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January 13, 2005

Demagoguing Oil-for-Food

For months now the rightwing echo chamber has been like a dog with a bone on Oil-for-Food scandal. Not to be outdone, the rightwing portion of the blogosphere has gotten into the act too.

A few weeks ago Political Musings.net cited a National Review piece blaming both Europe and the UN for the oil-for-food mess by way of trying to make the case that the Left is doomed to extinction for being out of touch. More recently the meme has been to discredit the UN's role in Tsunami relief, citing... you guessed it: Oil-For-Food. Even the rightwingers in Congress got into the act, calling for Kofi Annan to resign, aided and abbeted by rightwing think tanks.

The Left side of the blogosphere has attempted to rebut the misinformation, but to little avail.

So, imagine my surprise when I found this little nugget in TomPaine.com's daily list of Overlooked but important headlines of the morning.

It seems that a joint investigation by the Financial Times and Il Sole 24 Ore, the Italian business daily, has uncovered evidence that the Bush-led American government not only knew about specific instances of illegal oil sales, but turned a blind eye to it. Ditto for the British government. Why didn't they do something? We were running an active interdiction effort in the Persian Gulf via the Multinational Interception Force (MIF), the force led by the US Navy that had been enforcing the embargo on Iraq.

Saybolt, the Dutch company hired by the UN to oversee oil loading operations in Iraq, reported the incident (apparent illegal loading of oil onto tankers) to the MIF.

On February 21 2003, when reports of the smuggling first appeared in the US press, Jeff Alderson, spokesman for the Maritime Liaison Office (MLO), the US navy office in Bahrain that co-ordinated the MIF activities, was quoted as saying that he had “no information” about it.

His successor, Jeff Breslau, confirmed to Il Sole/FT that “we have no record that we were warned” about the smuggling. But Il Sole/FT has discovered that on February 17 2003, Saybolt sent an e-mail to the MLO about smuggling that specifically mentioned the Argosea. The same day, the MLO sent a reply to Saybolt acknowledging that notification.

Out of this one operation, traders estimate, Iraqis pocketed about $50m, all off the UN books, while subsequent sale of the oil netted $150m in profits.

Bush's motive for turning a blind eye?

Oil traders were told informally that the US let the tankers go because Amman needed oil to build up its strategic reserves in expectation of the Iraq war.

Last week Paul Volcker, head of the independent commission created by the UN to investigate failures in the oil-for-food programme, confirmed that Washington allowed violations of the oil sanctions by Jordan in recognition of its national interests.

However, only a fraction of the oil smuggled out of Iraq reached the Jordanian port of Aqaba. Most was sold to the Middle East Oil Refinery, in Alexandria, Egypt; to a refinery in Aden, Yemen; and to Malaysia and China. “This operation was not permitted under the Security Council resolutions dealing with the oil-for-food programme,” said Michel Tellings, one of the two UN inspectors responsible at the time for the implementation of the programme. “The volume of oil was not inspected and payments were not made to the UN escrow account, as required by the programme.”

Maybe this is why Bush has not only resisted joining in the calls for Annan's resignation, but has gone out of his way to cooperate with the UN of late... He didn't want the whole truth to come out. All he wanted was to get his base fired up for the November election.

Posted by Kevin at January 13, 2005 12:35 PM