Oil for Food

I've missed most of what's going on with the investigation into the corruption in the program that permitted Iraq to sell oil during sanctions if the proceeds were used for humanitarian causes, such as food and medicine. Apparently there's some problem with deciding who will actually conduct the investigations, which I suspect will end up like anything we do in this country - choose investigators who won't cause the investigated any real harm.

At any rate, there are more than Saddam's crooks involved in this deal:

Allegations that Saddam was earning illicit cash by smuggling oil out of the country, or that his inner circle were profiting from kickbacks paid by companies keen to get the lucrative business are nothing new. But the publication of the list in January was the first time that charges were leveled at people outside the regime, including former ministers in France, political parties in Russia, Arab journalists, British politicians and dozens of companies domiciled in Switzerland, Liechtenstein or Cyprus.

Republican lawmakers and administration officials in Washington (who have between them several of their own inquiries into the affair) have suggested that votes on the U.N. Security Council may have been influenced by the voucher scheme, and some have hinted darkly at a web of corruption that reaches all the way to Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

  UPI article