SamSaid!

OIL AND CORRUPTION

     It is always interesting to see how the TV networks and the major newspapers and magazines select the stories to “ride” day after day. The Abu Graib prisoner abuse story is a good example and the current flap over the Marine shooting of an insurgent is another. Day after day we get bombarded. But what about stories that can have a major impact? Isn't it odd that they become the 5th or 6th item in a long list of news snippets and not much more. The Oil for Food program of the UN is a current example. Aside from Fox News, no one else seems particularly interested in digging out the facts underlying a story with major implications.

     The Oil for Food program was sponsored by the UN to help needy Iraqis after the Gulf War. The sale of Iraqi oil would be the source of revenue to pay for the program. But the program was bastardized by big time connivers working hand in glove with Saddam to get around the sanctions imposed by the UN after the Gulf War. Now we know that millions and millions of dollars were fed back into Saddam's coffers as well as the pockets of French Ministers, UN officials, and Russian plutocrats, and assorted privateers who were buddies of Saddam.  An investigatory Commission headed by American Paul Volcker was apppointed to find out where all the money went, but at this point Kofi Annan is stonewalling efforts to get the documentary evidence needed to trace the money trails. Annan's son is directly implicated in the whole scheme. The total sale of Iraqi oil under this program is over $11 Billion, and only a fraction of the money ever found its way back to the needy Iraqi people.

     So why does Kofi Annan refuse to produce the audits and related documents from the UN files in NY City? Obviously, he is protecting a lot of people who are very much at risk. A factual declaration could be exteremely embarrassing to UN leadership, the French Government and the Russian leaders as well.   Yet our big time newshounds sort of pass off the charges as ho-hum. This is the kind of stuff that can bring down a government or the UN leadership, but ABC, NBC and CBS downplay the whole messy affair as just another case of pilfering  — not much more. They evidently prefer to editorialize on trivia.  US taxpayers put up the money to support the UN  — a highly disproportionate amount of the cost to keep that outfit going. Yet we are not entitled to very pertient information about a program conducted right under our noses in New York City? And at the moment, we are letting Kofi Annan get away with it while he is bad mouthing our efforts in the middle east. My beef is not solely with Annan. It is primarily with the major news outfits who look the other way instead of making a big deal out of a program that is little more than a perfidious sham.

     Fox should not have to go it alone. Brokaw, Rather and Jennings should go after the UN and Kofi Annan in a big way and force him to cough up the documentary evidence that will disclose the massive corruption he is attempting to conceal. We are not talking about nickels and dimes here or a program that is at the periphery of Iraq. It is big bucks and directly relates to the perfidy of our European “buddies”. As Americans who are footing the bill, we have every right to know the details of the unprincipled thievery of the UN and high level French officials who have pocketed huge sums. Is anyone in the media interested or concerned??  Just watch the network news  — back burner.