From the AP:
The Swedish government knew in 2000 that Saddam Hussein’s government demanded kickbacks from companies participating in the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program, officials and news reports said Tuesday.
An unidentified Swedish company informed the country’s embassy in Amman, Jordan, in 2000 that Iraq was demanding 10 percent “fees” on all deals as a way to circumvent U.N. sanctions on Saddam’s regime, according to a Swedish Foreign Ministry document published on the Web site of Swedish Radio.
The document was sent from the embassy in Amman to the Foreign Ministry and Swedish delegation at the United Nations in December 2000, Swedish Radio said.
The document stated clearly that the extra fees violated U.N. sanctions. But it was “clear that an open Swedish engagement in this issue would negatively affect other Swedish business opportunities” in Iraq, it said.
Anders Kruse, head of the Foreign Ministry’s legal division, said Sweden had forwarded the information to the U.N. committee in charge of sanctions and was told the extra fees were widely known.
“This was something that was more or less commonly known, that was the picture we received,” Kruse said. “We could not do anything about it. There were no possibilities for us here in Stockholm to do something.”
A U.N. report last year said more than 2,200 companies had colluded with Saddam’s government, paying kickbacks on lucrative contracts in the 1996-2003 program.
[my emphasis]
If the kickback demands were already “widely known” in 2000, why was nothing done about it? Why wasn’t the UN committee in charge of sanctions screaming bloody murder?
Oh, yeah. Now I remember. Because some of that kickback money wound up in the bank accounts of those responsible for overseeing the sanctions.
And yet some people continue to believe the UN bestows some sort of moral or legal authority, the absolutist nature of which practically rises to the level of the metaphysical. An error in judgment, on the part of these UN adepts? Or willful blindness commingled with utopian fantasies and transnationalist aspirations?
I know. Tough call.
Anyway, for his part, Swedish foreign minister Jan Eliasson is denying any knowledge of payoffs—a claim that UN ambassador John Bolton’s straight talking mustache, “Regis,” isn’t readily buying, noting that he “once slept with a Swedish flight attendant who in the morning asked for cab fare plus 10%, claiming that in her country, that’s ‘just how we do things.’
“Of course, she got nothing and liked it.”
(h/t AJ Strata)
CALL ACE.
I don’t really care about the corruption. That’s how bureaucracies work. Nor the anti-Americanism and the anti-Zionism. An organization is little more than the sum of its parts, and with nearly 25% Muslim countries and so much more European appeasers (And those who realize how easy it is to scratch the backs of the quarter), that is to be expected.
The thing I, and clearly I’m preaching to the choir here, stating the MIND-NUMBINGLY OBVIOUS, mind is the childish fantasy that so many Lefties indulge in (Probably ingrained in their head by media archetypes since youth) that the UN is some sort of grand, impartial entity that disobeying is a sin worse than all others… That their moral authority is unimpeachable.
Then again, it may just be convenient alignment of values. Who else is consistantly anti-Israeli and anti-American but the American leftists?
I think it’s that cool blue flag they have, with its “We are the World” theme. Plus, all the multifarious quasi-socialist bureaucratic organizations, each with a pronounceable acronym, which are all there to do GOOD! (Whether they actually DO do good or not is irrelevant to lefties, since their good intentions are all that is required to maintain their self-righteousness, no matter the result in the real world.)
The UN fails to serve a single useful purpose not already performed more effectively by other organizations.
The US pays roughly $7 billion/year to the UN.
Americans–indeed all the people of the world–should be disgusted by the continued existance of the UN.
And the Swedish Bikini Team was already facing an uphill struggle to penetrate the highly competitive world of Iraqi bikini teams.
The Keystone Kops were there first, and much funnier.
Hussein was just taking kickbacks so that he could feed the children (into shredders).
Yes, Jeff, there’s something about this revelation (if true) that is irritating at best. Where’s the best of the old Viking spirit when Sweden needs it most?
To quote: “We could not do anything about it. There were no possibilities for us here in Stockholm to do something.†eoq.
Oh yes there was. You just decided not to do it and even make clear why—Swedish business concerns might have suffered. How simply and irrevocably disgusting of you. Good grief…
I’ll also admit to wondering about a (timely?) statement like this for other reasons, one of which I’ll posit here—sometimes really, really bad news is leaked just a little by little before the deluge begins. The hope seems to be that small revelations before the dam breaks will allow one to more float with the current than get drowned like a rat.
Sweden, I certainly hope that isn’t what all this is about.
Reminds me of that CPB asshole Jim Lehrer. He claims he’s never voted in order to maintain his strict objectivity as a journalist. All the while, he’s a shill for the left. Fuck Sweden. And fuck the UN. The sooner we’re out of it the better.
I’d pay a thousand dollars to watch a flight of F-4 Phantoms drop 500 pounders on Turtle Bay, come back with napalm, and strafe any survivors with 20mm cannon fire.
Why? Because I’m nostalgic. Those F-4s were cool planes.
I can’t think of any organization that has talked so much and done so little. No, let’s be honest. An organization that stood by and watched the massacre in Rwanda, that stands by and does nothing in Darfur, that sent baby rapers to Africa to keep the peace and one that took bribes from Saddam deserves nothing but contempt and removal from this planet.
Too cruel? I think not, but I’d compromise. Hold the napalm, and use cluster bombs on the second pass.
TW: french. I kid you not.
Hey is this Al-Alamoudi day or what?
http://americanthinker.com/
Mark D – count me in for a thousand, too – but, for the sake of innocent New Yorkers (there are some, and the National Review bldg is only 10 blocks away) I’d go with a fake bomb drop timed exactly with a wired explosion, to ensure ONLY the UN site is destroyed, but that the ENTIRE UN site is destroyed.
On the second round, the F-4s can drop bags of salt, which can then be worked into the soil, and then the whole barren site can be designated a “Heritage Site” (tho obviously not with UNESCO!), to remind men of the folly of overweening, self-satisfied multi-national organizations (League of Nations, RIP).
Um, obviously none of us have given this any thought or anything . . .
Jeff,
Great post.
Now there’s only one mystery left. How come the right doesn’t ever bring up the fact that Halliburton was doing work in Iraq through a European subsidiary while Dick Cheney was its chair.
Beats me. I guess for the same reason we don’t bring up any of the other work that Halliburton was doing while Cheney was its chair in order to to spin conspiracy theories.
We have other interests.
I wouldn’t mind penetrating the Swedish Bikini Team.
Or even the Iraqi Bikini Team, although penetrating the sack over them sounds challenging.
Dude. Leg hair and mustaches only grow so fast, mkay?
‘course, the gals do grow them faster than what passes for Swedish men nowadays…
Okay, now y’all are just threatening to procreate with all these critters just to annoy me, is that it? That’s gotta be it.
To anon who stated: “How come the right doesn’t ever bring up the fact that Halliburton was doing work in Iraq through a European subsidiary while Dick Cheney was its chair.”
How come you don’t make sense of it?
Uh, anon, do try to keep up, or is it just that your memory is failing?
Jeff is correct from his point of view, but there were certain of us on the Right who were shouting it from the housetops. It was, after all, a golden opportunity—a major American firm with boots, facilities, and management on the ground that had the capability and the expertise to do service and support for the troops. Things like messing (food, in case you didn’t get it), fuel, and housing aren’t organic to the military any more, as part of the “peace dividend” </sneer> They have to be done by
sutlerscivilian contractors.It probably saved a year, maybe more, since we didn’t have to wait for people to form consortia of pissants with the proper graft for every Congressman before proceeding. Just to jog your memory, how about “no-bid contracts” as a subject for the chittering of the moonbat colonies?
Regards,
Ric
If Halliburton had only given a bag of cash – strike that – campaign contribution to the DNC, I’m sure all would be forgiven.
I mean the no-bid contracts, not the UN. No forgiveness there at any price.
As the head and focal point of so much extensive, base corruption, Secretary-General Kofi Annan is as fine a candidate for a war-crimes tribunal as anyone I can think of.
If he truly knows anything about honor, it must be that only valued by thieves and rogues of that sort. I don’t see where his real constituency can consider him anything but betrayal personified.