Mahablog: What Was That About UNscam?

Julian Borger and Jamie Wilson of the Guardian dropped a bomb on the UN oil-for-food scandal so beloved by the Right, but don't hold your breath waiting for the righties to acknowledge it.

The United States administration turned a blind eye to extensive sanctions-busting in the prewar sale of Iraqi oil, according to a new Senate investigation.

A report released last night by Democratic staff on a Senate investigations committee presents documentary evidence that the Bush administration was made aware of illegal oil sales and kickbacks paid to the Saddam Hussein regime but did nothing to stop them.

The scale of the shipments involved dwarfs those previously alleged by the Senate committee against UN staff and European politicians like the British MP, George Galloway, and the former French minister, Charles Pasqua.

In fact, the Senate report found that US oil purchases accounted for 52% of the kickbacks paid to the regime in return for sales of cheap oil - more than the rest of the world put together.

"The United States was not only aware of Iraqi oil sales which violated UN sanctions and provided the bulk of the illicit money Saddam Hussein obtained from circumventing UN sanctions," the report said. "On occasion, the United States actually facilitated the illicit oil sales.

The righties are still holding victory orgies to celebrate the slaying of the great beast Newsweek, but they might want to take a break and pay attention to this new twist in UNscam, because it could be huge. The best blog analysis I've seen so far is from Steve Soto at The Left Coaster:

We already know that Bush let Zarqawi get away several times in the year before the war, and now the man is killing our soldiers. We now find out that Bush allowed Hussein to enrich himself illegally at a time when Bush was planning to invade his country and commit our troops to toppling him. Worse yet, Bush had the US Navy provide escort to the ships of Odin Marine, who were shipping Saddam's crude from an unauthorized Iraqi port to Jordan, with Saddam getting kickbacks for these transactions as late as early 2003. Bush was helping Saddam line his pockets in the months leading up to the invasion, and some of that money probably helped finance what our soldiers are enduring now. What was the reason for allowing Saddam to profit from illicit oil deals circumventing the UN program? To allow Jordan and Turkey to get a source of oil that was hindered by the UN sanctions against Iraq,and to buy their support in other areas. Yet the US not only knew about it and condoned the enrichment of Saddam, but provided a navy escort for the oil shipments.

Bush and the GOP have the gall to call for Kofi Annan’s head over the administration of the Oil for Food program, and now it turns out that Bush let a member of the Axis of Evil profit from illegal transactions when just months later it was Saddam’s noncompliance with UN requirements that was cited by Bush as a reason for going to war? And we now find out that the Bush Treasury Department stonewalled the Volcker Commission's efforts to find out the US role in these illicit transactions, even after Colin Powell's State Department pressed Treasury.

You'd think the depths of Bushie corruption wouldn't surprise me any more, but I'm stunned. It's been obvious for several months that the Bushies were hyping UNscam to discredit the UN and keep the natives stirred up. They must have figured no one would notice they were the biggest scammers.