Yes, indeedy, there was a coalition of the coerced and bribed, only problem is that it was Iraq doing the coercing and bribing:
Saddam bribed politicians around worldSaddam Hussein bribed senior politicians and businessmen around the world to secure an early lifting of sanctions, according to the Iraq Survey Report.
Focusing his attention in particular on France and Russia, both permanent members of the UN Security Council, Saddam awarded oil exploration contracts and financial inducements to individuals. [emphasis added]
The bribes were at first funded by the Iraqi government, but later derived from Saddam's illegal misuse of the oil-for-food programme, which was supposed to provide food for the poor and medicine for the sick.
You do recall the Moonbat Left's cry that the US sanctions were starving and killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi babies and children don't you? But it gets much worse for John Kerry's proposed "Help Is On The Way Coalition"
Although the list included many legitimate oil traders, it also contained the names of politicians, political parties and other groups with little obvious connection to the oil industry.
Among those named were Benon Sevan, the former head of the UN's humanitarian programme; President Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia; the former French interior minister Charles Pasqua; and Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the founder of Russia's Liberal Democratic Party.
The CIA's internet list appeared to have been edited to protect the identities of several firms and individuals from the US and other countries that supported the war.
France and Russia pressed for the lifting of UN sanctions from the mid-1990s.
In 1992, according to Iraqi intelligence documents included in the report, Abdel-Razek Al Hashimi, the Iraqi ambassador to France, handed $1 million for the ruling Socialist party to Pierre Joxe, the defence minister.
Tariq Aziz, Saddam's foreign minister, awarded several French "individuals" substantial oil vouchers in return for using their influence to help lift sanctions.
Most vouchers could be exchanged for cash from oil middlemen in Baghdad. "Saddam sought favourable relations with France because France was influential in the Security Council," the report said.
In June 2000, Iraq awarded $1.78 billion in short-term contracts under the food programme to France, worth 15 per cent of Iraq's total oil contracts, in the hope of ensuring support over sanctions.
Iraq's security services "flagged two groups influential to France's policy in the UN Security Council - government officials and influential citizens", the report said.
It disclosed that a $12 billion deal to build economic relations with Iraq was discussed with Russia's energy minister.
A staggering 32 per cent of oil-for-food contracts went to Russia in the form of oil vouchers and gifts in which the new oligarchs, officials and political parties were principal beneficiaries.
"The lion's share of Iraq's undeveloped oil fields went to Russia," said the report. In 2002, Russian firms negotiated 10-year contracts to begin exploring Iraqi oil fields.
UPDATE: Tom Maquire notes the disgusting, yet predictable spin from the US media.
A wonderfully inflammatory headline from the LA Times: "Oil-for-Food Probe to Reach White House". Call it "Mission Accomplished" for Waxman.
Meanwhile over at GlennReynolds.com un grand nuage noir appears on the Kerry foreign policy horizon: COLLAPSE OF KERRY'S FOREIGN POLICY CASE
Although everybody's talking about weapons of mass destruction, the story that's not being reported --you'd almost think the press "wants Kerry to win"-- is the complete collapse of John Kerry's foreign policy case, and the reason for that collapse.Posted by feste at October 7, 2004 09:22 AM | TrackBack