The Republican Congress is on the oil for food which hunt. Citing unpublished Iraqi documents under their own control, that they say prove maverick left MP Galloway made profits getting a commission for oil. And if you read the trackback list here
they are going after anyone on the left blogosphere who dares call them on it.
Why this witch hunt? Because, of course, it is a distraction. First because it is something they can simply lie about, as the US Congress is lying about Galloway, and second because it covers over much larger oil scandals. And third, because it has that magic word "Saddam".
[Crossposted at Bopnews.com]
This one is getting ignored, but it is part of the concerted attempt to swap out the aging "stalin" meme from the classic "liberals are socialists are communists are stalinists".
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Some background.
The Clinton strategy on Iraq was containment, that is, avoid invading Saddam's Iraq, but use every measure short of war to force a deterioration of his position. To this end they backed an bungled coup attempt in 1995 and zealously interpretted the mandate to bomb air defense targets in Iraq. In addition, as inspections dismantled Saddam's WMD and missile program, the Clinton Administration quite probably used intelligence gathered to improve target selection of the slow bombing campaign. It was, to borrow a phrase, war in time of peace.
Containment was certainly an ugly strategy, but the alternative was leaving Saddam with a free reign, plenty of oil money, and a penchant for destabilizing geopolitical moves. Saddam launched the Iraq-Iran war, which was the proximate cause of the massive oil spike of 1979-1981. Saddam was a man who played with fire in a country filled with gasoline.
Part of the strategy of containment was the oil for food program. The intent of the program was to provide enough of a revenue stream, but a public one, by paying somewhat more for Iraqi oil than could be paid by smuggling it out of the country. There were several pitfalls. The first is that American ally Jordan needed some of the smuggled out oil, the second is that OPEC, in poor shape because of falling oil prices would not stand that much Iraqi crude on the market, and the final being the delicate job of allowing enough money in to keep Iraqi's from starving, but not enough to allow Saddam to maintain his security apparatus. In essence, it was designed to throw him a lifeline attached to an anvil, and like similar deals with North Korea, intended to prevent the radicalization of Iraq by revolution or coup into a proxy state of Iran.
These considerations mean that the oil for food program was a camel designed by committee.
And it also became a source of corruption, which prompted an investigation, headed by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker. Volcker's none too kind report faulted Annan for failures of oversight, and failures of good judgement, but found no connection between Annan and oil for food profits, To draw moral equivalence, it is like Powell the younger's behavior at the FCC - Colin isn't directly involved with it, but it certainly looks and smells like nepotism and questionable judgement.
That there has been corruption at international institutions is, sadly, not new news particularly. That a "dirty war" strategy with relation to Iraq has spawned corruption is par for the course, and with the investigation, and perhaps some criminal prosecutions, the matter should have been closed, though it would certainly taint the people involved.
But the matter is not closed, in no small part because the right wing needs proof of "liberal corruption" to hide matters such as Haliburton's influence peddling, Cheney's collusion with energy manufacturers, Delay's ethical lapses and accepting in kind contributions that were against the law, and a host of other irregularities and illegalities.
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Enter the Oil for Food scandal as a chance for the right wing to scream up its base and provide a kind of "embarassing moment conversation stopper". When even Jude Wanniski, author of the phrase "supply side economics", admits that that oil for food was a smoke screen for waging economic war. The obvious retort is "war is hell, even if it is a cold one. Let's talk about lying to go to war in Iraq."
What oil for food is, is a coded message, or if you use the British term "dog whistle politics". The start of the trail begins with David Bay Chalmers and his being indicted. Take a guess party Chalmers belongs to.
Now we get to the new Galloway accusations. The alledged documents come from the Oil Ministry. You know, the one that Ahmed Chalabi heads. It seems strange in a country where oil output is about half of capacity during a time of high oil prices that the first thing he would do is fish Galloway's name out of a mass of paper. Particularly when Galloway had already won one libel suit. This is coming out of the Republican Congress because that is the only entity on the planet that wouldn't be sued for defamation on this.
Which brings us to the right wing blogosphere, and the UN dispatch.
Most people here don't know the name Peter Daou immediately, except perhaps through the influential Daou Report. What fewer people know is that he is also person who did blog out reach for Kerry - who hand picked him for the task - and is now the lead blogger at the UN Dispatch, a blog run by the United Nations Foundation. A few days ago he took on Roger Simon, who has been making hay by being the wingnut world's designated repeater on oil for food. Peter Daou caught him grinning at the camera about how many hits it was getting him. That became intolerable - not only did Simon fire back, but the entire right wing blogosphere has piled on as well: including right wing uberhack Michelle Malkin of townhall.com and other fine outlets of drool fuel for the crankhead porn monkeys that make up the right wing activist class.
Malkin doesn't do things like this without it being important. She maybe stupid, but she's not stupid. The right wing has to protect the oil for food franchise, because it is a bottomless well of unbacked allegations, and has a deep source in Iraq that can manufacture whatever evidence is needed. It has the keys to the files and plenty of letterhead.
This is why the attack is going to continue, because the blogosphere is great for debunking such material. Note that the memos haven't been produced, and will never be produced in such a form as to be open to examination. Given the long sordid history of manufactured memos, for example Yellowcake Forgery, it should be fairly clear that the credibility of self-serving documents from Ahmed Chalabi or anyone associated with the Administrations Iraq agenda are, to put it mildly, highly suspect.
So that's the story people: this is the "Whitewater" replacement for the right wing. A bad oil deal which, if you think about it, helped American consumers by putting some of Iraq's oil online at very low prices, and harmed only the Iraqi people left to live under a state of siege during Saddam's regime. A regime that, if sanctions had been lifted, would not have been in the sorry shape necessary to allow Bush to invade in the first place. If anything, oil for food saved American servicemen's lives, since it meant that they were going after rusting Soviet era tanks and a grounded airforce.
And the right wing is going to attack to kill anyone who dares touch this franchise, because, as we saw with Whitewater, once a reactionary Republican Congress lead by a corrupt leader gets into the act, there's no limit to the three ring circus that can be run.