Swamp Musings

It's been a very interesting afternoon. Lots of changes are probable around my swamp in the next few months but not enough information to cast them into the infinite Google maw just yet.


Of course if you've been reading these notes for just a bit, you know I have a real desire to move the U.N. to Fangataufa. There's so much ammo beyond the fact that >80% of the tin-pots and outright moonbats in that org hate the U.S. to get it out of here that additional linkage goodness seems excessive. Got some recent stuff anyway.


WSJ - Kofi Annan Must Go

By NORM COLEMAN

December 1, 2004; Page A10

"It's time for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to resign.

Over the past seven months, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair, has conducted an exhaustive, bipartisan investigation into the scandal surrounding the U.N. Oil-for-Food program. That noble program was established by the U.N. to ease the suffering of the Iraqi people, then languishing under Saddam Hussein's ironfisted rule, as well as the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the U.N. after the first Gulf War. While sanctions were designed to instigate the removal of Saddam from power, or at least render him impotent, the Oil-for-Food program was designed to support the Iraqi people with food and other humanitarian aid under the watchful eye of the U.N.

Our Investigative Subcommittee has gathered overwhelming evidence that Saddam turned this program on its head. Rather than erode his grip on power, the program was manipulated by Saddam to line his own pockets and actually strengthen his position at the expense of the Iraqi people. At our hearing on Nov. 15, we presented evidence that Saddam accumulated more than $21 billion through abuses of the Oil-for-Food program and U.N. sanctions. We continue to amass evidence that he used the overt support of prominent members of the U.N., such as France and Russia, along with numerous foreign officials, companies and possibly even senior U.N. officials, to exploit the program to his advantage. We have obtained evidence that indicates that Saddam doled out lucrative oil allotments to foreign officials, sympathetic journalists and even one senior U.N. official, in order to undermine international support for sanctions. In addition, we are gathering evidence that Saddam gave hundreds of thousands -- maybe even millions -- of Oil-for-Food dollars to terrorists and terrorist organizations. All of this occurred under the supposedly vigilant eye of the U.N." (snip, read it all)

Sen. Coleman is chairman of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.



Emmett Tyrrell is having lunch. It's not pretty.
Kofi Jr.



So what's new?
Annan's Son Took Payments Through 2004



Can I get a pardon?
Americans' Role Eyed in U.N. Oil Scandal

By BRIAN ROSS and RHONDA SCHWARTZ

"Dec. 1, 2004 — Former American fugitive Marc Rich was a middleman for several of Iraq's suspect oil deals in February 2001, just one month after his pardon from President Clinton, according to oil industry shipping records obtained by ABC News.

And a U.S. criminal investigation is looking into whether Rich, as well as several other prominent oil traders, made illegal payments to Iraq in order to obtain the lucrative oil contracts." (snip)

.....hmmmmmmm....



"U.N. Out of U.S. " ad clip. This one opens with a choice, not directly.