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Fifth Column |
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Legendary journalist Seymour Hersh speaks out.
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| Please include the link to the original article when posting. |
UC BERKELEY NEWS — The Iraq war is not winnable, a secret U.S. military unit has been "disappearing" people since December 2001, and America has no idea how irreparably its torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison has damaged its image in the Middle East. These were just a few of the grim pronouncements made by Pulitzer Prize—winning investigative reporter Seymour "Sy" Hersh to KQED host Michael Krasny before a Berkeley audience on Friday night (Oct. 8).
The past two years will "go down as one of the classic sort of failures" in history, said the man who has been called the "greatest muckraker of all time" and (paradoxically) the "enfant terrible of journalism for more than 30 years." While Hersh blamed the White House and the Pentagon for the Iraq quagmire and America's besmirched world image, he was stymied by how it all happened. "How could eight or nine neoconservatives come and take charge of this government?" he asked. "They overran the bureaucracy, they overran the Congress, they overran the press, and they overran the military! So you say to yourself, How fragile is this democracy?"
From My Lai to Abu Ghraib
That fragility clearly unnerves him. Hersh summarizes his mission as "to hold the people in public office to the highest possible standard of decency and of honestyâŠto tolerate anything less, even in the name of national security, is wrong." He tries his best. More than any other U.S. journalist alive today, he embodies the statement that "a patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government," a belief defined by the conservationist Edward Abbey.
Continued on Page 49
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Posted by: Hupereger Ebbigum6422 ||
10/13/2004 7:57:13 AM ||
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Sy Hersh: Fake and inaccurate. |
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Posted by: Xbalanke ||
10/13/2004 10:49 Comments ||
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Sy! Live at Berkeley! There's a Lefty Wet Dream! |
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Posted by: tu3031 ||
10/13/2004 10:50 Comments ||
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No picture of the crowd kissing the hem of his hemp robe? |
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Posted by: Seafarious ||
10/13/2004 10:59 Comments ||
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#4
Can we please have a moratorium on posting lefty wet dreams?
I mean, geez, Hersh? He's a lying sack of shit. |
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Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
10/13/2004 10:59 Comments ||
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Just how many of these keanulint-brains are there? |
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Posted by: Steve from Relto ||
10/13/2004 11:13 Comments ||
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I read his kennedy darkside camelot book - that was pretty good to go. He was on O'Reilly the other night trying to argue that our interrogation techniques are all wrong but gave no alternative to cracking the jihadis other then we need to gain their trust....I could only scratch my head at him. |
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Posted by: Jarhead ||
10/13/2004 11:20 Comments ||
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Murat(or Hupereger Ebbigum6422, perhaps?) was a big Sy fan as I remember. |
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Posted by: tu3031 ||
10/13/2004 11:29 Comments ||
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I saw this Joker on MSNBC and he was prognosticating that Americans could not do business in the Middle East due to the war. He based this on the comment (probably over a bong) with one âSpecial Forcesâ operative. I donât think Sy has even been on Free Iraqi soil and yet he writes a book on how bad things are going? This book was a good talking point about two weeks ago. Today the Iraqi and U.S. forces are pushing the Jihadists out of most of the trouble spots so his predictions have been overcome by reality. Notice Kerry and Edwards have stopped predicting doom and gloom in Iraq. Sy was probably hoping for a quagmire to last until he could get his book published. |
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Posted by: Cyber Sarge ||
10/13/2004 12:14 Comments ||
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I saw him on the Daily New show with John Stuart and he was saying much of the same B.S. but amazingly enough the audience could not seem to get enough. John Stuart dropped his usual joking and practically rolled on the ground asking for his tummy to be rubbed. Pretty sad and amazing. |
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Posted by: robi ||
10/13/2004 12:23 Comments ||
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I'm sorry, the story of the massacre of the granary guards just reeks... how the hell could two units (platoon-sized, apparently) full of eyewitnesses keep something like that quiet, especially in the internet age? You can't keep something like that quiet, not for very long. Even My Lai couldn't be "dissappeared". There were rumours afterwards, enough to get a journalist named Ron Ridenhour onto the story. |
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Posted by: Sgt. Mom ||
10/13/2004 12:28 Comments ||
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Sy Hersh is auditioning to replace Dan Rather on Sixty Minutes II. |
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Posted by: doc ||
10/13/2004 12:42 Comments ||
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This war will go down as one of Biblical proportions. Those who conducted can be assured their name will be in history books for centuries to come. Sy will be forgotten before his body is cold. |
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Posted by: Sheck Hupoluns8631 ||
10/13/2004 13:13 Comments ||
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#13
What the fuck is wrong with you people?
What in Seymour Hersh's record leads you to believe that he's lying? I don't even recall him ever being ACCUSED of lying. His facts are always impeccable, and his stories backed up by actual facts and photographs.
Christ. This web site's a right-wing loony house. |
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Posted by: Hupereger Ebbigum6422 ||
10/13/2004 13:41 Comments ||
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#14
Okay, I'll accuse Hersh of lying. Better now? Have a cookie.
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Posted by: Shipman ||
10/13/2004 13:48 Comments ||
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#15
The Cult of Seymour Hersh
Columnist John Lofton quotes Hersh in a 1984 interview with the University of Chicago magazine: "I'm not interested in history because I'm trying to change things."
And a lot more. |
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Posted by: ed ||
10/13/2004 13:50 Comments ||
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Oh, maybe a few days into the Afghanistan opertion when Mr. Hersh on the NBC Today program said, based upon 'unnamed sources' in DoD, that the entire operation was going wrong, busted. He was just putting his hat in the race to prejudge the campaign as a failure, disaster. The vote in a Afghanistan this weekend basically buried the nay sayers like Hersh. |
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Posted by: Don ||
10/13/2004 13:52 Comments ||
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#17
Of course he can't name his sources. That's a retarded comment. Journalists are nothing without sources - give them up and you cease to be a journalist. Journalism as a whole gets demolished. And you can't base accusations on a single line of text taken out of CONtext. That's equally retarded.
So far all Hersh has got are the drool marks from right-wing attack dogs who can't find any teeth to bite him with. Well, and you guys, of course. Who are nothing if not lovin' the right wing.
Hersh brought the inevitable failure of this war to light when he talked to military and intelligence members almost one year ago, who all told him that the plan Bush had was untenable. Only now is it coming to light that he was right.
Similarly he talked to both Scott Ritter and Hand Blix, both of whom were in charge of the search for WMD. He predicted that none would be found, as sanctions had made it impossible for Hussein to import any of the necessary materials.
Two years ago he exposed the Bush camp's reliance on documents that "supposedly" proved that Hussein bought uranium from Nigeria. Like Ambassador Joseph Wilson before him, he discredited any claims that that might have been true, exposing those documents as crude forgeries that no one in the CIA actually believed, but which Cheney wanted very badly.
You people have completely given up any form of "free press". Liberal bias is bullshit. Yes, reporters and artists are generally left wing. But who OWNS those networks? Who OWNS the airwaves? Which financial conglomerates are at the head of all information dissemination in your country? Look at Sinclair media - forcing 62 stations to air an attack-documentary about Kerry weeks before the election - contrary to US ELECTION LAW!. Can you imagine the furour if anyone tried to release Farenheit 9/11?
The only reason Hersh seems like a crackpot is because he's employed by one of the only media outlets in the country financially secure enough to AFFORD to tell the truth. Thank god for New York. That city alone almost wipes out the shame of the American Bible-belt. |
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Posted by: Spemble Spains3686 ||
10/13/2004 14:04 Comments ||
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lol spemble brains....nice try. |
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Posted by: Frank G ||
10/13/2004 14:14 Comments ||
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#19
Can you imagine the furour if anyone tried to release Farenheit 9/11?
Yeah. Wow. Thank God that'll never happen.People would be so pissed... |
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Posted by: tu3031 ||
10/13/2004 14:23 Comments ||
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#20
Spemble: while corporations own the networks, it doesn't seem to have crimped the style of the left-wing reporters.
2 -- Sinclair isn't violating election laws, though I suspect they've tip-toed right up to the line. They have pretty good lawyers, and I'll bet the lawyers looked at this very carefully.
3 -- As to Farenheit 911: go ahead and broadcast it. More who see it the better, so that all can see just how desparate Michael Moore is.
4 -- While a journalist sometimes can't name sources, a reporter who never names sources isn't going to be credible.
5 -- Scott Ritter -- completely unreliable and unbelievable.
6 -- Hans Blix (aka Inspector Clouseau) -- ditto. You'll have to do better than Ritter and Blix.
7 -- Wilson -- unreliable and a political hack who didn't do the job he was sent to do. Rather damning for a government official, eh?
Sy Hersh occasionally does good work. Problem is, he believes his own press releases. |
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Posted by: Steve White ||
10/13/2004 14:30 Comments ||
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#21
Hersh is fairly consistently wrong, misinformed (despite his "impeccable" sources) or operating from a separate set of assumptions from the rest of us. I quit reading anything he wrote when he wrote up the KAL007 shootdown in, I think, 1984, and managed to "prove" that a foreign airliner was, in fact, a U.S. intel collection platform and thus deserved to be shot down.
Pfui. |
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Posted by: Fred ||
10/13/2004 14:51 Comments ||
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master of super-informed and highly placed "unnamed" sources privy to all manner of embarrassing secrets! He makes that shit up |
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Posted by: Frank G ||
10/13/2004 14:58 Comments ||
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Sy Hersh can't name his sorces because there aren't any. He come from the Dan Rather school of journalism - if the facts don't suit the thesis, make them up. |
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Posted by: SR71 ||
10/13/2004 15:33 Comments ||
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The granary guard story is bullshit. If anyone else here has been in the military or with a grunt outfit within the last 10 years you'll know a half dozen reasons why it's bullshit off the bat. I still liked the camelot book though. |
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Posted by: Jarhead ||
10/13/2004 15:51 Comments ||
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Jarhead, I am positive that the granary massacre is BS, and I want to see that story torn apart, and Seymour Hersh join Dan Rather in the corner of irrelevancy, but I don't have specifics, other than the conviction that you couldn't have 50 or so American military guys see this happening and not one do a thing about it. List and explain all the ways it is a BS story, from your point of view. I am afraid if this story is not immediatly and promptly debunked, it will live as long as the stories about the whacked-out, atrocity-committing Vietnam vet. I am sick to death of people making careers out of bogus atrocity stories. |
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Posted by: Sgt. Mom ||
10/13/2004 16:30 Comments ||
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Hupereger Ebbigum6422, According to my 'unnamed, high-level, and in-the-know sources, Sy is a IDIOT! Much like his buddy Dan he has been wrong at pretty much every charge he has laid on this administration. He reminds of the sniveling little rat Krugman, who taught book cooking at the prestigeâs Eron Corp (according to my sources). Can you honestly read that crap about the granary massacre, secret units disappearing, and claim this guy is playing with a full deck? Maybe he, Krugman, and you can share some nice blue pills together? Remember you need to take those daily. |
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Posted by: Cyber Sarge ||
10/13/2004 17:54 Comments ||
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#27
I never want to see more of hersh.
the only good thing about hersh is that he will die sooner or later, and in 50 years nobody will remember who he was. his writing will end up burned on the world's trash heap. |
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Posted by: anymouse ||
10/13/2004 18:05 Comments ||
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#28
Sgt Mom, here are some good ones just off the top of my grape:
1) What Lieutenant's going to call Hersh from halfway around the world? What, on a cellphone in a combat zone? Failing to prevent a war crime and totally bucking the chain of command to include the Battalion C.O., Regimental C.O., Division C.O., etc. Doesn't wash.
2) Just happened to have Hersh's hotline or Hersh interviewed some guy dying to tell some bullshit that he himself was involved in, responsible for and failed to prevent. That's even too stupid for any Lieutenant I've ever known to include myself when I was one (and I did some real dumb shit). Sounds like Winter Soldier Part Deux.
3) There are strict rules of engagement and ethics every officer is entrusted to carry out to include refusing unlawful orders - this is drilled into us. Being a "zero" myself I can say w/100% certainty no Company Commander allowed this to happen - not today or under such black and white circumstances. I lmao when I first read it.
4) 43 Guys in one rifle platoon for us Gyrines, makes 86 if there's two. And Hersh is the first one to hear about this and this happened when? Give me a big fricken break. This would've gotten out big time, people would already be in the brig or getting thrown out w/a bcd. I don't know too many Lance Corporals that can keep a secret and their saying about 40 of them could here in this instance...bwhahahaha.
5) Human rights assholes would've been on this way before Hersh if we were whacking locals in some town in front of other locals. Perfect fodder for the jihadis and they missed it to? yeah, right.
6) If it sounds like hollywood bullshit - it is.
Mikey J. Fox and commie Penn should be suing Hersh for infringement...he lifted the script from "Casualties of War" & ran w/it.
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Posted by: Jarhead ||
10/13/2004 23:23 Comments ||
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Home Front: Politix |
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Mark Steyn:THE SEESAW BUCKLES
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It was sobering, on reading the recent flurry of letters in this newspaper under the heading "Balancing The US Debate", to discover that it was this column that had single-handedly unbalanced it. "If Steyn represents the American right, where is the spokesperson for the American left?" demands Conor McCarthy of Dun Laoghaire. The hitherto perfectly poised seesaw of press coverage of the United States is apparently all out of whack because my corpulent column is weighing down one end while on the other up in the air are the massed ranks of Irish Times correspondents, RTE, the BBC and 97% of the European media class, plus Anthony O'Halloran, who opined in these pages a few days ago that "anyone who cares to visit a small town in the Midwest will encounter what can only be described as ultra-right-wing thinking." Prof O'Halloran didn't cite any examples of this "ultra-right-wing thinking", secure in his assumption that most readers would know the sort of thing he had in mind.
As the ne plus ultra of unbalanced right-wing thinkers, it's not for me to suggest how the US debate might be balanced in these pages. I have only one theory on column-writing, which is this: at a certain basic level, a columnist has to be right more often than not, otherwise the reader (I use the singular advisedly) is just wasting his time. If I were Robert Fisk, the famed foreign correspondent with decades of experience in the Muslim world, I'd be ashamed to leave the house. Sample Fisk headlines on the Afghan war: "Bush Is Walking Into A Trap", "It Could Become More Costly Than Vietnam". Sample insight on the Iraq war: when the Yanks announced they'd taken Baghdad International Airport, Fisky insisted they hadn't and suggested they'd seized an abandoned RAF airfield from the Fifties by mistake. It's this kind of unique expertise that has made him so admired around the world, not least in Ireland.
By contrast, readers of this column may have gained the impression that George W Bush will win the Presidential election on November 2nd. If he doesn't, I shall trouble readers of this newspaper no further. It would be ridiculous to continue passing myself off as an incisive analyst of US affairs after I've been exposed as a deluded fool who completely misread the entire situation. In the bright new dawn of the Kerry Administration, you'd deserve better. If that's not an incentive for Irish citizens to smuggle a few illegal campaign contributions the Senator's way, I don't know what is.
Continued on Page 49
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Posted by: tipper ||
10/13/2004 1:45:17 AM ||
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Dang! Mark Steyn isn't taking any prisoners lately, is he? |
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Posted by: Dave D. ||
10/13/2004 6:53 Comments ||
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STEYN!
A sane version of .. dare I say it ...
HOWARD BEALE...
I'M MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!
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Posted by: BigEd ||
10/13/2004 11:20 Comments ||
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#3
C'mon Mark, Don't hold back! Tell us how you really feel!
Way Cool! |
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Posted by: DanNY ||
10/13/2004 13:49 Comments ||
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A good article, I think his job is safe. I love the Fisk quotes, especially the one about U.S. forces capturing an old RAF Base. How does he show his face in public? But being liberal means never having to admit you were wrong. |
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Posted by: Cyber Sarge ||
10/13/2004 13:57 Comments ||
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#5
CS - Fisk shows his face in "public" quite easily, since he doesn't know anyone who doesn't think just like he does.
Steyn RULES! :-D |
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Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
10/13/2004 14:09 Comments ||
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In lefty land, the more and bigger you fail, the greater your legend becomes. |
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Posted by: eLarson ||
10/13/2004 15:11 Comments ||
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I hope he's right! If he's wrong - I'll pay to read his stuff online. |
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Posted by: too bee ||
10/13/2004 17:03 Comments ||
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#8
"And yes, it was a flawed election: it emerged on polling day that the indelible ink used to mark votersâ thumbs could be rubbed off. And whose fault is that? Well, the election was managed by the UN, which evidently got its indelible ink from the book-keeping department of its Oil-for-Food program."
Yow! That is what we call, in Mortal Kombat terms, a "fatality." |
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Posted by: Matt from Ill ||
10/13/2004 22:48 Comments ||
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Iraq-Jordan |
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Bandits in Iraq's 'oil for food' deal By William Safire
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OCT 14th, 2004 Thursday /
The Straits Times
POWERFUL officials and their profiteering friends in France had a reason to try to stop the United States from overthrowing Saddam Hussein: They were pocketing billions in payoffs through a United Nations oil-for-food front.
That's the import of the Duelfer report. These non-partisan investigators found documents 'giving economic favours to key French diplomats or individuals that have access to key French leaders', and also got Saddam's mouthpiece, Mr Tariq Aziz, to sing about their purpose: 'According to Mr Aziz, both parties understood that resale of the oil was to be reciprocated through efforts to lift UN sanctions, or through opposition to American initiatives within the Security Council.'
Mr Charles Duelfer's group put on the public record the name of Mr Charles Pasqua, France's former interior minister and now a senator. Mr Pasqua denied all to the BBC and fingered former associates: 'Maybe other former ministers are involved.'
Former French ambassador to the UN Jean-Bernard Merimee is listed as receiving vouchers for 11 million barrels of oil from Saddam, the proceeds from which would beat a diplomat's pay.
Another of President Jacques Chirac's friends receiving Saddam's UN largesse was Mr Patrick Maugein, 'whom the Iraqis considered a conduit to Mr Chirac', according to the report.
Mr Maugein, 58, whose links with Mr Chirac have been chronicled by French journalist Karl Laske, is chairman of Soco, an oil company active in Vietnam. He's down for 13 million barrels. French oil companies Total and Socap got about 200 million barrels.
A name that keeps coming up in my poking around is Mr Marc Rich, the American billionaire who was for many years a fugitive, until blessed with one of former US president Bill Clinton's midnight pardons. Mr Rich's company Trafigura, spun off from the Swiss-based Glencore, and its possible dealings with outfits like Mr Jean-Paul Cayre's Ibex have excited the interest of many of the sleuths I've spoken to.
(This is BIG!!) Watch this story pick up steam as we enter the countdown to election day)
France's diplomats here are apoplectic, calling the unconfirmed Duelfer reports 'unacceptable'. They note, in high dudgeon, that US firms involved in the UN corrupt caper are not named by the US team and deride our excuse about 'privacy laws'. However, within 24 hours of the report's issuance, reporter Judith Miller and her colleagues had the names of the US companies involved - Chevron, Mobil, Texaco, Bay Oil and one Oscar Wyatt Jr of Houston, who may have profited by US$23 million (S$38 million) - on the front page of The New York Times.
The Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has issued seven subpoenas and a dozen hard-to-ignore chairman's letters from Senator Norm Coleman to companies in the US, as well as to multinationals doing business here. I hear the committee has met no legal resistance so far. Mr Ben Pollner, head of Taurus Oil, active in Iraq all through the oil-for-food fiasco, stiffed Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau's men. (Mr Pollner tells me his dealings were legal, but he clammed up to investigators because he remembers Martha Stewart.)
Russian officials and oligarchs were able to rip off even more than France's predators. Politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky made out like a bandit when his party had some power; so did 'the office of the Russian president' and the Peace and Unity Party, both headed by the unmentionable Mr Vladimir Putin.
As the hares zoom by, Mr Paul Volcker, the UN investigative tortoise, tells his people to forget the French and Russians and to concentrate on UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's right-hand man, Mr Benon Sevan, and Mr Annan's son's relationship with Cotecna, the UN's see-no-evil 'monitor'; The White House is wringing its hands because it needs the UN's blessing on the Iraqi election.
If I were a French reporter and wanted to lose my job at Mr Chirac's Le Figaro in a hurry, I would drop in at 24 Boulevard Princess Charlotte in Monaco and ask whether Mr Maugein, Rui de Souza or Mario Contini have dropped by to see if Toro Energy and the African Middle East Petroleum company are still there. If that's a blind alley, try the casino. lololol WOW just the tip of the ice berg!
If there was any doubt to the real reasoning behind France, German and Russia blockage of removing their good friend Saddam, from petrol-power in Iraq, stay tune there is MUCH more! Where are the liberal Dems on this issue? Helloooooooooo?
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Posted by: Mark Espinola ||
10/13/2004 8:30:39 PM ||
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#1
Those stupid Americans have no idea how much money we made lolol)
Who is laughing now ? |
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Posted by: Mark Espinola ||
10/13/2004 20:38 Comments ||
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[Off-topic or abusive comments deleted] |
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Posted by: Cromorong Chomble7321 TROLL ||
10/13/2004 20:48 Comments ||
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#3
Mr Annanâs sonâs relationship with Cotecna, the UNâs see-no-evil âmonitorâ
Kofi Jr left his Contecna job 13 months before Contecna won the UN's contract to monitor the food-for-oil program. Cotecna won the contract by submitting the lowest bid.
No wrongdoing by Cotecna or Kofi Jr (or Kofi Sr) has been proved or even detailed. The insinuations about these relationships are just a smear.
. |
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Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
10/13/2004 21:42 Comments ||
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Boris is an anti-American Serb who ought to be deported immediately to Zagreb--and Mr Anti-Censorship thinks he should be allowed to shit on others' private property. However, he has provided incalculable laughter to Rantburgers with his simpleminded "theories." |
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Posted by: BMN ||
10/13/2004 22:13 Comments ||
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#5
To 'Cromorong Chomble7321' otherwise known as The Spin Schmuck.
The truth hurts concerning the French oil and cash, but more incredible revolations concerning the phoney coverup reasons why Jacques Chirac & Dominique de Villepin refused to assist in the overthrown of Saddam & his Ba'athist goons. The reason was $$$$$$$$$... sack fulls!
Let us continue opening this can of Frogs.
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Posted by: Mark Espinola ||
10/13/2004 22:14 Comments ||
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IIRC, Steven DenBeste had this possibility of bribes nailed. He was looking at why France was so adamant in their threat and use of their UNSC veto for the resolution. Steven looked at all the possibilities with his logic and things pointed to France and Co on the take. |
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Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
10/13/2004 22:43 Comments ||
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#7
Turtle Bayâs Carnival of Corruption
A spokesman in Kofi Annan's office has now offered in Kojo's defense that Kojo was no longer in the pay of Cotecna on the day the company won the U.N. contract. But the timing was close: Kojo had resigned from a consulting job for Cotecna earlier that same month. According to Annan's spokesman, Kojo held a staff job at Cotecna in a junior position from December 1995 through February 1998. Just two months later, Kojo reappeared on Cotecna's payroll as a consultant, via a firm called Sutton Investments, from April 1998 to December 1998, resigning from that consultancy just before Cotecna clinched the U.N. contract on December 31, 1998.
It might all be mere coincidence. Kojo's recent statements, relayed to me last Friday by Kofi Annan's U.N. office, convey that Kojo's consulting work for Cotecna was limited to projects in Nigeria and Ghana, unrelated to Oil-for-Food. But given the U.N.'s tendency to take several months to process contracts, and considering that the U.N. had to review several competing bids, the dates here suggest that Kojo resigned from Cotecna's staff only to return as a consultant during precisely the period in which Cotecna would most likely have been assembling and submitting its bid for the U.N. job, and the U.N. Secretariat would have been reviewing the bids. That certainly warrants attention by an independent panel. |
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Posted by: ed ||
10/13/2004 22:45 Comments ||
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#8
Will you be satisfied, Ed, if an independent panel shows no wrongdoing -- or will that just be more proof of corruption?
Kojo worked in a company that did consulting work for Cotecna. So what? Here's some questions that ought to be answered:
What exactly was Kojo Annan's position in Cotecna when he worked in the company, 13 months before the UN contract? Did his work in that position have anything to do with the UN contract?
What exactly was Kojo Annan's position in the consulting firm? Did his position there have anything to do with the UN contract?
What exactly did the consulting firm do for Cotecna? Did the consulting have anything at all to do with the UN contract?
What exactly did Cotecna do wrong in performing its UN contract? Does any such wrongdoing have anything at all to do with Kojo Annan?
Does Kojo Annan's relationships with Cotecna and with the consulting firm have anything to do with Kofi Annan? Did Kojo Annan profit personally from the relationship? Did Kofi Anna profit?
So far, this all looks like nothing but a baseless but vicious smear of the Annans. There is absolutely no evidence of any wrongdoing by the Annans AT ALL!
. |
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Posted by: Mike Sylwester ||
10/13/2004 23:06 Comments ||
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| #9
BMN, this "private property" is a snake pit of hate that incites violence against Americans on US soil, and we salute anyone who stands up against it. |
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Posted by: Glons Thalet1575 ||
10/13/2004 23:09 Comments ||
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#10
All of this doesn't even mention the overt bribery that took place in late 2002: the massive, multi-billion $$$ sweetheart oil deals Saddam signed with France and Russia's national champions, TotalFinaElf and LUKoil.
TotalFinaElf's deal was for exclusive rights to develop the W Qurna oilfields that contain 1/3 of all of Iraq's proven reserves, or 20 BILLION BARRELS!
Of course, no oil company, certainly not TFE, is large enough to handle such a project by itself, and certainly a consortium would have been formed, but this is by any measure the biggest deal of the last twenty years. I'm not an oil analyst but if one can expect a 5% return on sales over the life of the deal, at an average price of, oh, let's say $30 per barrel this deal equates to 5% X $30/bbl X 20B bbl = $30 billion.
A $30 billion deal for a nation with only a $1.5 trillion dollar economy?! That's breathtaking. OF COURSE France was bribed by Saddam. Ditto for LUKoil's nation (and Russia's economy is about 1/4 the size of France's). Talk about a "coalition of the bribed"!
France and Russia were determined to spring Saddam from the containment box that sanctions (plus no-fly zones and, for a while, inspections) had put him in. In short, by the time TotalFinaElf signed the W Qurna deal (Nov '02), sanctions had collapsed.
In other words, containment too was collapsing, leaving the only remaining alternatives as a) doing business with Saddam (the oilmen's preferred option); and b) overthrowing him by force. Outrageous that this, the crucial angle of the story, is being buried by the MSM.
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Posted by: lex ||
10/14/2004 1:11 Comments ||
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William Safire is an anti-American Jew who has caused the US uncalculable damage with his yellow journalism. |
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Posted by: Cromorong Chomble7321 ||
10/13/2004 20:48 Comments ||
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#12
William Safire is an anti-American Jew who has caused the US uncalculable damage with his yellow journalism.
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Posted by: Cromorong Chomble7321 ||
10/13/2004 20:45 Comments ||
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