A vote for morals, ethics, and values.

GH: I am sure that all those God fearing moral majority republicans that felt it imperative to impeach a presidnet for a lie about a blow j*B,, will be very upset about an effort to change the rules to allow a man indicted by a Texas grand jury on state political corruption charges to keep his leadership position. You just wait I bet the outcry will be deafening

I will see your accused conservative politician and raise you a liberal secular scumbag.

Come Clean, Kofi
The U.N. secretary-general ducks responsibilty for the Oil for Food scam.

BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Wednesday, November 17, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST

With estimates soaring of graft and fraud under the United Nations Oil for Food program in Iraq, we are hearing a lot about the need to "get to the bottom" of this scandal, the biggest ever to hit the U.N. To get to that bottom will need a much harder look at the top--where Secretary-General Kofi Annan himself resides.

That violates all sorts of taboos. But so, one might suppose, does a United Nations that allowed Saddam Hussein to embezzle at least $21.3 billion in oil money during 12 years, with the great bulk of that sum--a staggering $17.3 billion--pilfered between 1997-2003, on Mr. Annan's watch.

These are the record-breaking new estimates released Monday by the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, whose staffers, despite Mr. Annan's refusal to cooperate, have spent the past seven months voyaging deep into the muck of Oil for Food. At a hearing Monday, these investigators surfaced to tell us the theft and fraud under Oil for Food was at least twice as bad as earlier reports had suggested, and that all this is just a preview of yet more appalling disclosures they expect to release early next year. Sen. Norm Coleman, the subcommittee's chairman, underscored the urgency of such investigations, noting not only that the size of the fraud "is staggering," but that some of Saddam's vast illicit stash might right now be funding terrorists and costing American lives.

Mr. Annan, by contrast, seems to inhabit a different universe--one in which the chief problem lies not in the U.N.'s complicity, including his own, in the biggest fraud in the history of humanitarian relief, but rather in the attempts to shine any light on all that sleaze. In Annan Land, there was earlier this year no need for any probe into Oil for Food; and even now there is no need for any investigating beyond the U.N.'s own "independent inquiry" into itself, led by former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, required to funnel its findings first through Mr. Annan, funded to the tune of $30 million out of one of the old Oil for Food accounts it is supposed to be investigating, and not planning to clock in with any specific results until sometime next summer.

In the spirit of shooting the messenger, Mr. Annan has complained often in recent months about criticism of Oil for Food, denouncing it as a "campaign" that has "hurt the U.N." Monday's Oil for Food hearing evoked from Mr. Annan's spokesman, Fred Eckhard, the comment that Mr. Annan feels he has been "misjudged by certain media" and that Mr. Annan is "not being obstructionist" in his refusal to cooperate with congressional investigators. We are given to understand that Mr. Annan would help if he could, but his job entails so many over-riding responsibilities.

OK, except that when it comes to Oil for Food, Mr. Annan has labored hard in recent months to disavow his own large role and responsibilities. From both Mr. Annan and the entourage of U.N. speechwriters and spokesman who report to him have come a long series of disclaimers and protests, eye-catching less for what they tell us than for what they leave out.


Just last week, we had Mr. Annan's director of communications, Edward Mortimer, asserting in a letter to The Wall Street Journal that Mr. Annan was "not involved" in designing Oil for Food. Technically, it may be correct that Mr. Annan did not actually seal the original deal. But Mr. Annan's own official U.N. biography states that before becoming secretary-general, he "led the first United Nations team negotiating with Iraq on the sale of oil to fund purchases of humanitarian aid"--and that implies a certain familiarity with the origins of Oil for Food.
Once Mr. Annan became secretary-general, he lost little time in getting deeply involved with Oil for Food. In October 1997, just 10 months into the job, he transformed what had begun as an ad hoc, temporary relief measure into the Office of the Iraq Program, an entrenched U.N. department, which reported to him directly--and was eliminated only after the U.S.-led coalition, against Mr. Annan's wishes, deposed Saddam. To run Oil for Food, Mr. Annan picked Benon Sevan (now alleged to have received oil money from Saddam, which he denies) and kept him there until the program ended about six years later.

Mr. Annan's reorganization of Oil for Food meant a nontrivial change in the trajectory of the program. All the signs are that Saddam immediately took the cue that he could now start gaming the program with impunity--and Mr. Annan did not prove him wrong. Within the month, Saddam had created the first crisis over the U.N. weapons inspectors, who were supposed to be part of the sanctions and Oil for Food package. Mr. Annan's response was not to throttle back on Oil for Food but to go before the Security Council a few months later and urge that Baghdad be allowed to import oil equipment along with the food and medicine to which the program had been initially limited. This set the stage for the ensuing burst in Saddam's oil production, kickbacks, surcharges and smuggling.

Mr. Annan then flew to Baghdad for a private powwow with Saddam and returned to declare that this was a man he could do business with. The weapons inspectors returned to Iraq for a short spell, but by the end of 1998, Saddam had evicted them for the next four years. Mr. Annan, however, went right on doing business. And big business it was, however humanitarian in name. Under the Oil for Food deal, Mr. Annan's Secretariat pulled in a 2.2% commission on Saddam's oil sales, totaling a whopping $1.4 billion over the life of the program, to cover the costs of supervising Saddam. Yet somehow the Secretariat never found the funding to fully meter oil shipments, ensure full inspections of all goods entering Iraq, or catch the pricing scams that by the new estimates of Senate investigators let Saddam rake in $4.4 billion in kickbacks on relief contracts.

Mr. Annan and his aides would also have us believe that Oil for Food had nothing to do with Saddam's smuggling of oil--which generated the lion's share of his illicit income. But it was only after Oil for Food geared up that Saddam's oil smuggling really took off, totaling $13.6 billion during his entire 12 years between wars, but with more than two-thirds of that--an estimated $9.7 billion--earned during the era of Oil for Food. Those were precisely the years in which Mr. Annan repeatedly went to bat to enable Saddam, under Oil for Food, to import the equipment to rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure, whence came all that smuggled oil.

Transparency from the start might have flagged the world and stopped the scams as things turned deeply rotten under Oil for Food. But Mr. Annan's policy to this day has been secrecy. On Monday, Sen. Coleman summed up his subcommittee's efforts to get at the truth, as having required so far, eight subpoenas, 13 chairman's letters, "numerous interviews with key participants, and receipt of over a million pages of evidence" to begin to understand "the behind-the-scenes machinations of the participants in the Oil for Food program."

"Participants" are generally understood to have been Saddam's chosen contractors. But we need to recognize that one of the biggest of those contractors was, in effect, the U.N. itself. As Oil for Food was not only designed but expanded, embellished upon and run for more than six years under Mr. Annan's stewardship, it became not so much a supervisory operation, but a business deal with Saddam, in which the U.N. in effect provided money laundering services, the Secretariat collected a percentage fee from Saddam--and somewhere in there, between the kickbacks, surcharges, importation of oil equipment and smuggling out of oil, they jointly ran a storefront relief operation.


Who at the U.N. took illicit money from Saddam--if, indeed, anyone did--is an important question, and worth pursuing. But so is the matter of who covered up for Saddam; who pushed to continue and expand a program so derelict that it failed to nab more than $17 billion in illicit deals, and so secretive that investigators have spent much of the past year trying simply to get their hands on information the U.N. should have made public at the time. It is worth asking whose welfare was enhanced, whose domain was expanded, whose coffers filled with $1.4 billion delivered as a percentage cut of Saddam's oil revenues--and who has failed to this day to take on board the thumping lessons about the need for transparency at the U.N.
That would be Mr. Annan. He is not protecting the U.N. At great cost to whatever noble aspirations the U.N. once had, and to all societies that value integrity over Potemkin institutions, he is protecting himself.

Ms. Rosett is a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the Hudson Institute. Her column appears here and in The Wall Street Journal Europe on alternate Wednesdays.

***********************************

There is no indication that DeLay, a 57-year-old Texan, will be indicted in connection with a Travis County, Texas, campaign finance investigation. But the majority leader has called the probe a partisan attack on him.


Bonilla said there was no vote count taken in the closed meeting but said the proposal passed overwhelmingly.


"This takes the power away from any partisan crackpot district attorney who may want to indict" party leaders and make a name for himself, Bonilla said.

********************************

What ever happened to being innocent until proven guilty??

I haven't been following this much, but I don't see the problem.

If the guy if found guilty by a court, judge, or whatever, then he deserves to brought to justice. Just simply being accused of something isn't a crime is it?? What am I missing here??


How is this related to slick willy? I guess some wanted him to step down before he was actually proven guilty - but I wasn't one of them.

PP We are talking about a grand jury indictment, by a TEXAS Grand Jury, of a man already rebuked by the house for unethical conduct.


"In September, the grand jury indicted three political operatives associated with DeLay and eight companies, alleging campaign finance violations related to corporate money spent in the 2002 legislative races. The corporate donations were made to Texans for a Republican Majority, a political action committee created with help from DeLay.

In October, the House ethics committee rebuked DeLay for appearing to link political donations to a legislative favor and improperly persuading U.S. aviation authorities to intervene in the Texas redistricting dispute."


How it relates is the pure hypocrisy of some folks who want to claim the moral high ground while doing all they can to protect the position of power held by one of their own crooks.

Strange we never needed this rule in the past 200 plus years. I can guarantee you that if this were a democrat speaker; the talking heads like Rush the drug addict, would be totally outraged.

The Democrats have the same rule the Republicans used to have. If they attempt to change it, I would be upset. Bad policy is still bad policy even if done by your party.

TK Are you saying that Kofi Annan is a Democrat? If not what the heck is your point? Care to address the topic?

Dave,
Kofi is a lib. He runs the show over at the UN Kerry and the dem's thought we should seek their approval before we defend ourselves. So the dems give him more power than the conservatives give Delay.

TK: Now how about the topic?

As to your digression. I think Kofi, may well be a scum bag. I havn't done my homework enough to have a firm opinion. If so, he should be prosecuted. I still fail to see how you can call him a liberal. The word has no context with someone not in any way part of our society, political system, culture, or religion. It would make as much sense to say Saddam was a conservative. After all he wanted strong national defense, loved the death penalty, and claimed the moral high ground.

Dave,

Socialist = American liberal It's a global village remember. Kofi's world view is as close as one can get to Kerry and the Dem's world view the past few years.

TK The scary thing is I think you beleive that, whereas I was only joking about Saddam bieng a conservative.

Dave,

Sure I do. You cannot show me much difference between Kerrys platform and an amalgam of the liberal/socialist EU nations agendas.

Infact compare Kerry's paltform to the Communist Party USA's. I dare you to line item the two.
http://www.cpusa.org

TK: I repeat. Care to address the topic?

------------------------------------------------------------

Dave,

Even though he's not an American citizen--if some how Kofi Annan could have voted for either Kerry or Bush on Nov. 2nd--Do you have any doubt he would have voted for Kerry?

RB: I assume Kofi, having seen first hand how badly Bush had screwed up the war on terror, and the Iraq war, would have voted for anyone but Bush. I fail to see how that makes him a liberal.

I beleive Aunty M also voted for Kerry and she is damn sure not a liberal. Not all things are black and white, especially hypothetical scenarios such as yours.

Now back to the topic!

Dave,

A vote for morals, ethics, and values. Is the topic. Kerry, Kofi, socialists and communists all tie in nicely.

Go get em Dave, I really feel for you, cause after a while its like talking to a stone fence.

Dave, surely you can see that anyone not fitting into the crusader's mold is a liberal.

Funny thing about that hypocrisy you mentioned is that the evangelical fanatics have made it an art form. The very rule they are trying to ammend they themselves created in 1993 as a means to get at the Democrats when Clinton was around. Amazing arrogance. And their the same ones that vote morals, ethics, and values.

Innocent until proven guilty? Why then are they so concerned with changing the rule preemptively? Oh, there's that preemptive thing and the Gay Old Parrot party again.

The King - Keep fighting the good fight - if you try really hard you can probably hijack this thread.

What frosts me is that the GOP first put the rule into effect that they just changed. Of course, they must have never felt that any of their own might be indicted. The first hint of it and they scurry around to change the rules. It's typical and it's wrong.

Eddie,

It is absurd but that's politics. My point was to point out that there are scumbags,liars and thieves on every level in life. If you are looking to make your case against the other side it will not be hard.

I like what Frank Zappa said in the album Sheik Yer Bhutti. " Broken hearts are for A holes"

The loss that keeps on giving!


November 18, 2004


As we wait for CBS to concede the election, Democrats are claiming Kerry lost because Americans are stupid – and if there's one thing voters respond to, it's crude insults.

This is not only the first step of a brilliant strategy to win the red states back, but also inconsistent with the Democrats' theory that Bush was an illegitimate president for the last four years because Democratic voters in Florida were too dumb to follow an arrow to the circle by Al Gore's name. How stupid were the alleged Gore-supporters who couldn't figure out how to cast a vote in the 2000 election?

Using classical Marxist thinking, liberals can't fathom how issues like abortion and gay marriage could trump ordinary people's economic interests -– which liberals axiomatically assume are furthered by the Democrats' offers of government assistance. Democrats are saying to voters: How can you be so stupid to subordinate your own selfish economic interests to "moral values," the betterment of the country and the general welfare of people you don't even know?

It can only be false consciousness. If liberals think the Bush vote was composed of illiterate homophobes who fear women in the workplace, perhaps the Democrats should start demanding literacy tests to vote.

Garry Wills – who fills in "occupation" on his federal tax return with "self-hating Catholic" – denounced America in the New York Times as an unenlightened nation full of people who believe "more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution."

By contrast, apparently, "enlightened" people believe in the Aborted Birth more fervently than they believe in national defense. And just in the interest of fairness here, Garry: At least there's some documentation on the Virgin Birth story. For people who believe so fervently in evolution, these Bush mandate-deniers sure are resistant to it on a personal level.

On the same day, on the same nuanced Times editorial page, both Wills and Maureen Dowd wrote that Kerry was defeated by a "jihad" of Christians. The jihadists, according to Wills, were driven by "fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity." Dowd said they were "a devoted flock of evangelicals, or 'values voters,' as they call themselves ... opposing abortion, suffocating stem-cell research and supporting a constitutional amendment against gay marriage." Finally – a jihad liberals oppose!

Speaking of gay marriage, as long as liberals are so big on discussing "mandates" and whether Bush has one (they say he does not), I think the one thing we can all agree on is that there is definitely a "mandate" against gay marriage. In fact, a clear majority of us are uncomfortable with the word "mandate" because it sounds like Wayne asking Stephen out for dinner and a movie.

Reacting to Bush's re-election in that calm, reasoned way we have come to expect of liberals, they are running to psychotherapists, threatening to move to Canada and warning of a fascist police state – including their fear of a Hollywood "blacklist." (Now you understand how the myth of McCarthyism began, red states!)

One depressed Kerry voter committed suicide at Ground Zero. Meanwhile, the entire Democratic Party is also contemplating political suicide by making Howard Dean its next chairman.

Some Democrats are so despondent they've contemplated (hushed whisper) prayer. They're just not sure if they're supposed to pray to Bill Clinton or to their "Higher Power."

The day after the election, documentary filmmaker and Upper West Side denizen Mitch Wood told the New York Times: "Watching my kids this morning, going down the street, flicking things in the air, jumping around, I wondered, are they going to have that sense of freedom that I had growing up?"

As if on cue, a commercial jetliner piloted by Islamofascist hijackers did NOT crash in front of Wood at this point, killing his entire family instantly, in silent testimony to the national security we currently enjoy under President Bush. Wood gave no indication of noticing this.

A teacher on the Upper West Side, Ireena Gurvich, said, "I'm thinking of leaving the country." Gurvich said she wanted to go to Canada because, "it's a kinder and gentler United States." And yet you still ask why our children cannot read or write.

Another denizen of the Upper West Side, Patty Fondrie, said: "If it gets bad, we'll go to France," where she will probably be murdered by Muslims.

Michael Conway, an administrator at United Talent Agency in Beverly Hills, Calif., was quoted in the Times worrying, "What's going to happen, some kind of blacklist?" – suggesting an entirely new, if somewhat scatological connotation, to the term "A-list."

I think we have a long way to go from Michael Moore being an honored guest at the Democratic National Convention to a "blacklist" –- except for actors who believe abortion and gay marriage are "wrong." But here's hoping.

Damn, Krusty. You won, you're stupid, get over it.

Sheesh. :rolleyes: