Also coming as a tip from Preemptive Karma but more directly Tom Paine's Newsworthy section, this story originally found at Financial Times UK you also could have picked up if you listened carefully enough to Paul Volcker's report on the UN Oil-for-Food investigation:
Overall, the operation involved 14 tankers engaged by a Jordanian entity to load at least 7m barrels of oil for a total of no less than $150m (€113m) of illegal profits. About another $50m went to Mr Hussein's cronies.
In February 2003, when US media first published reports of this smuggling effort, then attributed exclusively to the Iraqis, the US mission to the UN condemned it as “immoral”.
However, FT/Il Sole have evidence that US and UK missions to the UN were informed of the smuggling while it was happening and that they reported it to their respective governments, to no avail.
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.
This is just what FT appears to be able to prove. The winked-at total is in the billions, not millions. Perhaps it's Norm Coleman who should think about resigning in disgrace.
--TJ
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