Help, need info fast. The food for oil "scandal" what are the facts?

[Hamlette]

My mother's crazy republican cousin is in town and my mom wants me to take her on. This was apparently one of the attacks from the cousin re: Iraq. My first response is: so? let's say Kofi Annan's son ripped off the UN and or Iraq, which incidently might be said of Halliburton too, but leave that aside. Let's say it's true. The solution is not to send my kid to die in Iraq. The solution is to investiage the alleged wrong doing and punish the wrongdoers. Or, easier still, cancel the program.

What's my second best argument?

[harpo]

1. investigation...then action...pretty simple

[Oreo]

2. The key is Chalabi

I dont know the details but I think Chalabi brought up the allegations


Google results
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22food+for+oil%22+%2Bchalabi

[Oreo]

3. bingo!

http://slate.msn.com/id/2101123/

Can anyone still doubt Ahmad Chalabi's place among history's great con men? Last week's police raid on his Baghdad offices—following reports that he'd supplied U.S. intelligence secrets to Iran—signaled the collapse of his once-mighty power base in Washington.

But con men tend to thrive when their marks want to be conned. And President George W. Bush's national-security team was rife with the most gullible marks imaginable. As long as Chalabi's interests converged with the Bush team's interests, he was their man. Once it became clear that he was diddling others, too, including Iraqis and Iranians whose interests opposed ours, the game was up, the con exposed, the alliance shattered.

That's what happened last week. The only surprise is that it didn't happen months ago.

[Hamlette]

8. great link, thanks, shows Chalabi used the food for oil scandal to

discredit Brahimi because Chalabi still thought he could run Iraq.


That and all the US companies is great ammunition.

[Maple]

4. Check the US companies involved in it

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGB6IOAJL0E.html

"Among the companies listed that received Iraqi oil were four American companies: Texaco and Chevron, now ChevronTexaco Corp.; Mobil, now Exxon Mobil Corp.; and a third company listed as Phoenix International.

ChevronTexaco and Exxon Mobil have been subpoenaed by the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office for a grand jury investigation into the oil-for-food program.

Among the thousands of companies listed as exporting goods to Iraq were a handful of American ones. They included Baker Atlas, an oil service company owned by Baker Hughes Inc.; Cargill Inc.; and Continental Grain, now owned by Cargill."

[shelley806]

7. One was a Halliburton subsidiary

[Warren DeMontague]

5. That Bush could fuck up a ham sandwich...

I think your first argument covers it, though.

[IdaBriggs]

6. Check out this thread for more information.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1232681

The details on your question can be found here:

October 18, 2004, Newskweek / MSNBC.com, United Nations: Oil for food fiasco?: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6214647/site/newsweek/

Revelations by U.S. WMD sleuth Charles Duelfer about corruption in the U.N.-run Oil-for-Food Program in Iraq could further complicate Bush-administration foreign policy. Iraqi documents appended to the report Duelfer published last week identify figures in Russia, France and the Vatican as alleged recipients of oil deals personally approved by Saddam Hussein. Duelfer's report documents how Benon Sevan, the top U.N. official who ran the Oil-for-Food Program, purportedly got deals for 7.2 million barrels of Iraqi oil. Sevan has denied any corruption.

<more>

[shelley806]

9. Here's an excellent article for Cheney, Halliburton and Oil for Food...

Sorry, I don't have the URL; Google the title below or author, and/or Scoop


Under Cheney, Halliburton Helped Saddam Hussein Siphon Billions from UN Oil-for-Food Program
<snip>
By Jason Leopold
"When the Iraqi Survey Group released its long awaited report last week that said Iraq eliminated its weapons programs in the 1990s, President George W. Bush quickly changed his stance on reasons he authorized an invasion of Iraq. While he campaigned for a second term in office, Bush justified the war by saying that that Saddam Hussein was manipulating the United Nation's oil-for-food program, siphoning off billions of dollars from the venture that he intended to use to fund a weapons program.

The report on Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction, prepared by Charles Duelfer, a former U.N. weapons inspector and head of the Iraqi Survey Group, said Saddam Hussein used revenue from the oil-for-food program and "created a web of front companies and used shadowy deals with foreign governments, corporations, and officials to amass $11 billion in illicit revenue ( http://www.registerguard.com/news/2004/10/07/a2.nat.oilfood.1007.html ) in the decade before the US-led invasion last year," reports The New York Times.

"Through secret government-to-government trade agreements, Saddam Hussein's government earned more than $7.5 billion," the report says. "At the same time, by demanding kickbacks from foreign companies that received oil or that supplied consumer goods, Iraq received at least $2 billion more to spend on weapons or on Saddam's extravagant palaces."

But the one company that helped Saddam exploit the oil-for-food program in the mid-1990s that wasn't identified in Duelfer's report was Halliburton, and the person at the helm of Halliburton at the time of the scheme was Vice President Dick Cheney. Halliburton and its subsidiaries were one of several American and foreign oil supply companies that helped Iraq increase its crude exports from $4 billion in 1997 to nearly $18 billion in 2000 by skirting U.S. laws and selling Iraq spare parts so it could repair its oil fields and pump more oil. Since the oil-for-food program began, Iraq has sold $40 billion worth of oil. U.S. and European officials have long argued that the increase in Iraq's oil production also expanded Saddam's ability to use some of that money for weapons, luxury goods and palaces. Security Council diplomats estimate that Iraq was skimming off as much as 10 percent of the proceeds from the oil-for-food program thanks to companies like Halliburton and former executives such as Cheney."

[DefenseLawyer]

10. The United States

was the #1 customer of Iraqi oil from Saddam during the "oil for food" program.