This is not news to Balloon Juice readers, as we have been discussing the Russian, French, And German pefidy in regards to oil and Iraq for years. Check out this new bombshell:
Documents from Saddam Hussein’s oil ministry reveal he used oil to bribe top French officials into opposing the imminent U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
The oil ministry papers, described by the independent Baghdad newspaper al-Mada, are apparently authentic and will become the basis of an official investigation by the new Iraqi Governing Council, the Independent reported Wednesday.
“I think the list is true,” Naseer Chaderji, a governing council member, said. “I will demand an investigation. These people must be prosecuted.”
Such evidence would undermine the French position before the war when President Jacques Chirac sought to couch his opposition to the invasion on a moral high ground.
Pretty nasty stuff:
The list quoted by al-Mada included members of Arab ruling families, religious organisations, politicians and political parties from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Sudan, China, Austria, France and other countries. But no names were available last night.
Organisations named include the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Communist Party, India’s Congress Party and the Palestine Liberation Organisation. The United States and Britain launched the war on Iraq on 19 March, 2003 without UN approval after tense negotiations in the Security Council collapsed in the face of a veto threat from France. France’s relations with Britain and the US deteriorated to their worst point in decades over the Iraq rift, and have yet to heal.
Here is a slogan that does ring true- “Chirac Lied… People Died.”
Jon Henke
“NO War for Oil!!!”
Translation:
“Give us oil, and we’ll make sure there’s no war”
Hey, turns out the anti-war crowd was right, after all.
Ralph Gizzip
They weren’t too correct. There is a war and they ain’t gettin’ no oil.
Bob Hawkins
Chirac should be tried by the Iraqi people.
andrew
Forget the French. This is one area where I stongly agree with the right-wingers. If we as Americans start ignoring the French maybe we can get them to stop being such pricks in the security council. Less French obstructionism means a better UN and more multilateral terror fighting.
Andrew J. Lazarus
I wouldn’t credit the papers so fast. A number of alleged documents (including some passed by the IGC for its own purposes) have gone down as forgeries: the Galloway MP bribe, the Al Q-Saddam link, etc.
CadillaqJaq
I read an email copy of the papers, translated to English, earlier today. I’ll give them a lot of credence until someone can prove beyound a doubt that they are false or forgeries. Reason being, it makes sense to me that France in particular had a whole lot invested in maintaining the status quo in pre-war Iraq.
As far as them being forgeries, who is going to do the leg work to disprove them? The Dems? Who seem to have an ongoing love affair with liberal internationalism, the UN (read: France).
Slartibartfast
I, too, am all for waiting and seeing.
Dean
Andrew (Lazarus):
The Daily Telegraph’s documentation (which were separate and distinct from those the Christian Science Monitor used) have neither been refuted, nor shown to be forgeries.
Nor, it seems, has Galloway proceeded w/ the libel charges that he loudly declaimed would exonerate him.
wallster
Ha! If this is true, we won’t have to hear the French say ‘I told you so” anymore.
I doubt it is true, though.
dg
It seems everyone was in on the Iraq ”Oil For Food” program.
At least Cheney was a little trickier, hiding behind French subsidiaries of Halliburton to profit off Iraqi oil before the start of the war (and, of course, securing billions of dollars in government contracts during the war and currently):
Halliburton Iraq ties more than Cheney said
NewsMax Wires
Monday, June 25, 2001
UNITED NATIONS, June 23 (UPI) — Halliburton Co., the oil company that was headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, signed contracts with Iraq worth $73 million through two subsidiaries while he was at its helm, the Washington Post reported.
During last year’s presidential campaign, Cheney said Halliburton did business with Libya and Iran through foreign subsidiaries, but maintained he had imposed a “firm policy” against trading with Iraq.
“Iraq’s different,” the Post quoted him as saying.
Oil industry executives and confidential U.N. records showed, however, that Halliburton held stakes in two companies that signed contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer, the Post reported.
Two former senior executives of the Halliburton subsidiaries said they knew of no policy against dealing with Iraq. One of them said he was certain Cheney knew about the deals, though he had never spoken about them to the vice president directly.
If he “was ever in a conversation or meeting where there was a question of pursuing a project with someone in Iraq, he said, ‘No,’ ” Mary Matalin, Cheney’s counselor, said.
“In a joint venture, he would not have reviewed all their existing contracts,” Matalin told the Post. “The nature of those joint ventures was that they had a separate governing structure, so he had no control over them.”
The deal was legal, the Post said, and they showed how U.S. firms use foreign subsidiaries and joint ventures to avoid doing business with Baghdad. The practice is not a violation of U.S. law and falls within the U.N.-run oil-for-food program.
The Post said U.N. records showed that the dealings were more extensive than originally reported and than Cheney had acknowledged, however.
According to the report, the Halliburton subsidiaries, Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co., sold material to Baghdad through French affiliates. The sales lasted from the first half of 1997 to the summer of 2000. Cheney resigned from Halliburton in August.
“Halliburton and Ingersoll-Rand, as far as I know, had no official policy about that, other than we would be in compliance with applicable U.S. and international laws,” said Cleive Dumas, who oversaw Ingersoll Dresser Pump’s business in the Middle East, including Iraq.
Cheney’s spokeswoman, Juleanna Glover Weiss, referred the Post’s calls to Halliburton, which in turn, directed them back to Cheney’s office.
In a July 30, 2000, interview on ABC-TV’s “This Week,” Cheney denied that Halliburton or its subsidiaries traded with Baghdad. Three weeks later, on the same program, he modified his response after being informed that a Halliburton spokesman had said that Dresser Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump traded with Iraq.
Cheney said he did not know the subsidiaries were doing business with the Iraqi regime when Halliburton purchased Dresser Industries in September 1998.
The firms traded with Iraq for more than a year under Cheney, however. They signed nearly $30 million in contracts before he sold Halliburton’s 49 percent stake in Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co. in December 1999 and its 51 percent interest in Dresser Rand to Ingersoll-Rand in February 2000, the Post quoted U.N. records as saying.
Cheney has long criticized of unilateral U.S. sanctions, which he says penalize American companies. He has pushed for a review of policy toward Iraq, Iran and Libya.
gay fotos
Quo animo? – With what spirit? (or intent?)