I don’t really care which countries it was. The fact is, a dictator was manipulating people inside the U.N. and at high levels of several governments, and was buying himself enough political favors to allow him to profit personally while screwing over his people. I don’t care if the entire Republican leadership were involved to. Take 'em all down.
This is corruption on a level that dwarfs your Jack Abromoffs and the petty hustlers that live around Washington. This is a mass murderer reshaping the world with cash and oil. It’s a big damned deal, outside of partisan politics.
I would not call what Abramoff did for the the Northern Marianas a small fry, I am not referring to the amount of money used, but the evidence points to the American government being manipulated by other organizations with the help of guys like Abramoff in that and other cases. I would also point out that worse corruption is going on in Iraq right now.
I thought he was in jail now.
My gut feeling is that almost no one else will be punished for it, but partisan politics is shaping the current investigation, It can not be missed that politics too are not allowing much action regarding investigations on the current corruption in Iraq.
Charles Pasqua was minister of the interior until the election of Chirac in 1995 (he was supporting Chirac’s rival) . I looked up M. Merimee. He also was sacked after Chirac’s election (I also saw he’s currently prosecuted for embezzlement and corruption in relation to the Oil for food programm).
So, after reading this list, I still fail to see why you think this could explain France’s position at the beginning of the war in Irak. It makes as much sense as stating that Bush declared the war because Gore had been bribed by oil companies 7 years before.
The money doesn’t have to go directly to politicians for it to be useful. Perhaps Iraq’s study of French election law led them to believe that they would be more successful in influencing organizations, such as French exporting companies, which in turn influence politicians. If you go down the list of recipients of this money in various countries, you can see some patterns like that. Sometimes politicians got the loot directly, other times it was influential figures close to the government, or people in a position to sway public opinion, such as the financier of Scott Ritter’s movie which called the inspection process a charade manipulated by the U.S.
And this list is not necessarily exhaustive. There is still more evidence coming to light. But it’s clear that there was a lot of Iraqi money flowing to a lot of people close to power in many countries.
Shaker Al-Khaffaji (7 million barrels) advanced $400,000 to Scott Ritter, former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq. Ritter produced a documentary purporting to tell the true story of the weapons inspections, which in his telling were corrupted by sinister U.S. manipulation. [47]
Samir Vincent (10.5 million barrels): In 2000, Vincent, an Iraqi-born American who lived in the U.S. since 1958, organized a delegation of Iraqi religious leaders to the U.S., which met with former president Jimmy Carter.