First of all; lemme admit something. When I first started this blog, I meant for it to be a politics and sports blog. For regular readers, I haven't done alot of sports. Yes, I still do keep up with it, but when I get in front of this keyboard and start typing sports is usually the last thing on my mind right now.
Why? Because there is way too much at stake to take my mind off of this election.
I don't think alot of people realize what's really at stake here when we talk about the presidential election. Oftentimes, conservatives get criticized for not being open-minded. But when you ask them why they'll vote for John Kerry, it's mainly because he isn't Bush.
Well, they're right. John Kerry is not George Bush. In fact, these two are probably the most diverse candidates since Reagan and Mondale clashed in 84. Back then, it was about the nuclear freeze. Now it's about internationalism, and how it will dictate U.S. policy in the future.
With the Oil-For-Food Program, we saw internationalism at it's worst so far.
The London Times reported today that the main culprits of the the Oil-For-Food scandal was Russia and France:
The report largely implicates France and Russia, whom Saddam Hussein targeted as he sought support on the UN Security Council before the Iraq war. Both countries were influential voices against UN-backed action.
A senior UN official responsible for the scheme is identified as a major beneficiary. The report, marked “highly confidential”, also finds that the private office of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, profited from the cheap oil. Saddam’s regime awarded this oil during the run-up to the war when military action was being discussed at the UN.
And don't think Putin was the only one:
A French oil company teamed up with the regime to bribe a UN-appointed inspector monitoring exports of Iraqi oil. The inspector, a Portuguese national working for Saybolt, a Dutch firm, was paid a total of £58,000 in cash to forge export documents.
The French firm is linked to a close associate of Jacques Chirac, the country’s president. A spokesman for Saybolt said it would be investigating the allegations.
France is no surprise. After all, they tried all they could to sabotage the war with those
forged Niger documents. As for Russia, well, it answers a few questions. Putin did admit that he had given the U.S. intelligence about
Saddam attempts to attack. However, it's now obvious that money kept them from supporting any mission to oust Hussein as well.
Now the
New York Times jumped on this yesterday with information about a House subcommittee report that added China into the mix:
The paper suggests that France, Russia and China blocked inquiries into Iraq's manipulation of the program because their companies "had much to gain from maintaining'' the status quo. "Their businesses made billions of dollars through their involvement with the Hussein regime and O.F.F.P.," the document states, using the initials for the program. No officials of the three governments could be reached for comment.
The paper also accuses the United Nations office charged with overseeing the program of having "pressed" contractors not to rigorously inspect Iraqi oil being sold and the foreign goods being bought. The program office, headed by Benan Sevan, who is also under investigation by a committee appointed by the United Nations, turned a blind eye to corruption charges, the paper says, because it apparently saw oil-for-food "strictly as a humanitarian program."
But the problem is that the corruption kept money
out of the mouths of the hungry and could have helped moderize and rebuild Iraq's infrastructure after the Gulf War. According to the NYT, Saddam and the Iraqi Government made over
$10 billion dollars since that program started in 1995. And he did it by selling the oil for less than what it was worth to companies and traders who gave him kickbacks for it. They turned around and sold it for a higher profit. And the United Nations - who knew about this the whole time - was given hush money and let it happen.
Now let's talk about the election. The Democratic presidential candidate says he should be elected because he can bring the United Nations in to help reconstruct Iraq.
But there are two problems with that:
1. In order to get the U.N. to do anything, you must get all the countries with veto power to agree. France, Germany, and Russia got veto power, and they have all said they would use it for any resolution requiring forces to go into Iraq.
2. Why should we try to gain influence with the countries that were right in the midst of corruption with a despot, and won't even admit their wrongdoing?
These are the countries that John Kerry wants to look to before we make a decision. These are the countries in which John Kerry wants to administer a "global test" in order to determine whether we should use military force. This is the "internationalism" that John Kerry embraces. But it should be painfully obvious to anyone that internationalism is not in the best interest of America, nor will it uplift any country. It will keep the rich richer, at the expense of the poor.
Make no mistake about it;
if this was the United States who vetoed U.N. resolutions in order to protect U.S. companies who were conducting illegal business deals with a despot who has killed hundreds of thousands of people and has attacked other countries and our servicemen, you'd never hear the end of it. ESPECIALLY if it was a Republican president, and ESPECIALLY if it was George W. Bush. Every two-bit leftist around the world would be calling for his head.
Because these are countries that sided against the war, they get a pass. It's an ends-justify-the-means approach. And sadly, there's just enough people that could be hoodwinked into this joke of a candidate and one of the most simple-minded and dangerous ideas that this country could ever face.
