Saddam's Coalition of the bribed

The emerging UN Oil of Food scandal UN Oil for Palaces scandal UN Oil for UN Security Council Vetoes scandal is showing that the only world leader whose coalition was comprised of bribed countries was Saddam.

Saddam bet the farm that UNSC vetoes by France, Russia and China would save him from one division of U.S. marines. Saddam had good reason to make this bet: he’d already paid for the vetoes.

If the UN—or least if the UN Security Council—operated with even the slightest shred of ethical standards then France, Russia and China would have been disqualified from voting on Iraq due to conflict of interest. Chart 1 shows the relationship between commerce with Saddam’s Iraq and concern with blocking the U.S. from removing Saddam’s regime.


Chart 1: Iraqi weapon importations 1973-2002 with respect to exporting country.
Note: credits for this chart goes to The Dissident Frogman. For some reason my chart’s image is hard to read; you can see a legible image of this chart here


The U.S. and her allies removed Saddam’s regime in spite of the opposition from Saddam’s coalition of the bribed. Subsequently, paperwork discovered in Iraq’s archives showed that massive corruption in the UN’s Oil for Food program provided our opponents with even more incentive than was already apparent.

New York Times’ reporter Judith Miller wrote an article describing how France, Russia and China systematically blocked the U.S. and the UK from pursuing inquires into corruption within the UN’s Oil for Food program:

Congressional investigators say that France, Russia and China systematically sabotaged the former U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq by preventing the United States and Britain from investigating whether Saddam Hussein was diverting billions of dollars.

In a briefing paper given on Friday to members of the House subcommittee investigating the program, the investigators said their review of the minutes of a U.N. Security Council subcommittee meeting showed that the three nations "continually refused to support the U.S. and U.K. efforts to maintain the integrity" of the program.

[snip]

The paper suggests that France, Russia and China blocked inquiries into Iraq's manipulation of the program because their companies made billions of dollars through their involvement with Saddam's regime and the program. [emphasis mine—johnh]

This emerging scandal shows that the major players who are not part of our collation are exactly the same players who had the most to lose from the removal of Saddam. Put another way, our opponents on the UNSC were paid well by Saddam to be our opponents.

Typically, John Kerry got everything backwards. John Kerry was wrong when:

he blamed when the opposition the U.S. encountered in the UNSC on George W Bush instead of Saddam’s beneficiaries. Our UNSC opponents were acting in their own narrow self interest. They opposed us simply because supporting the U.S. would contrary to their own self-interest.

when he identified our UNSC opponents as “allies” that Bush failed to recruit. They are not our allies; they are Saddam’s coalition of the bribed. Furthermore, one of the Allies that Kerry aspires to recruit, France, has already preannounced their determination to not join the U.S. whether Kerry is elected or not. Put another way, France is our opponent regardless of who is the president; Bush isn’t a factor.

when he identified our allies as the “coalition of the bribed and the coerced”. Our allies are not coerced; they voluntarily joined with us and they can quit if they want too (e.g., Spain). Furthermore, it is 100% of the countries that Saddam paid-off that refused to join our coalition. True allies don’t need to be bribed.

As typical for John Kerry, he believes that the U.S.’ friction with the UN is caused by are not caused by the UN’s deficiencies but instead by America’s flaws.

John Kerry is wrong. Senator Patrick Moynihan, in a 1975 speech to the AFL-CIO, stated:

Every day, on every side, we are assailed [at the UN]… There are those in this country whose pleasure, or profit, it is to believe that our assailants are motivated by what is wrong about us. They are wrong. We are assailed because of what is right about us.

In this speech Moynihan was decrying the murderous Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Moynihan could make these same statements today about John Kerry, John Edwards and the elites in the Democratic Party and it would fit perfectly.

Update:

WhooHoo! Do great minds think alike or what!