scheme to free itself from the impact of sanctions and, ultimately, to gain political support for their termination, according to the report.
Although Iraq had to forgo some profit for itself by selling oil to the voucher recipients at a deep discount, the individual concessions Iraq granted helped the country curry foreign political influence and win a series of illicit trade agreements with its neighbors that netted nearly $11 billion between 1990 and 2003.
Since we all knew already that there were no WMD this is quickly turning into a story about the corruption of our putative allies and the UN and of Saddam's ability to game a system that Senator Kerry says he'd have kept in place. Posted by Orrin Judd at October 8, 2004 7:37 PM
I'm not convinced that Saddam's bribes would have gotten him where he wanted. Not too many sitting governmental figures were mentioned in the report (lots of former figures, some of whom still have influence). Just because he thought something, didn't mean it was going to work. One UN official, but the votes that count on that sort of thing are on the Security Council, and the US probably would have used its veto.
Posted by: Brennan Griffin at October 8, 2004 7:42 PM
Brennan:
Sure, until a President was elected who didn't take a hard line on Iraq.
Also, at some point the most pressing issue would have been the suffering of the Iraqi people, which had already caused the food-for-oil, (oil-for-bribes), programme to be set up in the first place.
At least two UN Commissioners overseeing the oil-for-food programme had resigned because they didn't feel that the programme was effective enough in supporting the Iraqis, and the one from Ireland was organizing a protest organization to lobby the UN to end the sanctions.
The UN sanctions would have ended at some point.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at October 8, 2004 7:49 PMOrrin, of all people I wouldn't expect you to make the mistake of saying "there were no WMD" when, to be accurate, you should say something like "we found WMD programs on temporary hold and lots of WMD capability and a few odd poison gas shells, but not stockpiles of WMD."
Maybe this is nitpicking, but the difference seems important.
Posted by: PapayaSF at October 8, 2004 7:50 PMIt's serendipitous for the President that this is becoming a widely covered story in time to aid him in the election.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at October 8, 2004 7:52 PMHmmm, serendipitously, three weeks before the election, the government issued a report with proving that John Kerry has no workable foreign policy or plan to protect the country bated with a story that the MSM would find irresistable.
Posted by: David Cohen at October 8, 2004 8:20 PMThe word from France is that this simply amounts to a bunch on unverified rumors.
Posted by: Uncle Bill at October 9, 2004 10:04 AM