The Great Oil-for-Food Bugaboo

First, I would like people to notice something that separates Kofi Annan from George W. Bush at ANY point in the latter's life:

Secretary General Kofi Annan said Wednesday that he took personal responsibility for the management failures highlighted in a damning new report on the oil-for-food program, and he urged adoption of fundamental changes in the way the United Nations is run.

Addressing the Security Council along with the report's author, the former Federal Reserve chairman, Paul A. Volcker, Mr. Annan said, "The report is critical of me personally, and I accept the criticism."

What?

Taking personal responsibility?!!

Obviously the United Nations is completely wrong for America!

Now, speaking of this Oil-for-Food thing -- surely Dear Leader can be relieved that he had nothing to do with this program...

While US Navy ships were patrolling the Gulf in February 2003, making a show of boarding and searching leaky dhows and small ships, they turned a blind eye to tankers carrying $54 million of Iraqi oil under the scheme on Jordan's behalf, the report said.


A total of 7.7 million barrels of oil was smuggled through the Khor al-Amaya oil terminal in at least seven shipments in February and March 2003, it said.

The sales were arranged by a businessman in Jordan named "Mr Shaheen" who told an Iraqi official he had "the Pentagon in one pocket and the CIA in the other."

The oil was bought at a heavily discounted price of around $7 a barrel, the report said. If it had been sold at fair market value within the oil-for-food program, it could have earned $200 million to buy humanitarian goods.

"The illegal sales of oil from Khor al-Amaya came at a staggering cost to the program in terms of potential revenue foregone," the report said.

The 1,000-page report showed shipping records from a tanker included instructions for the ship's captain saying the US Navy was "already aware about your passage and itinerary." The investigation said the smuggling in early 2003 was "the single largest episode of oil smuggling" under the oil-for-food program and occurred "with the approval of the United States government."

I am going to take a wild stab here and guess that Moron Junction and Ernest T. Bass, ESQ take no notice of these two inconvenient facts.

Oh, and while we are at it, about that $8 plus billion that disappeared under the Iraqi Provisional Authority governed by Presidential Medal of Freedom Winner, Paul "These Combat Boots are made for Fleeing" Bremer?