Conservatives love talking about Iraq's hidden revenues in the 90's. They will scream "Oil for Food" until their vocal cords are shredded and our ears are bleeding.
And for very simple reason: it's great fun to be able to call Kofi Annan a thief, isn't it? Makes people not have to focus on the president! Well, then, shouldn't we account for the other 90% of Saddam's illicit funds?
Read on for the source of most of Saddam's illegal funds and how the US did nothing to stop it.
First, some math:
The Oil-for-Food program was a $60 billion dollar program started by the UN to allow Iraq to buy medical supplies, the necessities of daily life, and of course, as the name implies, food. Of this $60 billion, it would seem that through some wrongdoing, by autonomous individuals within the UN, $1.7 billion dollars somehow became direct revenue for the Saddam Hussein regime. This includes individuals like Benon Savan, among others who seem to have manipulated the program to get some of their own shady deals through. As I stated above, this amounted to about $1.7 billion going into Saddam's pockets. This accounts for just over 10% of the $10.9 billion dollars that the Duelfer report listed Saddam as receiving between 1991 and 2003.
The report by CIA weapons inspector Charles Duelfer found that oil-for-food corruption generated $1.7 billion for Saddam. It said illegal oil contracts generated about $8 billion: $4.4 billion with Jordan, $2.8 billion with Syria and $710 million with Turkey. A short-lived agreement with Egypt generated $33 million. Overall, Saddam had $10.9 billion in illicit revenue from 1990 to 2003, Duelfer said.
And the best part about all those smuggling revenues? The US knew about it the entire time, but just didn't care!
Though considered smuggling, most of the trade took place with the knowledge - and sometimes the tacit consent - of the United States and other nations.
Now, conservatives will often throw out the $21.3 billion dollar figure that the Senate Governmental Affairs committee pinpointed using a different methodology. Of this,
$13.7 billion dollars was from oil smuggling. As we've seen, $1.7 billion dollars of this was from Oil-for-Food.
Of course, as expected, Republicans immediately jumped on the $21.3 billion figure and attempted to pin it all on the heathen UN.
But it looks like this has caught the eyes of some Democrats (and Chris Shays) confused over the obsession of Senate Republicans in persecuting Kofi Annan, while not looking into the smuggling that we were apparently complicit in:
"I am determined to see to it that our own government's failures and oversights or mistaken judgments and decisions should also be exposed," said Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif.
Some Republicans are promising to hold hearings on the matter next year.
"I believe the smuggling issue is huge," said GOP Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, chairman of the House Government Reform subcommittee on national security.
::snip::
But Democrats say Annan cannot be held accountable for smuggling that they say the United States condoned.
"When three-quarters of the money ... is something that we specifically acquiesced in, it just sort of highlights how wrong it is to put it at Kofi Annan's doorstep," said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.
But there is another side to the story. According to David Mack, former deputy assistant secretary of state for Near East Affairs, the illegal trade with Jordan was acknowledged, but nothing was done about it because it was believed the Jordanian economy would collapse without Iraqi trade. With Turkey and Syria, however, the situation was a bit different:
"With Turkey, it was plain illegal. It was smuggling, but everybody just said, `Oh well, geez, it was too hard to try to do anything about that,'" Mack said.
The shipments to Jordan and Turkey were not concealed. Trucks carrying oil were frequently seen entering those countries from Iraq. The Clinton and Bush administrations annually issued waivers that allowed the two countries to continue receiving U.S. aid despite their violations of the Iraq penalties.
Syria was another matter.
Allen Keiswetter, deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs in 2000-01, said U.S. officials were aware that Syria was buying oil from Iraq through a pipeline.
"We objected to it mightily and often, but there did not seem any good way to stop it short of military action," he said.
This seems to have gone on all the way into 2003. An interesting little side-note to throw at the shrieking Oil-for-Food freepers who seem to think $1.7 billion is huge but don't mind the US overlooking the other $11 billion that went Saddam's way.
Original AP story