Oil-for-Food IS the Smoking Gun

Those in denial about the links between Saddam and Terrorism… vast proportions of the mainstream media and the huge numbers of Americans (mainly Democrats) that have been deluded by them… ought to read The Scotsman this morning:

The PFLP [People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine], whose history of terrorism dates back to the “black September” hijackings of 1970, was personally vetted by Saddam to receive oil vouchers worth 40 million British pounds.

The deal has been uncovered by US investigators, trawling millions of pages of documents showing a network of diplomats bribed by Saddam’s regimes, and political parties who qualified for backhanded payments from Baghdad.

The Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which is still working its way through 20,000 boxes of documents from Saddam’s Baath party discovered only recently, found a list of pressure groups bankrolled by Saddam.

Using the United Nations’ own oil-for-food scheme – ironically intended as a sanction to control the behaviour of his dictatorship – Saddam gave Awad Ammora & Partners, a Syrian company, two million barrels of oil.

Documents handed over to US authorities by a former Iraqi oil minister only four months ago show that this was a front for the PFLP – which was then embarked on a spate of car bombings aimed at Israeli officials.

The Iraqi records show only one six-month period – suggesting the payments could go on for much longer. While some allocations to the likes of Russian political parties were not cashed in, the PFLP oil deal was carried out in full.

Is this surprising? Not to anyone who has been following the scandal surrounding the UN Oil-for-Food program. When the history of this period is written, the likes of The New York Times, Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times will look peculiarly disgraceful for this reason. Claudia Rosett who has been covering this matter continually for the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere deserves the Pulitzer for at times being a lone voice (accompanied by a few bloggers who have virtually no investigative facilities) in this matter. (via Power Line)