Experimenting With Bias: Four Articles - One Story

Today in Englewood, Colorado, John Kerry gave a news conference. This impromptu question and answer session revealed Kerry's lack of any moral fiber, his complete lack of mettle, and his total and utter lack of comprehension regarding the serious state of the world today.

One of the pool reporters asked Kerry a hard question regarding his constantly waivering firm stand. He replied with something to the effect of, "I know what I know...", and after a few more journalists pelting him, he ended with, "I don't know..." and abruptly ended the conference.

When the text of the news conference is available, I will post it into this thread.

Here we go (in no particular order):

Article 01

My San Antonio
Round 2 Starts Before the Bell
Web Posted: 10/08/2004 12:00 AM CDT
Gary Martin
Express-News Washington Bureau

ST. LOUIS — President Bush and Democratic rival John Kerry sharpened their attacks on each other Thursday as they prepared for their second televised debate.

The candidates engaged in a verbal brawl on the eve of tonight's showdown that likely will include questions about Iraq and a new report that concluded Saddam Hussein didn't have the weapons of mass destruction cited as a reason for last year's U.S.-led invasion.

Bush conceded Thursday that Saddam lacked the weapons, but not the will to redevelop the program.

"I believe we were right to take action, and America is safer today with Saddam Hussein in prison," Bush said at the White House before traveling to St. Louis, where the debate will be held at Washington University.

The statement brought a quick response from Kerry, who told a Colorado news conference that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney "may be the last two people on the planet who won't face the truth."

"My fellow Americans, you don't make up or find reasons to go to war after the fact," Kerry said.

The president defended his position at a Wisconsin rally, where he reiterated his characterization of Kerry as indecisive — first supporting and then opposing the war — and unfit to be commander in chief.

"My opponent tries to say that I made up reasons to go to war. Just who is the one trying to mislead the American people?" Bush asked.

The exchanges were an extension of the first debate, when Kerry insisted the Bush administration's rush to war allowed 9-11 instigator Osama bin Laden to slip away in Afghanistan.

Kerry accused the president of misleading the country about Saddam's weapons program to shift focus from al-Qaida to Iraq, leaving America more vulnerable to another terrorist attack.

This week, Bush said Kerry's vacillation on Iraq would create a danger for the United States and the free world.

The heated attacks come as a poll out Thursday shows Kerry gaining a slight lead over the president with just 23 days before the Nov. 2 election.

Tonight's debate, the second of three, will be a town-hall style event in which the audience will ask questions on Iraq, foreign affairs and domestic policy.

The audience will be composed of undecided voters chosen by the Gallup Organization.

All major television networks plan to air the 90-minute debate, which begins at 8 p.m. CST.

Polls show Kerry's performance in the first debate on foreign policy gave him a boost among undecided voters.

It also raised expectations for the president to blunt that momentum with a strong showing in the second encounter.

In the first, Bush seemed peeved and annoyed with Kerry's criticisms, at times scowling and pursing his lips.

"The president did not come across well. That is an image he needs to eliminate," said Frank Harrison, a professor at Trinity University in San Antonio.

"I'm not sure he can survive one or two more debates where that is the perception," said Harrison, a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania.

The president was widely judged to have lost the first debate. Earlier this week he responded with a retooled stump speech that sought to draw even sharper distinctions with Kerry.

Bush branded Kerry as a "tax and spend liberal" who voted 98 times during a 20-year Senate career to raise taxes. He also said Kerry's claim that the invasion of Iraq was a colossal mistake is a "strategy of retreat."

"It's a new and very shrill attack on John Kerry and John Edwards," said Joe Lockhart, a Kerry campaign spokesman.

Democrats characterized the new Bush speech as a desperate measure to regain his footing after a poor debate performance and a week of stinging revelations about Iraq.

Monday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he knew of no direct tie between Saddam Hussein and al Qaida.

And Paul Bremer, the president's handpicked administrator in Iraq, said the United States failed to put enough troops in country to quell insurgent uprisings after the invasion.

A report by Charles Duelfer, a U.S. weapons inspector, released to Congress on Wednesday, concluded that Saddam eliminated his weapons of mass destruction after the first Gulf War in 1991.

He found no evidence to suggest that there were any concerted efforts to restart his weapons program before the U.S. invasion.

Bush acknowledged the lack of weapons, but cited passages of the report to bolster his case that Saddam planned to rebuild his arsenal after UN sanctions were lifted. He said the invasion was justified.

The president said the Iraqi leader "retained the knowledge, the materials, the means and the intent to produce weapons of mass destruction, and he could have passed that knowledge on to our terrorist enemies."

gmartin@express-news.net

Article 2

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Kerry: 'Bush won't face truth about Iraq'
Published on: 10/07/04

Democrat John Kerry charged Thursday that President Bush had "fictionalized" the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and that his misjudgments are responsible for the "chaos on the ground" in Iraq.

Kerry's criticism of the president, his strongest yet, came in response to a report Wednesday by weapons inspector Charles Duelfer that Iraq had "essentially destroyed" its illicit weapons stockpile more than a decade ago.

Faced with the report, Bush conceded early Thursday that Iraq did not have the stockpiles of banned weapons he had used as justification for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq last year.

But Bush insisted that Saddam had retained the "means and intent" to produce weapons of mass destruction and that the United States was right to use military forces to depose him.

In his first public comment on the Duelfer report, Bush referred back to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks by Osama bin Laden, arguing that "in a world after Sept. 11, [Saddam] was a threat we had to confront."

Similarly, Vice President Dick Cheney, a chief architect of the war in Iraq, said Thursday that a danger existed in Iraq and it was right to invade.

"Delay, defer, wait wasn't an option," Cheney said at a campaign rally in Miami. "The president did exactly the right thing in taking down Saddam Hussein."

Kerry told reporters in Colorado, where he was preparing for tonight's debate with Bush, that "the president of the United States and the vice president of the United States may well be the last two people on the planet who won't face the truth about Iraq."

He also charged that the evidence Bush and Cheney presented in arguing for a pre-emptive strike against Saddam was "all designed, all purposefully used to shift the focus from al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden to Iraq and Saddam Hussein, all with the result that the president shifted the focus from the real enemy to an enemy that was aggrandized and fictionalized."

Kerry said events this week have "provided definitive evidence as to why George Bush should not be re-elected president."

In addition to the Duelfer report, he cited comments this week by the former U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, suggesting that the Bush administration had not provided enough troops to prevent violence in Iraq after the fall of Saddam.

"President Bush's decision to send in too few troops, without thinking about what would happen after the initial fighting was over has left our troops more vulnerable, left the situation on the ground in chaos, and made the mission in Iraq much more difficult to accomplish," Kerry said.

Kerry, when asked if he would commit more troops to Iraq as president, said conditions there could deteriorate further over the next few months, making it difficult to know what to expect.

"I don't know what I'm going to find on January 20th, the way the president is going," he said. "If the president just does more of the same every day and it continues to deteriorate, I may be handed Lebanon, figuratively speaking."

Lebanon descended into civil war in the 1980s — a conflict in which Westerners were routinely taken hostage and in which the bombing of U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 killed 241 American servicemen. Months after the bombing, then-President Reagan withdrew U.S. troops from Lebanon.

Kerry said he rejected Bush's argument that Saddam still had the "means and intent" to produce weapons of mass destruction, recalling that the president had claimed prior to invading Iraq that such weapons existed.

Looking straight into the television cameras at his news conference, Kerry said, "Mr. President, the American people deserve more than spin about this war. They deserve facts that represent reality, not carefully polished arguments and points that are simply calculated to align with a preconceived perception."

Later, at a rally in Wisconsin, Bush blasted Kerry's criticism as a continuation of the Democrat's "pattern of overheated rhetoric."

"He now claims that I somehow misled America about weapons, when he himself cited the very intelligence about Saddam's weapons as the reason he voted to go to war," Bush said.

"Two years ago this Saturday, back when he was for the war," Bush told the crowd, "my opponent said on the floor of the United States Senate, and I quote, 'Saddam Hussein, sitting in Baghdad with an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, is a different matter. In the wake of September 11, who among us can say with any certainty to anybody that those weapons might not be used against our troops or against allies in the region?' "

Bush also quoted Kerry as telling the Senate that there was no certainty that "this master of miscalculation will not develop a weapon of mass destruction even greater — a nuclear weapon — then reinvade Kuwait, push the Kurds out, attack Israel, any number of scenarios to try to further his ambitions."

"Now today my opponent tries to say that I made up reasons to go to war," Bush said. "Just who is the one trying to mislead the American people?"

Kerry issued a statement saying the quotes had been taken out of context.

Article 3

Rocky Mountain News
Kerry Assails Bush on Iraq
By The Associated Press
October 7, 2004

ENGLEWOOD — Democratic Sen. John Kerry said today that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have failed to recognize a deteriorating situation in postwar Iraq and "may well be the last two people on the planet who won't face the truth."

In his strongest statement yet, the Democratic presidential nominee suggested that if Bush fails to recognize the severity of problems in Iraq, then if Kerry takes office in January he will face a situation as chaotic as the Middle East in the early 1980s.

"If the president just does more of the same every day and it continues to deteriorate, I may be handed Lebanon, figuratively speaking," Kerry told reporters at a brief news conference.

In 1983, suicide attacks against the U.S. embassy in Lebanon killed 63 people, and the bombing of U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut six months later killed 241 American servicemen. Dozens of Westerners were taken hostage during that period.

President Reagan ordered U.S. troops to withdraw from Lebanon just a few months after the Marine bombing.

Kerry made the comments as he wrapped up a low-key stop in Colorado to prepare for Friday night's debate against Bush, their second encounter in the final weeks of the presidential campaign.

Kerry spoke the day after Charles Duelfer, the U.S. weapons hunter in Iraq, reported that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programs had deteriorated by the time of the U.S.-led invasion last year. Kerry said the report "provided definitive evidence as to why George Bush should not be re-elected president of the United States."

Faced with that evidence, Bush conceded today that Iraq did not have the stockpiles of banned weapons he had warned of before the invasion last year. But he maintained that Saddam retained the "means and the intent" to produce weapons of mass destruction and the United States was right to take action against him.

Kerry rejected the argument, saying that the evidence of weapons of mass destruction that the administration presented to Congress was why he and other lawmakers voted to give Bush the authority to go to war.

"My fellow Americans, you don't make up or find reasons to go to war after the fact," Kerry said. "Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States and the vice president of the United States may well be the last two people on the planet who won't face the truth about Iraq."

Kerry then looked into the camera and posed his challenge directly to Bush.

"Mr. President, the American people deserve more than spin about this war," Kerry said. "They deserve facts that represent reality, not carefully polished arguments and points that are simply calculated to align with a preconceived perception."

Kerry said he still believed that Saddam was a threat, but dozens of other countries have the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction or are home to al-Qaeda operatives.

Kerry said the evidence of weapons of mass destruction was overblown and designed to "purposefully used to shift the focus from al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden, to Iraq and Saddam Hussein."

Kerry has argued that the Iraq was a diversion from the overriding U.S. effort to respond to the Sept. 11 attacks and hunt down its mastermind bin Laden.

Article 4

Turkish Press
Kerry Blasts Bush For 'Pattern of Deception' on Iraq

ENGLEWOOD, Colorado, Oct 7 (AFP) - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, stepping up his attacks on George W. Bush, accused him Thursday of serious errors and a "pattern of deception" on Iraq that has undermined the overall war on terror.

"The president of the United States and the vice president of the United States may well be the last two people on the planet who won't face the truth about Iraq," Kerry told a news conference on the eve of his second debate with Bush.

The Massachusetts senator, running neck and neck with the Republican less than four weeks before the November 2 election, ran down a litany of criticisms of Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq that came out this week.

"The result is that President Bush's serious errors in judgment have left us more vulnerable and less safe as the terrorists continue to murder school children and target our brave soldiers," he said.

Kerry accused Bush of a "pattern of deception" on Iraq and other issues, and of ignoring criticism such as a new official report that said Saddam Hussein had years ago gotten rid of the weapons of mass destruction used to justify the war.

He also picked up again on comments Monday by Paul Bremer, the former US civilian overseer in Iraq, that the administration had not deployed an adequate number of troops to keep order after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003.

The Democrat said Bush "left our troops more vulnerable, left situation on the ground in chaos, and made the mission in Iraq much more difficult to accomplish. That is the truth."

Kerry again accused Bush of "not being straight with Americans," diverting attention from Al-Qaeda terrorists to Iraq, ducking responsibility and launching "dishonest" attacks on his White House rival's positions.

"For President Bush, it's always someone else's fault, denial, and blaming someone else," the senator said. "The truth is, the responsibility lies with the commander in chief."

Saddam’s Sugar Daddy

October 07, 2004, 10:50 p.m.
Saddam’s Sugar Daddy
Claudia Rosett
NRO Contributor

The facts about the U.N.’s corrupt Oil-for-Food relationship with the deposed Iraqi tyrant are further exposed.

CIA chief weapons inspector Charles Duelfer may not have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but he sure found information enough to blow the lid off the simmering scandal of the United Nations Oil-for-Food program. As it turns out, Oil-for-Food pretty much was Saddam Hussein's weapons program.

As Duelfer documents, Oil-for-Food allowed Saddam to replenish his empty coffers, firm up his networks for hiding money and buying arms, corrupt the U.N.'s own debates over Iraq, greatly erode sanctions and deliberately prep the ground for further rearming, including the acquisition of nuclear weapons. As set up and run by the U.N., Oil-for-Food devolved into a depraved and increasingly dangerous mockery of what was advertised by the U.N. as a relief program for sick and starving Iraqis.

The report notes that the start of Oil-for-Food, in 1996, marked the revival of Saddam's post-Gulf War fortunes. His regime amassed some $11 billion in illicit funds between the end of the Gulf War in 1991, and his overthrow by the U.S.-led Coalition in 2003. Most of that money flowed in from 1996-2003, during the era of Oil-for-Food. One might add that what allowed this dirty money to stack up was U.N. policy — urged along and overseen by Annan, in the name of aid — that allowed Saddam to import the equipment to revive Iraq's oil production, all of it accruing to Saddam. Saddam's regime had virtually no other source of income; there was no tax base. It was out of these oil flows, condoned (but not well metered) by the U.N., that Saddam derived virtually all income for the astounding roster of political bribery and illicit arms transactions detailed in this report.

Saddam followed a deliberate strategy of using bribes in such forms as contracts for cheap oil via the U.N. program, or outright gifts of vouchers for oil pumped under U.N. supervision, to gain political influence abroad. He grossly violated U.N. rules, with illicit trade agreements, oil smuggling, and arms deals (conventional, but still deadly) — and the U.N. did not stop him. By 2001, Saddam was able to thwart many of the constraints sanctions were meant to impose on his regime. His strategy, notes the Duelfer report, succeeded "to the point where sitting members of the Security Council were actively violating resolutions passed by the Security Council."

But no one has ever heard these facts from the U.N. itself, certainly not from such prime violators as France, Russia, and Syria — nor from the man most directly responsible for protecting the honor of the institution, Secretary-General Annan. Instead, Annan has to this day refused even to disclose to the public such basic details as the names of Saddam's contractors or the terms of their deals.

By greatly obscuring the specifics, this U.N. secrecy has gone far to blur the true damage and horrors of Oil-for-Food, leaving the impression that any graft — if indeed there was such a thing within the program — was allegedly committed by faceless people employing vague methods, overseen by an unwitting U.N. Secretariat, led by a Secretary-General who earlier this year professed himself ignorant of any wrongdoing by his staff, and who somehow never worked around to alerting the world that Saddam had developed a taste for doing sweet deals via states with conveniently shared borders, such as Jordan and Syria, or veto-wielding members of the Security Council: France, Russia, and China.

Blessedly, the Duelfer report clears away much of the U.N. murk. Volume I, devoted to sources of financing and procurement for Saddam's regime, provides hundreds of pages of damning details — lifting much of the cover that U.N. secrecy gave to Saddam, his business partners, and the U.N. itself (which had effectively become one of his chief business partners, thanks both to the 2.2-percent commission collected by Annan's Secretariat, and the deals parceled out by Saddam to pivotal member states). Duelfer's report, released Wednesday, includes not only general descriptions of Oil-for-Food corruption, but names, dates, methods, networks, and dollar amounts — a roster dubbed adroitly by Reuters as Saddam's "Weapons-of-Mass-Corruption."

There is everything here from the eye-catching list of Saddam's oil allocations to Annan's handpicked head of the program, Benon Sevan (he denies it); to specific allocations of cheap oil for French and Russian government officials; to such low-profile stuff as how Oil-for-Food gave Saddam money and maneuvering room to meddle in the presidential election of Belarus.

There is information on Saddam's illicit oil-funded contracts to buy from assorted Russian companies such stuff as barrels for antiaircraft guns, missile components, and missile-guidance electronics. There is an illuminating section that explains, "Most of Iraq's military imports transited Syria by several trading companies, including some headed by high-ranking Syrian government officials" — including the head of Syrian presidential security, Dhu al-Himma Shalish. There are details on Saddam's missile-procurement negotiations with North Korea. And there is background on Saddam's deals with Chinese companies that helped Iraq improve its indigenous-missile capabilities, despite the history, as the report notes, that "China stated publicly on multiple occasions its position that Iraq should fully comply with all UN Security Council resolutions."

Indeed, there is so much here, involving so many businesses and officials and illicit networks worldwide, that it may take a while for many of the disclosures to be winnowed out, and sink in. But what it boils down to is that the U.N. provided cover for Saddam to steal, smuggle, deal, and bribe his way back toward becoming precisely the kind of entrenched menace that all of the U.N.'s erstwhile integrity and well-paid activity was supposed to prevent — equipped with weapons that may even now be killing both civilians and Coalition troops in Iraq.

On the WMD front, Duelfer reports that while no weapons of mass murder were found, Saddam had made a point of preserving the know-how. By corrupting the U.N. setup of sanctions and Oil-for-Food, he was deliberately amassing the resources and networks to go right ahead as soon as sanctions were gone.

Among Duelfer's findings was that Oil-for-Food riches had positioned Saddam to massively ramp up chemical-weapons production in a matter of months. This has already inspired Rep. Joe Barton, who heads one of the assorted congressional inquiries into Oil-for-Food, to write to Annan, demanding further information. "The notion that the United Nations allowed the oil-for-food program to become an oil-for-death program is troublesome, to say the least," wrote Barton. He added, "Given Mr. Duelfer's findings, we now ask for your personal involvement in the expeditious discovery and public release of any information in possession of the United Nations related to the diversion of oil-for-food funding into Iraqi chemical weapons programs.

Annan's office has not been answering questions in recent months on Oil-for-Food. The U.N. deflects all such issues to its own self-investigation, headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker — who has continued Annan's practice of keeping secret even such basic information as who bought how much bargain-priced oil from Saddam, and who has deferred all question-answering of substance until he delivers his report, maybe sometime next year.

The standard U.N. defense, offered up periodically by Annan and his subordinates since Annan finally conceded this past March that there had been, perhaps, quite a lot of "wrong-doing," is that Oil-for-Food performed as well as possible under difficult circumstances. A little corruption, we are given to understand, can creep into even the loftiest humanitarian endeavors.

This was not simply a little corruption, however. And it was not vague, and it was not faceless, and it was anything but benign. The Duelfer report takes us right into the caverns of corruption, political rot, arms traffic, and U.N. complicity that under cover of a relief operation was allowing Saddam to to prosper. As we begin to absorb the details, the very least Kofi Annan can contribute is to pursue — with the same kind of zeal he brought to expanding Oil-for-Food — a campaign for the kind of U.N. transparency that should have been the first line of defense against this monstrous travesty ever happening in the first place.

— Claudia Rosett is a journalist in residence at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and an adjunct fellow with the Hudson Institute.

President's Remarks at a Victory 2004 Rally in Wausau, Wisconsin

Marathon Park
Wausau, Wisconsin

3:19 P.M. CDT

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all for coming out. (Applause.) It's great to be back in Wisconsin. (Applause.) Listen, thanks for coming. It's great to be back in Wausau. It's an honor that so many came out to say hello. I'm so thankful you're here. (Applause.) Next time I come back I'd like to do some hunting and fishing. (Applause.)

I'm here to ask for your vote. (Applause.) I'm here to ask for your help. (Applause.) We're getting close to the stretch run here in this campaign, and I'd like to encourage you to get your friends and neighbors to register to vote, and then go to the polls. And remind them when they head to the polls, if they want a safer America, a stronger America, a better America, to put Dick Cheney and me back in office. (Applause.)

Laura sends her very best. (Applause.) Last time I saw her I was watching the Jay Leno rerun this morning. (Laughter.) I am -- you know, when I asked her to marry me she said, fine, just so long as I never have to give a speech. (Laughter.) I said, okay, you got a deal. Fortunately, she didn't hold me to that promise. The American people have gotten to see what I know: She is a strong, compassionate, great First Lady for this country. (Applause.)

I was proud of the job my Vice President did the other night. (Applause.) I appreciate Tommy Thompson. He's a great leader. (Applause.) He's in my Cabinet, as you recall. And I appreciate you training him so well. (Applause.) I'm glad to be here on the stage with the next United States senator from Wisconsin, Tim Michels. (Applause.) You got a good one in Tim, and I hope you put him in office. (Applause.) It's important. And make no mistake about it, with your help, he's going to win. (Applause.)

I want to thank Jack Voight, who is the State Treasurer. I want to thank the Assembly Speaker, John Gard who is with us, Scott Walker is over here from Milwaukee County. I appreciate him coming. We call him Scott W. (Laughter.) I want to thank the mayor of Wausau for being here, Mayor Tipple. Mr. Mayor, I'm proud you're here. My only advice, and I know you didn't ask for any -- (laughter) -- but my only advice is to fill the potholes. (Laughter and applause.)

I want to thank Scott Klug for emceeing this event, and I appreciate my friend Stan Orr. I want to thank John Conlee, the singer who was here. I appreciate you coming, John, and thanks for entertaining everybody. I particularly want to thank the grass roots activists who are here. (Applause.) Those are the people who put up the signs and make the phone calls and do all the hard work. You never hardly get thanked. I'm here to thank you for what you're going to do. (Applause.) I know with your hard work, I know when we turn out the vote, we will carry Wisconsin this year and win a great victory in November. (Applause.)

I have a strong, positive message. As your president, I have worked hard to make America more hopeful and more secure. I have led our country with principle and resolve -- and that's how I'll lead this nation for four more years.

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

THE PRESIDENT: When I took office -- I want you to remind your friends and neighbors about what we have been through as a country. When I took office, the bubble of the 1990s had burst, and our economy was heading into recession. And because of the attacks of September the 11th, nearly a million jobs were lost in three months. It was a dangerous time for our economy. You might remember there were people warning of potential deflation and depression. But we acted. To stimulate the economy, I called on the United States Congress to pass historic tax relief, which it did. (Applause.) And that tax relief was the fuel that got our economy growing again. Thanks to the effort of our citizens, and the right policies, in the right place, at the right time. (Applause.) That recession is behind us and we're creating jobs once again. (Applause.)

In the past year, the United States has added about 1.7 million new jobs -- more than Germany, Japan, Great Britain, Canada, and France combined. (Applause.) Real after-tax income -- the money in your pocket -- is up more than 10 percent since I took office. (Applause.) Home ownership is at an all time high in America today. Small businesses are flourishing. Today we learned that America's welfare rolls are the lowest in 34 years. (Applause.) Math and reading scores are increasing in our public schools. (Applause.) Ten million students will get record levels of grants and loans to help with college. (Applause.) We have modernized Medicare so our seniors will get a prescription drug coverage in 2006. (Applause.)

And this farm economy is strong. I understand farming is a priority in Wisconsin. (Applause.) And I made it a priority in my administration. My opponent has taken a different view. In the Senate career he's consistently voted against the interests of your dairy farmers.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: He supported the Northeast Dairy Compact.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: That puts your farmers at a distinct disadvantage. I believe farm policy should treat all farmers fairly. That's why I was proud to sign a good farm bill. (Applause.) We've opened up foreign markets for your products. We've increased funding for ethanol and biodiesel. Farm income is at an all-time high. (Applause.)

I know that the Milk Income Lost Contract program is important to the dairy farmers here in Wisconsin. The milk program is set to expire next fall. I look forward to working with Congress to reauthorize the program, so Wisconsin dairy farmers and dairy farmers all across this country can count on the support they need. (Applause.)

We have made America stronger, and we're just getting started. (Applause.) Listen, we live in a time of change. It's a changing economy. People are changing jobs and careers often. Women are working inside the home and outside the home. And yet the fundamental systems of our government haven't changed. They're stuck in the past. I understand a hopeful society is one in which we challenge the soft bigotry of low expectations in our public schools, and raise the standards, and trust the local people to make sure they make the right decisions for the schools. We have an achievement gap in America that's closing, thanks to our education reforms. And we're not going to turn back. (Applause.)

We're going to invest in our nation's fine community colleges so they prepare workers for the jobs of the 21st century. In a time of change, because people are changing jobs often, we'll expand health savings accounts so people can pay health expenses, tax-free, and keep the savings if they change jobs.

We'll improve Social Security. Listen, if you're -- I remember the 2000 campaign here in Wisconsin. You might remember it, too. They said if old George W. gets elected, he's going to take away your Social Security check. You remember those ads? Well, you got your check, didn't you? (Applause.) And you're going to get it again. (Applause.)

Nobody is going to take away the check of those who are on Social Security, and the baby boomers are in good shape. But we better worry about our children and our grandchildren when it comes to Social Security. In order to make sure Social Security is available for them, younger workers ought to be able to take some of their own money and set up a personal savings account that they can call their own, that the government will not take away. (Applause.)

To keep our economy strong and competitive, we got to make sure America is the best place in the world to do business. That means we've got to have that tax relief we passed permanent. That means we got to do something about these needless regulations on small businesses. (Applause.) This country needs an energy plan if we want to keep jobs here in America. I submitted a plan to the Congress over two years ago. It's a plan that calls for more conservation, the use of renewable fuels like ethanol and biodiesel. It's a plan that says we can use our coal and natural gas wisely without hurting the environment. It's a plan that says if we want jobs here in America, we must be less dependent on foreign sources of energy. (Applause.)

We got to do something about the frivolous and junk lawsuits here in America that hurt our employers and make it hard to get jobs. (Applause.) We've got -- my opponent and I have got different views on all these issues. We've got some fundamental differences on issues like taxes. See, I have a record of reducing them. He's got a record of raising them.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: He voted in the United States Senate 98 times to raise taxes.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: That sounds like he's developing a habit. (Laughter.) He voted for higher taxes on Social Security benefits.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: He voted for the 1997 formula that helped cause the increases in Medicare.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: He's against all the tax relief we've passed. You might remember that tax relief. We raised the child credit. We reduced the penalty on marriage. (Applause.) We created a 10-percent bracket for low-income Americans. (Applause.) He voted against them all.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: My opponent is one of the few candidates in history to campaign on a pledge to raise taxes.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: And unfortunately that's the kind of promise more politicians keep. (Laughter.) He says the tax relief -- the tax increase is only for the rich. Now, you've heard that before. The rich hire lawyers and accountants for a reason -- to stick you with the bill. (Laughter.) The good news is we're not going to let him tax us this year. We're going to carry Wisconsin and win a great victory in November. (Applause.)

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

THE PRESIDENT: The Senator and I have different views on health care -- fundamentally different views on health care. I believe that we ought to make health care available and affordable. We'll make it available by making sure low-income Americans can -- can go to a community health center to get good preventative care, and good primary care. We'll make it available to make sure our children's health programs for low-income Americans are expanded to every corner of this country. We'll make it affordable by doing something about these frivolous lawsuits that are running good doctors out of business and running your costs up. (Applause.)

We'll make it affordable by promoting technologies, which will help wring out excessive costs in health care. We'll make it affordable by allowing small businesses to pool risk across jurisdictional boundaries so they can buy insurance at the same discounts big companies can buy insurance. (Applause.) We'll make it affordable by expanding health savings accounts, and that stands in stark contrast to my opponent's plan. Under his plan, 8 million Americans would lose the private insurance they get at work and would end up on a government program.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: Under his plan, eight out of 10 people who'd get new insurance would get it from the federal government.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: My opponent's proposal would be the largest expansion of government-run health care ever.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: And you know something, when the government pays the bills, it makes the rules. His plan would put bureaucrats in charge of dictating coverage, which could ration your care and limit your choice of doctors. What I'm telling you is he's putting us on the path to "Hilary-care."

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: I've got a different idea. (Applause.) In all we do to improve health care, we will make sure the decisions are made by patients and doctors, not by bureaucrats in our nation's capital. (Applause.)

During his 20 years as a senator, my opponent hasn't had many accomplishments. Of the hundreds of bills he submitted, only five became law. That's in 20 years of service. One of them was ceremonial. But to be fair, he has earned a special distinction in the Congress. The nonpartisan National Journal analyzed his record and named John Kerry the most liberal member of the United States Senate.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: Now, that's saying when the competition is people like Ted Kennedy. (Laughter.) It wasn't easy for him to be the single most liberal member of the Senate. You might say it took hard work. (Laughter.) But he earned that title by voting for higher taxes and more regulation and more junk lawsuits and more government control of your life. And that's one of the real differences of this campaign. My opponent is a tax-and-spend liberal, I'm a compassionate conservative. (Applause.) My opponent wants to empower government. I want to use government to empower our citizens. (Applause.) My opponent seems to think all the wisdom is found in Washington, D.C. I trust the wisdom of the American people. (Applause.)

You know, I say this, we're living in a changing, and we do, there's some things that won't change, the values we try to live by: courage and compassion, reverence and integrity. We stand for a culture of life in which every person matters and every being counts. (Applause.) We stand for marriage and family, which are the foundations of our society. (Applause.) And I stand for appointing judges who know the difference between personal opinion and the strict interpretation of the law. (Applause.)

Our differences are also clear on issues like national security. When I took office in 2001, threats to America had been gathering for years. Then, on one terrible morning, the terrorists took more lives than America lost at Pearl Harbor.

Since that day, we have waged a global campaign to protect the American people and bring our enemies to account. Our government has trained over a half a million first responders, we've tripled the spending for homeland security. Law enforcement and intelligence have better tools to stop the terrorists, thanks to the Patriot Act -- which Senator Kerry voted for but now wants to weaken.

The Taliban regime that sheltered al Qaeda is gone from power -- (applause) -- and in two days time, 10 million people, 41 percent of whom are women, have registered to vote in a presidential election that will take place in two day's time. Think about that. (Applause.) Think about what's going on there. The black market network that weapons materials to North Korea, Libya, and Iran is now out of business. Libya has given up its weapons of mass destruction programs. (Applause.) Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have joined the fight, and more than three-quarters of al Qaeda's key members and associates have been brought to justice. (Applause.) We have led, many have followed, and America and the world are safer. (Applause.)

After September the 11th, America had to assess every potential threat in a new light. Our nation awakened to even a greater danger -- the prospect that terrorists who killed thousands with hijacked airplanes would kill many more with weapons of mass murder. That's the threat we face. And so we had to take a hard look at every place where terrorists might get those weapons.

And one regime stood out -- the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. We knew the dictator had a history of using weapons of mass destruction, a long record of aggression and hatred for America, and was listed by Republican and Democratic administrations as a state sponsor of terror. There was a risk that Saddam would pass weapons or materials or information on to terrorist networks. And that was a risk, after September the 11th, this nation could not afford to take. (Applause.) After 12 years of United Nations Security Council resolutions, we gave him a final chance to come clean and to listen to the demands of the free world. He chose defiance and he chose war, and the world is better off with Saddam Hussein sitting in a prison cell. (Applause.)

Last week in our debate, Senator Kerry once again came down firmly on every side of the Iraq war. He stated that Saddam Hussein was a threat -- and that America had no business removing that threat. Senator Kerry said our soldiers and Marines are not fighting for a mistake -- but also called the liberation of Iraq a "colossal error." He said we need to do more to train Iraqis -- but also said we shouldn't be spending so much money over there. He said he wants to hold a summit meeting -- so he can invite other countries to join what he calls the "wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time."

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: You hear all that, you can understand why somebody would make a face. (Laughter and applause.) Just a short time ago, my opponent held a little press conference and continued his pattern of overheated rhetoric. He accused me of deception. He's claiming I misled America about weapons, when he himself cited the very same intelligence about Saddam's weapons programs as the reason he voted to go to war. Two years ago this Saturday, back when he was for the war -- (laughter) -- my opponent said on the floor of the United States Senate, "Saddam Hussein sitting in Baghdad, with an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction is a different matter. In the wake of September the 11th, who among us can say with any certainty to anybody that those weapons might not be used against our troops or against allies in the region."

John Kerry went on. "Who can say that this master of miscalculation will not develop a weapon of mass destruction even greater, a nuclear weapon, than re-invade Kuwait or push the Kurds out, attack Israel, any numbers of scenarios to try to further his ambitions. Can we afford to ignore that possibility that Saddam Hussein might accidentally, as well as purposely allow those weapons to slide off to one group or another in a region where weapons are the currency or the trade."

Now today my opponent tries to say I made up reasons to go to war. Just who is the one trying to mislead the American people? (Applause.) We have many victories in this war on terror so far, and the war goes on. Our nation is safer, but not yet safe. To win this war, we must fight it on every front. We will stay on the offensive against the terrorist networks -- we will defeat them overseas, so we do not have to face them here at home. (Applause.)

We will confront governments that support terrorists, and could arm them -- because they're equally guilty of terrorist murder. And our long-term victory requires confronting the ideology of hate with freedom and hope, changing the conditions that produce radicalism and suicide bombers, and finding new democratic allies in a troubled region of the world. You see, America is always more secure when freedom is on the march. (Applause.) And freedom is on the march in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and elsewhere. There will be good days and there will be bad days in the war on terror. But every day, we will show our resolve and we will do our duty. This nation is determined: We will stay in the fight until the fight is won. (Applause.)

AUDIENCE: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

THE PRESIDENT: My opponent and I have very different views on conducting the war on terror. Senator Kerry approaches the world with a September the 10th mindset. Think about this. He declared at his convention speech that any attack will be met with a swift and certain response. That was the mind-set of the 1990s, while al Qaeda was planning the attacks on America. After September the 11th, our object in the war on terror is not to wait for the next attack and respond, but to prevent attacks by taking the fight to the enemy. (Applause.)

In our debate, Senator Kerry said that removing Saddam Hussein was a mistake because a threat was not imminent. Think about that. The problem with his approach is obvious. If America waits until a threat is at our doorstep, it might be too late to save lives. (Applause.) You see, terrorists and tyrants will not give us polite notice before they launch an attack on our country. I refuse to stand by while dangers gather. (Applause.)

My opponent also announced the Kerry doctrine, declaring that Americans' actions in the war on terror must pass a global test.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: Under this test, America would not be able to act quickly against threats because we'd be sitting around waiting for a grade from other nations. I have a different view. America will always work with our allies for security and peace. But the President's job is not to pass an international test; the President's job is to protect the American people. (Applause.)

When my opponent first ran for Congress, he argued that American troops should be deployed only at the directive of the United Nations.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: You probably think I'm making that up. (Laughter.) I thought it was wrong when I first read it. (Laughter.) Now, to be fair, he changed his mind, but it is a window into his thinking. (Laughter.) Over the years, Senator Kerry has looked for every excuse to constrain America's action in the world. These days he praises America's broad coalition in the Persian Gulf War. But in 1991 -- I want to remind you what he said -- he criticized coalition members as, quote, "shadow battlefield allies who barely carry a burden." That sounds familiar, doesn't it? And that time he voted against the war.

If that coalition didn't pass his global test, nothing will pass his global test, nothing will pass his global test. (Laughter and applause.)

The Kerry doctrine has other consequences, especially for our men and women in uniform. The Senator from Massachusetts supports the International Criminal Court.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: Which would allow unaccountable foreign prosecutors and foreign judges to put American soldiers on trial.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: You probably think I'm making that up. See, that would be a legal nightmare for our troops. My fellow citizens, as long as I'm your President, Americans in uniform will answer to the officers and law of the United States -- not to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. (Applause.)

We have a different point of view on how to build alliances. The Senator speaks about his plan to strengthen America's alliances but he's got an odd way of going about it. In the middle of the war, he's chosen to insult our fighting allies by calling them "window dressing" and "a coalition of the coerced and the bribed."

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: Well, the Italians who died in Nasiriyah were not window dressing. They're heroes in the war on terror as far as we're concerned. (Applause.) The British and the Poles at the head of the multinational divisions in Iraq were not coerced or bribed. They fought and some have died in the cause of freedom and peace. (Applause.) These good allies and dozens of others deserve the respect of all Americans, not the scorn of a politician. (Applause.) Instead, the Senator would have America bend over backwards to satisfy a handful of governments with different agendas. This is my opponent's alliance-building strategy, brush off your best friend and fawn over your critics. And that's no way to gain respect in this world. (Applause.)

My opponent says he has a plan for Iraq and part of it should sound pretty familiar because it's already known as the Bush plan. (Laughter and applause.) Senator Kerry suggests we train Iraqi troops. That's what we've been doing for months. (Laughter.) He's proposing that Iraq have elections. That's what's going to happen in January. He says the U.N. ought to be involved in the elections. Well, the U.N. is already there. (Laughter.)

There was one new element of Senator Kerry's plan. He talks about artificial timetables to pull our forces out of Iraq. You see, he sent a signal that America's overriding goal in Iraq would be to leave, even if the job isn't done.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: That may satisfy his political needs, but his words complicate the essential work we're doing in Iraq. See, the Iraqi people need to know that America will not cut and run when their freedom is at stake. (Applause.) Our soldiers and Marines need to know that America will honor their service and sacrifice by completing the mission. (Applause.) Our enemies in Iraq need to know that they can never outlast the will of America. (Applause.) Senator Kerry assures us that he's the one to win a war he calls a mistake, a diversion, an error. But you can't win a war you do not believe in fighting for. (Applause.) On Iraq, Senator Kerry has a strategy for retreat, and I have a strategy for victory. (Applause.)

We returned the sovereignty to the Iraqi people ahead of schedule. We have trained and equipped about 100,000 Iraqi soldiers, police officers and other security personnel, and the total will rise to 125,000 by the end of the year. See, the strategy ought to be clear. The Iraqi people must stand up and fight for their freedom. They must be the ones that take the hard risk. (Applause.) We've allocated about $7 billion for reconstruction efforts so more Iraqis can see the benefit of freedom. We're working with the coalition of some 30 nations to provide security. Other nations are helping with debt relief. And although the terrorists will try to stop them, Iraq will hold free elections in January. (Applause.)

I believe in the power of liberty to transform nations. I believe that freedom can bring peace. You know, I talk to Prime Minister Koizumi quite often -- he's the Prime Minister of Japan. I know we've got some veterans here -- first of all, I want to say thanks to all the veterans who set such a great example. (Applause.) I suspect we may have some veterans of World War II with us. My dad was such a veteran. There's a veteran right there. (Applause.) The reason I bring that up is because it wasn't all that long ago in the march of history we were fighting Japan. My dad was there, others were there, as well. They were the sworn enemy of America.

After World War II, Harry Truman believed that liberty could transform an enemy into a friend. So we worked hard to help Iraq with democracy -- I mean, Japan with democracy. And as a result, I sit down at the table today talking with the leader of a former enemy about how to keep the peace we all want. (Applause.) Think about that. That's what happening in the world today. A free Iraq will help us keep the peace. A free Iraq will be an ally in the war against terror. And some day an American President will be sitting down at the table with a duly-elected leader from Iraq, talking about how to keep the peace. And our children and our grandchildren will be better off for it. (Applause.)

These are important times. It is important -- it is important we complete the mission successfully. I know some of the citizens of our country have concerns over Iraq. I respect that. We ought to take this issue seriously because it's a serious matter. I assure them we're in Iraq because I believe it is necessary for the -- to get a positive outcome in this war on terror. That's what I believe. If another terror regime were allowed to emerge in Iraq, the terrorists would find a home and a new source of funding. They would correctly conclude that free nations do not have the will to defend themselves. If Iraq becomes a free society in the heart of the Middle East, we'll have an ally and a model for other nations to look at. (Applause.)

That's why Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman calls Iraq "a crucial battle in the global war on terrorism." That's why Prime Minister Tony Blair called the struggle in Iraq "the crucible in which the future of global terrorism will be determined." That's why the terrorists are fighting with desperate cruelty, because they know their own future is at stake. Iraq is no diversion. It is a place where civilization is taking a decisive stand against chaos and terror, and we must not waver. (Applause.)

Unfortunately, my opponent has been known to waver. (Laughter.) His well-chosen words and his rationalizations cannot explain why he voted to authorize force against Saddam Hussein and then voted against money to support our troops in combat.

AUDIENCE: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: He actually tried to clear it up initially by issuing the famous quote, I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it. (Laughter.) I've been in politics for some time. I've never heard one of them put it that way before. (Laughter.) He now says he made a mistake in how he talked about his vote. The mistake is not what Senator Kerry said, the mistake is what he did in voting against funding for our troops in harm's way. (Applause.)

That is the kind of waving a nation at war can never afford. On September the 14th, 2001, I stood in the ruins of the Twin Towers. It helped shape my thinking about my duty to protect you. I'll never forget that day. There were workers in hard hats there yelling at me at the top of their lungs, "Whatever it takes." I was doing my best to console those who were coming out of that rubble. They had grime and dirt all over them. I looked a guy right in the eye, he had bloodshot eyes, and he said, "Don't let me down."

I wake up every morning since that day thinking about how to better protect America. I will never relent in doing what is necessary to secure this country and to protect you, whatever it takes. (Applause.)

A race for President -- a race for President is a contest for the future. And you know where I stand: I'm running for President to keep this nation on the offensive against terrorists with the goal of total victory and peace for our children and our grandchildren. (Applause.) I'm running for President -- I'm running for President to keep this economy moving so every worker has a good job and quality health care, and a secure retirement. I'm running for President to make our strong nation a more compassionate society where no one is left out, because I believe everybody counts and everybody matters. I have a hopeful vision -- (Applause.)

I have an optimistic vision about this country. You would have one, too, if you've seen what I've seen. I've seen the spirit of America under good times and bad times. I've seen the great character of this nation rise up to help a fellow citizen who hurts. I've seen strangers put their arms around another person and say, I love you, brother, I love you, sister; what can I do to help you.

I believe this young century will be liberty's century. We'll promote liberty abroad to protect our country and build a better world beyond terror. We'll encourage liberty here at home to spread prosperity and opportunity to every part of this land. I'm going to carry this message to my fellow citizens in these closing days of this campaign. I'm looking forward to it. And with your help, we'll carry Wisconsin and win a great victory on November the 2nd. (Applause.)

Thank you all for coming. I'm glad you're here. God bless. Thank you all. (Applause.)

END 4:02 P.M. CDT

Inspections + Verification

The focus is on the Duelfer report, it's important to remember that the U.N. inspection regime was about providing positive evidence of Saddam's disarmament.
by Daniel McKivergan
10/07/2004 2:13:00 PM

WITH THE RELEASE of the Duelfer report on Iraq's weapons programs, now is a good time to review what role the international inspections had in verifying Iraq's disarmament--a role Senator Kerry and others appear to have confusion about. The inspection regime established by the U.N. Security Council in the wake of the Gulf War was never about the number of inspections conducted or, for that matter, whether U.N. inspectors could independently determine the status of Iraq's weapons programs. It was about verifying that Saddam Hussein actively engaged in disarmament, and providing positive evidence of that disarmament to the U.N. team. Given Iraq's history of successfully hiding its illicit weapons activities in a country the size of California, there could be no certainty that Saddam Hussein had disarmed unless and until Iraq fully cooperated in documenting its disarmament. As Clinton administration Defense Secretary William Cohen put it in November of 1998:

[Inspectors] have to find documents, computer discs, production points, ammunition areas in an area that size. Hussein has said, "We have no program now." We're saying, "Prove it." He says he has destroyed all his nerve agent. [W]e're asking "where, when and how?" . . . The onus for this is firmly on Saddam Hussein.

President Clinton stated that "it is incontestable that on the day I left office [in January 2001], there were unaccounted for stocks of biological and chemical weapons [in Iraq]." In fact, Saddam never met his obligation to account for them.

On January 27, 2003, head U.N. weapons inspector, Hans Blix, stated the following to the UN Security Council:

Resolution 687 (1991), like the subsequent resolutions I shall refer to, required cooperation by Iraq but such was often withheld or given grudgingly. Unlike South Africa, which decided on its own to eliminate its nuclear weapons and welcomed inspection as a means of creating confidence in its disarmament, Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance--not even today--of the disarmament, which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace.

As we know, the twin operation "declare and verify," which was prescribed in resolution 687 (1991), too often turned into a game of 'hide and seek'. Rather than just verifying declarations and supporting evidence, the two inspecting organizations found themselves engaged in efforts to map the weapons programmes and to search for evidence through inspections, interviews, seminars, inquiries with suppliers and intelligence organizations.

On February 14, 2003, Blix told the Security Council that:

If Iraq had provided the necessary cooperation in 1991, the phase of disarmament--under resolution 687 (1991)--could have been short and a decade of sanctions could have been avoided. Today, three months after the adoption of resolution 1441 (2002), the period of disarmament through inspection could still be short, if "immediate, active and unconditional cooperation" with UNMOVIC and the IAEA were to be forthcoming.

And again, in its February 28, 2003 report, UNMOVIC informed the Security Council that: "During the period of time covered by the present report, Iraq could have made greater efforts to find any remaining proscribed items or provide credible evidence showing the absence of such items."

On March 6, 2003, UNMOVIC--confronted with the same list of unaccounted for weapons and weapons-related material that President Clinton had cited in explaining the reason behind his 1998 bombing of Iraq--reported to the Security Council that: "The onus is clearly on Iraq to provide the requisite information or devise other ways in which UNMOVIC can gain confidence that Iraq's declarations are correct and comprehensive. . . ."

In April, 2003, Secretary Cohen flatly stated that he believed that Saddam had weapons:

"I am convinced that he has them. I saw evidence back in 1998 when we would see the inspectors being barred from gaining entry into a warehouse for three hours with trucks rolling up and then moving those trucks out. I am absolutely convinced that there are weapons. We will find them."

And in its first post-war (May 30, 2003) report to the Security Council, UNMOVIC acknowledged: "The long list of proscribed items unaccounted for and as such resulting in unresolved disarmament issues was not shortened either by the inspections or by Iraqi declarations and documentation." To the contrary, as UNMOVIC also reported in its May 30 report:

Iraq was required to declare the import of dual-use items and supply UNMOVIC with details as to their origin. However, Iraq's recent semi-annual monitoring declarations, starting with the "backlog" of declarations since 1998 supplied to UNMOVIC in October 2002, showed a trend of withholding pertinent information. . . . The biological imports were of a slightly more significant kind, and included the import of a dozen autoclaves, half a dozen centrifuges and a number of laminar flow cabinets.

Missile imports, however, were more substantial and could have contributed significantly to any missile development programme. One example was the importation of 380 Volga engines that Iraq planned to use in the production of the Al Samoud 2 missile, a missile system UNMOVIC later determined to be prohibited since its range exceeded 150 km. In its declaration of 7 December 2002, Iraq declared that it had imported 131 such engines but failed to supply any information about their origin (suppliers, exporting countries) until inspectors observed 231 such engines at an Al Samoud production facility.

A trend that was especially pronounced in the missile area (but to a lesser extent also present in the biological and chemical fields) was the use of the term "local market" to classify the import of some very sophisticated pieces of equipment. . . . UNMOVIC came to understand that Iraq used the term "local market" when an Iraqi import company imported a commodity and then sold or transferred it to a government facility, which suggested that Iraq was trying to conceal the extent of its import activities and to preserve its importing networks."

Daniel McKivergan is deputy director of The Project for the New American Century.

As Goes Instapundit, So Goes the Nation?

Posted 10/07 01:08 PM

Glenn Reynolds, aka the Blogfather, aka Instapundit, is an interesting measuring stick of the election. His politics tend libertarian, pro-gun and pro-gay marriage, and so he's not exactly a natural Bush supporter. With just a little effort or strategy, the Kerry campaign could be, or should be, able to get a guy like him to pull the lever for the Dems in November.

But Instapundit has been unenthusiastic about Kerry since this campaign began, and today he simply dismantles Kerry's foreign policy plan:

No weapons have been found, but the Iraq Survey Group's report makes clear that Saddam wanted to outwait sanctions and then start making the weapons again:

The ISG, who confirmed last autumn that they had found no WMD, last night presented detailed findings from interviews with Iraqi officials and documents laying out his plans to bribe foreign businessmen and politicians.

Although they found no evidence that Saddam had made any WMD since 1992, they found documents which showed the "guiding theme" of his regime was to be able to start making them again with as short a lead time as possible."

But hey, Kerry voted for the war, so his arguments on that topic boil down to either (1) Bush lied, and I'm gullible: or (2) Bush and I both got fooled, but I'll do better next time. Neither is very compelling.

The real centerpiece of Kerry's foreign policy stance, though, has been that he would be better than Bush at getting allies together, and at passing the "Global Test" before taking military action. And that case is in total collapse this week.

Forget missteps like his dissing of our allies in Iraq, Australia, and Poland — which drew a stinging response from the Polish President ("It's sad that a Senator with twenty years of experience does not appreciate Polish sacrifice.") Now even Kerry is admitting that he's not going to be able to deliver on his promises:

Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry conceded yesterday that he probably will not be able to convince France and Germany to contribute troops to Iraq if he is elected president.

The Massachusetts senator has made broadening the coalition trying to stabilize Iraq a centerpiece of his campaign, but at a town hall meeting yesterday, he said he knows other countries won't trade their soldiers' lives for those of U.S. troops.

"Does that mean allies are going to trade their young for our young in body bags? I know they are not. I know that," he said.

Body bags. This sounds like the John Kerry of 1971. I can't help but think that, for Kerry, every war is Vietnam. And if he's President, I'm afraid that might turn out to be the case.

Glenn concludes, after reading reports about Saddam bribing the French, that "It's hard to pass the "Global Test" when the people grading it are being bribed to administer a failing grade. Perhaps Kerry should change his stance, and promise that a Kerry Administration would "outbid the bad guys." That approach is more likely to succeed than the one he's been touting, which even he has admitted is doomed."

Now - picture the Democrats nominating a candidate who takes the war on terror seriously, who wants to finish the job in Iraq, and who doesn't see every foreign policy issue as a rerun of Vietnam.

A Tony Blair - style Democrat would probably be trouncing Bush right now. Karl Rove & Co. are very lucky to have the opponents they do.

UPDATE: Again, many readers suggest that Joe Lieberman was a Tony Blair-style Democrat, and that the Democratic base rejected him. Let me throw out another point - would Bush be getting trounced against a Tony Blair-style Democrat who wasn't associated with the Gore campaign and who looks and speaks more like Tony Blair and less like Droopy Dog. Don't get me wrong - I was caught up in the "Joe-mentum" earlier this year, but I think that to many voters, he just doesn't look the part of a commander-in-chief.

Oil-for-WMD?

From: PowerLineBlog
October 7, 2004

According to news reports, the testimony of Charles Duelfer and the thousand-page Iraq Survey Group report released yesterday suggest that Saddam Hussein had no WMD stockpiles and had not built any since 1992, but that he intended to restart the weapons program following the elimination of UN sanctions. (Click here for access to the report.)

In order to eliminate sanctions and obstruct military action against him, Saddam Hussein engaged in strategic bribery funded by the UN's oil-for-food program. The Scotsman reports:

Saddam was convinced that the UN sanctions - which stopped him acquiring weapons - were on the brink of collapse and he bankrolled several foreign activists who were campaigning for their abolition. He personally approved every one.

To keep America at bay, he focus[ed] on Russia, France and China - three of the five UN Security Council members with the power to veto war. Politicians, journalists and diplomats were all given lavish gifts and oil-for-food vouchers.

Tariq Aziz, the former Iraqi deputy prime minister, told the ISG that the "primary motive for French co-operation" was to secure lucrative oil deals when UN sanctions were lifted. Total, the French oil giant, had been promised exploration rights.

Iraqi intelligence officials then "targeted a number of French individuals that Iraq thought had a close relationship to French President Chirac," it said, including two of his "counsellors" and spokesman for his re-election campaign.

They even assessed the chances for "supporting one of the candidates in an upcoming French presidential election." Chirac is not mentioned by name.

A memo sent to Saddam dated in May last year from his intelligence corps said they met with a "French parliamentarian" who "assured Iraq that France would use its veto in the UN Security Council against any American decision to attack Iraq."

The Washington Post reports:

Hussein's multi-pronged strategy also included secret deals with neighboring countries to circumvent U.N. sanctions by smuggling oil, which reaped profits for both sides, and illicit government-to-government trade agreements. The subsequent success in turn "emboldened" Hussein to pursue programs related to weapons of mass destruction as well as conventional arms, the Duelfer report says.

"Despite U.N. sanctions, many countries and companies engaged in prohibited procurement with the Iraqi regime throughout the 1990s, largely because of the profitability of such trade," Duelfer reported. In turn, Hussein sought to make the embargo a "paper tiger," the report says.

Companies in countries closely allied with the United States, including France, Italy, India, Turkey, Jordan and Romania, may have sold Hussein dual-purpose equipment that could be converted for production of unconventional weapons.

The Washington Times summarizes the pertinent report sections as follows:

With Iraq's economy badly damaged and U.N. sanctions, Mr. Duelfer's report says, Saddam's plans for a skeletal weapons program that could be mobilized quickly led him to pursue the needed materials through illegal and indirect channels.

Starting in 1997 and peaking in 2001, he developed a giant smuggling operation that hinged on the establishment of "a network of Iraqi front companies, some with close relationships to high-ranking foreign-government officials," the report says.

Those officials, it says, "worked through their respective ministries, state-run companies and ministry-sponsored front companies to procure illicit goods, services and technologies for Iraq's WMD-related, conventional arms, and/or dual-use goods programs."

Syria was Iraq's "primary conduit for illicit imports" from late 2000 until the start of the U.S. invasion last year, according to the report, which also maintains that the Iraqi Intelligence Service set up front companies to buy prohibited arms from a Syrian totaling $1.2 billion.

"The central bank of Syria was the repository of funds used by Iraq to purchase goods and materials both prohibited and allowed under U.N. sanctions," the report says.

In trumpeting the report findings regarding the absence of WMD, The New York Times buries these suggestive paragraphs:

The report notes that its conclusions were drawn in part from interrogation of Mr. Hussein in his prison cell outside Baghdad. Mr. Duelfer, a special adviser to the director of central intelligence, said he had concluded that Mr. Hussein had deliberately sought to maintain ambiguity about whether Iraq possessed illicit weapons, primarily as a deterrent to Iran, Iraq's adversary in an eight-year war in the 1980's.

It was not until a series of meetings in late 2002, just months before the American invasion, that Mr. Hussein finally acknowledged to senior officers and officials of his government that Iraq did not possess illicit weapons, Mr. Duelfer said.

The report said American investigators had found clandestine laboratories in the Baghdad area used by the Iraqi Intelligence Service between 1991 and 2003 to conduct research and to test various chemicals and poisons, including ricin. As previously reported, it said those efforts appeared to be intended primarily for use in assassinations, not to inflict mass casualties.

Mr. Duelfer said in his report that Mr. Hussein never acknowledged in the course of the interrogations what had become of Iraq's illicit weapons. He said that American investigators had appealed to the former Iraqi leader to be candid in order to shape his legacy, but that Mr. Hussein had not been forthcoming.

The report said interviews with other former top Iraqi leaders had made clear that Mr. Hussein had left many of his top deputies uncertain until the eve of war about whether Iraq possessed illicit weapons. It said he seemed to be most concerned about a possible new attack by Iran, whose incursions into Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 were fended off by Baghdad partly with the use of chemical munitions.

Mr. Duelfer said Iraq had tried to maintain the knowledge base necessary to restart an illicit weapons program. He said Iraq had essentially put its biological program "on the shelf," after its last production facility, Al Hakam, was destroyed by United Nations inspectors in 1996, and could have begun to produce biological questions in as little as a month if it had restarted its weapons program in 2003.

The Times adds that "there were 'no indications' that Iraq was pursuing such a course, and it reported 'a complete absence of discussion or even interest in biological weapons' at the level of Mr. Hussein and his aides after the mid-1990's."

As for the trailers previously thought to be mobile weapons labs, "Mr. Duelfer said that the trailers could not have been used for that purpose, and that their manufacturers 'almost certainly designed and built the equipment exclusively for the generation of hydrogen,' upholding claims by Iraqi officials that linked the trailers to weather balloons used for artillery practice."

DEACON adds: So it turns out to be Senator Kerry who wants to form a "coalition of the bribed" to administer his "global test."

UN Looked Away as Regime Stole Oil-For-Food Cash

By David Rennie in Cleveland
(Filed: 07 October 2004)

The oil-for-food programme was the largest humanitarian project in history. Designed to stop Iraqis dying from disease and starvation, it quickly became corrupted by Saddam into a cash cow for his regime and supporters worldwide.

The genesis of the programme lay in the suffering of the Iraqi people under the sanctions imposed by the United Nations after Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990.

By conservative estimates, 250,000 children died from 1991 to 1996. But during those five years, Saddam refused offers to sell his oil and import humanitarian goods under UN supervision, gambling that images of starving babies would break the will of the international community.

By 1996 he was allowed to sell oil to clients of his choice provided that the income went into a UN account to be spent on food and medicine.

Saddam siphoned 10 cents off every barrel of oil leaving the country and a further 10 per cent "kickback" from every shipment of food or medicine to reach Iraq.

He was smuggling oil through Syria, which said the pipeline was being "tested", and by ship to the highest bidders.

In theory, the programme was monitored by the UN - which extracted administration costs of billions of pounds.

The UN turned a blind eye to signs that Saddam was bribing cronies at home and abroad with black market oil vouchers. The British and Americans were the only members of the Security Council routinely scrutinising every deal. But their officials were under orders to watch for illegal arms, not corruption.

Other countries were less fussy still. In the diplomatic words of ambassador Patrick Kennedy, in charge of US-led reform efforts at the UN: "The ability of the US and Britain to take measures to address or counter non-compliance was often inhibited by other members' desire to ease sanctions on Iraq."

French, Russian and Chinese firms queued up to buy oil and sell goods, including dual-use technologies, to Saddam, cloaking good business in a mixture of strict respect for sovereignty (in the case of China), pan-Arab solidarity (in the case of France) and long-standing friendship (for Russia).

These three countries are permanent members of the Security Council, endowed with the ability to veto any action by the world body. In the late 1990s Russia took the lead in trying to save Saddam from allied military action. In the run-up to the war last year, it was the French, often through then foreign minister Dominique de Villepin, who led the pack in trying to stop the US-led invasion.

Thanks to the UN, Saddam had money to buy friends abroad. This money came from a corrupted humanitarian programme.

The UN recently claimed that it "learned of the 10 per cent kickback scheme [on humanitarian contracts] only after the end of major combat operations" in 2003.

Whistleblowers call that a flat lie. Michael Soussan, a programme co-ordinator for the oil-for-food programme from 1997 until 2000, when he resigned, recently told The Daily Telegraph about a Swedish company that called the UN in 2000, seeking help after being asked to pay kickbacks.

In Iraq, millions of documents related to sanctions-busting are under the control of government auditors. Some powerful figures are expected to be named in those papers. Only time will tell whether Iraqi politics will permit those documents to see the light of day.

France Urges Caution in Oil-For-Food Case

France Urges Caution in Oil-For-Food Case
Associated Press
John Leicester
October 7, 2004

PARIS - France urged caution Thursday in dealing with a U.S. inspector's allegations it was involved in corruption at the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq, while others singled out in the report rejected the charges as "far-fetched."

The report issued Wednesday by Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, said Saddam Hussein issued secret vouchers for the purchase of oil, which could then be resold at a profit, to an array of officials and political figures from various countries, mainly Russia, France and China.

The report named former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, Indonesian president Megawati Sukarnoputri and the Russian radical political figure Vladimir Zhirinovsky as voucher recipients and implicated foreign governments, including Namibia and Yemen.

Zhirinovsky, who frequently traveled to Saddam's Iraq and had called for increased trade between the two countries, adamantly denied the claim in the report, which also cited top Russian oil companies Yukos and Lukoil as recipients.

"I never took a drop (of oil), or a single dollar from Iraq or from any other country. I have never dealt with oil," the Interfax news agency quoted Zhirinovsky as saying Thursday. "I do not care what someone might have received, I personally gained nothing."

Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa also rejected the accusations.

"There is no credence to these allegations," Natalegawa said. "It's a fact that we took part in the oil-for-food program, but this notion of vouchers is far-fetched. There were no dealings other than the oil-for-food."

The Namibian government also was quick to proclaim it had never received vouchers from Saddam or purchased any oil from Iraq.

"We never had any connection to Saddam Hussein. My president has condemned Saddam Hussein," Information Minister Nanjolo Mbumba said in a telephone interview from Windhoek. He added that Namibia buys all its oil from South Africa.

Pasqua's office said the former interior minister, who recently won a Senate seat and the parliamentary immunity that it confers, was not immediately available for comment.

But French Foreign Ministry spokesman Herve Ladsous counseled caution, saying the allegations weren't checked with the people or countries involved.

"It is important to assure oneself very precisely on the veracity of this information," he said. "We understand that these accusations against companies and individuals were not verified either with the people themselves or with the authorities of the countries concerned."

Russia's Foreign Ministry expressed its support for the investigation into the alleged bribes.

"The investigation that is being conducted should result in an objective picture of possible irregularities that could have been committed under the oil-for-food program," Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said.

"Russia, like all countries, is interested in the results of this investigation being objective," he said, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.

Yukos and Lukoil officials also could not be reached for comment.

The names of American companies and individuals who may have been involved in oil deals weren't released because of U.S. privacy laws, the report said.

Separately, Swiss authorities said Thursday that the owner of a Geneva-based oil trading firm has been fined $39,500 for making illegal payments for oil contracts in Saddam's Iraq and 10 more companies could be investigated.

The State Secretariat for Economic Affairs fined the head of the company for paying $60,000 to win a contract for the purchase of Iraqi crude oil under the U.N.'s oil-for-food program, said spokesman Othmar Wyss. Iraq failed to honor the contract and did not sell any oil to the company, despite the payment, the secretariat said. Wyss declined to name the person or the company involved.

The oil-for-food program was designed to allow limited oil sales to pay for humanitarian goods, but critics and U.S. congressional investigators have long alleged that administration of the program was rife with corruption and failed to prevent illicit business deals and massive kickbacks to the Iraqi government.

Russia calls for public UN probe on oil-for-food scandal

From: http://www.expatica.com, News and Information for Expats in France

MOSCOW, Oct 7 (AFP) - The United Nations should make public conclusions from its probe on corruption in the UN's oil-for-food programme in Iraq, Russia said Thursday in response to a US report alleging that Moscow officials received bribes from Saddam Hussein's government.

"After several countries expressed concern over corruption in the oil-for-food programme, the UN Security Council decided to create a special commission to investigate the matter," Foreign Ministry Spokesman Alexander Yakovenko told AFP.

"Russia supported that decision," he said. "Like other countries, we are expecting (the commission's) conclusions to be based on facts."

"Without the commission's conclusions, it is difficult to comment" on the accusations in the US report, he said.

In a report made public Thursday, a US weapons inspector said Saddam's government had issued millions of dollars in lucrative oil export vouchers to leading French, Russian and other foreign politicians as part of a concerted effort to win their assistance in lifting UN sanctions against Iraq.

Saddam, the ousted Iraqi leader, was captured by US forces north of Baghdad last December.

The Iraqi intelligence service paid particular attention to influential personalities in France and Russia because the two countries hold permanent seats on the UN Security Council, said the report prepared by chief US weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, who has perused tonnes of secret Iraqi documents seized in the wake of the US-led invasion of the country.

Baghdad had awarded lucrative oil contracts to nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the Russian Communist Party, which at the time controlled the largest faction in parliament, and the foreign ministry, the report said.

Baghdad also showered with money the well-connected Russian oil and gas oligarchy, including Gazprom, LUKoil, Yukos and other companies, the report said, and worked to establish close ties with Russian intelligence, the former employer of President Vladimir Putin.

© AFP Subject: French News

Silent But Deadly

John Kerry's Much-Lauded Debate Performance is Going to Continue to Dog Him - Even If the Media Doesn't Know It
by Hugh Hewitt
10/07/2004 12:00:00 AM

IF A GAFFE falls in a forest, and nobody hears it, is it still a gaffe?

John Kerry's widely praised debate performance a week ago was in fact blunder-filled. Already we have seen the Bush-Cheney team seize of Kerry's call for global testing of American foreign policy, and there were other disastrous peeks at Kerrythink embedded in his silky delivery, about which more will follow.

Kerry came out against modernizing America's nuclear arsenal, for selling nuclear fuel to Iran, for appeasement of North Korea, and with an analogy comparing the Iraq war to invading Mexico after Pearl Harbor. The senator from Massachusetts also answered a Jim Lehrer question as to whether the war in Iraq was a mistake with a resounding "No!" only to later brand the war in Iraq a colossal error. And he overplayed his Tora Bora hand by insisting that the terrorists who "walked away" from Tora Bora were now at work in 60 countries around the globe, displaying an eighth grader's grasp of the shared ideology but operational independence of the Islamist threat that links Bali to Madrid to Beslan to other outrages of the past three years.

John Kerry just doesn't get it. Because he just didn't get it eloquently, however, most though not all of the nation's media swooned. That collective response should be branded "Selective Gaffe Hearing Syndrome." If Kerry had declared himself of Martian descent, but had done so with a fine delivery, would Chris Matthews or Tim Russert have noticed?

Not that it matters. What matters is the substance because there is now developed an alternative message delivery system which does not depend on the agreement of the dinosaurs. An ad underlining "global test" appeared on Friday, courtesy of the Bush campaign, and Rush and other talkers were all over it. By Wednesday the groundwork had been laid, and Fox News and other cable shows carried the president's speech in its entirety that fully exploited Kerry's debate performance. Slowly but surely the blogosphere also turned its attention to the Kerry blunders, and Kerry's "momentum" faded and then reversed.

A week ago after the debate the Kerry campaign was experiencing the same sort of relief that swept through the passengers on the Titanic after the iceberg was passed and before they knew of the damage below the waterline.

What remains to be asked is why the "professionals" on the networks missed the "global test" remark that has proven so devastating? Rarely have so many commentators been so wrong about so obvious a pratfall as Kerry's global test, and given that pundits on both sides of the aisle missed it, the answer can't be bias. Of all the talkers I watched, only Fred Barnes and Mort Kondracke put a verbal circle around "global test." The rest were rushing to comment on Bush's facial expressions.

Fighting the last war, again, I think. Collectively recalling Al Gore's histrionics from 2000, the commentariat focused on demeanor to the exclusion of substance. If the substance is at least okay, that makes sense. But the president could wear a 24/7 smirk if John Kerry continues to insist to the American electorate that American sovereignty is subject to Security Council critiques, and that the mullahs should get what they need to fire up their reactors. It is one thing to mispronounce "moolahs." It is far worse to misunderstand them.

The first debate went to Bush because the memorable exchange is one that continues to rightfully dog Kerry. Bush supporters can hope for better delivery from their candidate, but should be praying for more of the same from John Kerry. A suicide note that impresses with its flourishes is poignant, but it's still a suicide note.

Hugh Hewitt is the host of a nationally syndicated radio show, and author most recently of If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends Upon It. His daily blog can be found at HughHewitt.com.

Saddam Paid Off French Leaders

Saddam Paid Off French Leaders
By Bill Gertz
07 October 2004
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Saddam Hussein used a U.N. humanitarian program to pay $1.78 billion to French government officials, businessmen and journalists in a bid to have sanctions removed and U.S. policies opposed, according to a CIA report made public yesterday.

The cash was part of $10.9 billion secretly skimmed from the U.N. oil-for-food program, which was used by Iraq to buy military goods, according to a 1,000-page report by the CIA-led Iraqi Survey Group.

According to a section of the report on Iraqi weapons procurement, the survey group identified long-standing ties between Saddam and the French government. One 1992 Iraqi intelligence service report revealed that Iraq's ambassador to France paid $1 million to the French Socialist Party in 1988.

The CIA report stated that the Iraqi ambassador was instructed to "utilize [the $1 million] to remind French Defense Minister Pierre Joxe indirectly about Iraq's previous positions toward France, in general, and the French Socialist party, in particular."

In the late 1990s, Iraq also used an oil-purchasing voucher system through the U.N. oil-for-food program, which began in 1996 and ended in 2003, to influence the French to oppose U.S. initiatives at the United Nations and to work to lift sanctions, the report stated.

The Iraqi Intelligence Service paid off French nationals by dispensing vouchers that allowed the holders to make hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions by selling them to oil buyers.

The payoffs help explain why the French government, along with Russia and China, opposed U.S. efforts in the United Nations in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion, U.S. officials said.

Iraqi intelligence agents also targeted French President Jacques Chirac, by giving gifts to a spokesman, two of his aides and two French businessmen, the report said.

One Iraqi intelligence report stated that a French politician assured Saddam in a letter that France would use its veto in the U.N. Security Council against any U.S. effort to attack Iraq.

Iraqi intelligence documents recovered in Iraq showed that the French citizens linked to the influence operation were "ministers and politicians, journalists and business people."

"These influential individuals often had little prior connection to the oil industry and generally engaged European oil companies to lift the oil, but were still in a position to extract a substantial profit for themselves," the report said.

Former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz told the Survey Group that he personally awarded several Frenchmen "substantial" oil allotments.

"According to Aziz, both parties understood that resale of the oil was to be reciprocated through efforts to lift U.N. sanctions or through opposition to American initiatives within the Security Council," the report said.

The report named former French Interior Minister Charles Pascua as getting a voucher for 11 million barrels of oil, and Patrick Maugein, who received a voucher for 13 million barrels of oil. The report said Mr. Maugein, the chief executive officer of the SOCO oil company, was a "conduit" to Mr. Chirac.

Michel Grimard, the founder of the French-Iraqi Export Club, received a voucher for 5.5 million barrels, and the Iraqi-French Friendship Society received vouchers for more than 10 million barrels.

French oil companies Total and SOCAP were granted vouchers for 105 million and 93 million barrels of oil, respectively.

The report stated that Iraq covertly purchased missiles and other military goods from Russia, Belarus, China, North Korea and South Korea.

According to the report, illegal goods used in making weapons of mass destruction were sold to Iraq by companies in Jordan, India, France, Italy, Romania and Turkey.

Conventional arms also were sold to Iraq by China, Jordan, India, South Korea, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Cyprus, Egypt, Lebanon, Georgia, France, Poland, Syria, Belarus, North Korea, Yugoslavia, Yemen, Russia, Romania and the Republic of China (Taiwan).

The report said Saddam's regime obtained $1.5 billion from U.N. humanitarian contract kickbacks and $228.5 million in surcharges on U.N.-approved oil sales.

Other oil smuggling provided the regime with $8 billion in cash outside of U.N.-approved oil sales, the CIA report reveals.

Charles Duelfer, the director of the CIA survey group, told a congressional hearing yesterday that a "sizable portion" of Saddam's cash obtained from the oil-for-food program were diverted to the military, specifically the government-run Military Industrial Commission.

"The funding for this organization, which had responsibility for many of the past [weapons of mass destruction] programs, went from approximately $7.8 million in 1998 to $350 million in 2001," Mr. Duelfer told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Mr. Duelfer said that during the period from 1998 to 2001, "many military programs were carried out — including many involving the willing export to Iraq of military items prohibited by the Security Council."