As Judge Robert Bork can tell you, having your last name turned into a verb is never a good thing. Still worse is when your name is taken, robbed of its capitalization, and used to describe others such as you. Vidkun Quisling was Norway’s most infamous Nazi collaborator. When Churchill spoke of “These vile Quislings in our midst,” he made the name synonymous with “traitor.” Now that the interim report of the U.N.’s so-called “Independent Inquiry Committee” on the Oil for Food program is out, it’s quite apparent that all the little volckers of the U.N. are doing their best to divert any serious investigation of the largest rip-off in history.
The report, released last Thursday, admits what is no longer deniable and ignores everything else. In January 2004, the Al Mada newspaper in Baghdad released a list of people, companies and nations that had been bribed by Saddam’s regime thought the Oil for Food scam. Among them was the name of Benon Sevan, the U.N. bureaucrat who headed up the program. The February 3 report says that Sevan asked Iraq for oil allocations for AMEP, a company run by his pal Fakhry Abdelnour. AMEP got its allocations (totaling about $1.5 million) and some part of the money resulting from the sale of the oil (thought to be at least $160,000) found its way into Sevan’s pockets. But why?
The Iraqis weren’t passing out oil allocations worth millions just to see if they could. Every bribe Saddam’s regime paid was for a purpose. The regime obviously wanted Sevan to do (or not do) something in return for the bribe. But what?
We’ve been volckered.
It’s easy to see from the amount of money Volcker was paid and the fact he was hand picked by Kofi Annan to lead this internal independent investigation that the reports were never going to point any fingers at Kofi himself. Sevan, while having done wrong, is not the only one involved at this high level. He is being used as a scapegoat.
As I’ve said before it will be interesting to find out what the next report will uncover. I wonder if Kofi is willing to put his son, Kojo, up for the next role as scapegoat.
The rest of the article is a very good read. You can read it all HERE
This statement summed it up for me; Every bribe Saddam’s regime paid was for a purpose. The regime obviously wanted Sevan to do (or not do) something in return for the bribe. But what? In the thoroughly volckered report, there’s no mention of the motive for the bribe, or the service Sevan did in return for it. Or even that the “Independent Inquiry” is looking into it.
- Does anyone think our congress will do better? I do think they will try.
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