Internet Video Used to Foment Insurgency

Internet Video Used to Foment Insurgency
Footage of attacks against Americans widespread
By Lisa Myers & the NBC Investigative Unit
Updated: 7:48 p.m. ET Nov. 17, 2004

The carnage is posted on Internet sites four or five times a week — video shot by Iraqi insurgents of attacks on Americans and allies, along with the accompanying bodies and body parts.

Evan Kohlmann, an NBC terrorism analyst, says these videos are now a key weapon in the effort to drive the United States out of Iraq.

"The message is that America's military is not invincible — that it can be defeated — and this is the way it can be defeated," says Kohlmann.

Most videos are branded with the logo of Iraq's most wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

In one, you can see a celebration in front of what's left of an American military vehicle. In another, insurgents make and bury a roadside bomb, wait for the target to approach and blow it up. A third shows a white sedan, with a suicide bomber at the wheel, who heads for an American convoy and detonates.

Narration accompanying one attack says, "The invaders who were walking like peacocks became like rats, fleeing, leaving everything behind."

In many Arab countries, the videos are viewed in Internet cafes and sold in markets.

Mohamed Salah, a journalist for the newspaper al-Hayat, says while there is widespread revulsion over videos of beheadings in Iraq, these military videos generate support for insurgents.

"If an American or British is killed in an operation, there is no sympathy at all; it creates pride, not sympathy," says Salah.

Why?

Experts say one reason is al-Jazeera. The television network bombards Arabs with images of dead or maimed Iraqi civilians and repeatedly aired controversial and graphic footage of an American Marine shooting a wounded Iraqi. Yet, the network did not show the fatal shooting purported to be of Iraqi aid worker Margaret Hassan at the hand of insurgents.

A spokesman says it's al-Jazeera’s long-time policy not to show the killing of hostages, but that airing similarly violent killings by Americans is justified because it it's part of a war.

Little wonder, says one Arab expert, that the Arab street — saturated with images of American violence against Muslims — sees insurgent videos as a welcome measure of revenge.

Chirac Decries Iraq War Before London Trip

Chirac Decries Iraq War Before London Trip
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 17, 2004, Filed at 7:08 p.m. ET

LONDON (AP) -- The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq mobilized Islamic extremists and made the world more dangerous, French President Jacques Chirac said, keeping up his vocal opposition to the war on the eve of a visit to London.

``There's no doubt that there has been an increase in terrorism and one of the origins of that has been the situation in Iraq,'' Chirac told the British Broadcasting Corp. in an interview to be broadcast later Wednesday.

``To a certain extent Saddam Hussein's departure was a positive thing. But it also provoked reactions, such as the mobilization in a number of countries, of men and women of Islam, which has made the world more dangerous,'' Chirac said, speaking in French which was translated into English by the BBC.

Despite Chirac's criticism of the war, officials in Paris say he wants stronger relations with Washington.

The issue will figure prominently in talks Thursday between Chirac and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has called for reconciliation between European leaders and the newly re-elected President Bush.

Chirac also said that France and the United States have a 200-year history of ``cooperation, friendship and solidarity.''

The dispute over Iraq does not ``mean that our relationship is in question,'' he added. ``Don't let's confuse a state of continuing friendship, understanding and mutual respect, allied to a trans-Atlantic link, with a differing stance on the specific situation in Iraq.''

Chirac added that while France would help Iraq ``achieve her sovereignty and hopefully develop her potential,'' he could not envisage sending troops to the country.

Blair's spokesman said Chirac's views on the war are well known, and insisted differences over Iraq would not stop cooperation on such issues as climate change, alleviating poverty in Africa and pushing forward the Middle East peace process.

``President Chirac's position (on Iraq) does not come as a surprise,'' the spokesman said on condition of anonymity. ``Let's be grown up about this. We have a difference of view but that does not mean we can't work together.''

He emphasized that France, Britain and Germany worked closely in reaching a deal with Iran over civil nuclear power. He pointed to France's support in Afghanistan and the role Paris could play in the Middle East peace process.

In Paris, French presidential spokesman Jerome Bonnafont said Chirac and Blair would discuss ways of rebuilding the trans-Atlantic relationship, which he described as ``the spine of our security.''

He said Chirac planned to give a speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London arguing that ``the trans-Atlantic relationship is more necessary than ever.''

Bonnafont said the two leaders would work closely on the issue of climate change and join forces to persuade Bush to reverse his opposition to the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

``It clearly won't be an easy task. But it seems to both the president of the Republic (Chirac) and to Tony Blair to be an issue that merits a very strong political commitment,'' Bonnafont said.

Chirac will spend two days in London to mark the 100th anniversary of the ``Entente Cordiale'' -- a historic pact ending centuries of warring and hostility -- and will enjoy the hospitality of Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle.

Associated Press correspondent John Leicester contributed to this report from Paris.

House Panel Probes Oil-for-Food Scandal

House Panel Probes Oil-for-Food Scandal
Wednesday, November 17, 2004

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers are questioning whether a French bank failed to comply with U.S. money-laundering laws, possibly helping Saddam Hussein manipulate the $60 billion U.N. oil-for-food program. The bank denies any wrongdoing.

In the latest in a series of congressional investigations of alleged corruption in the oil-for-food program, the House International Relations Committee was homing in on the role of the U.S. branch of BNP-Paribas, which handled most of the oil-for-food money.

The humanitarian program, begun in 1996, allowed Iraq to trade oil for goods to help Iraqis get food, medicine and other necessities that became scarce under strict U.N. economic sanctions imposed after the Gulf War. It was credited with preventing widespread starvation.

Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill, said the panel found evidence that BNP in some cases improperly approved payments of oil-for-food funds to companies that weren't supposed to receive them. The bank may also have allowed payments to companies that were shipping to Iraq goods prohibited by international sanctions.

"There are indications that the bank may have been noncompliant in administering the oil-for-food program," Hyde said in remarks prepared for Wednesday's hearing. "If true, these possible banking lapses may have facilitated Saddam Hussein's manipulation and corruption of the program."

He said he was providing the committee's findings to the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees banking issues.

BNP officials say the bank's role in the program was limited and it had no control over how the money was spent. It acknowledges regulators had raised some issues on compliance with banking laws, but said none of these would have contributed to the oil-for-food abuses.

A series of investigations have found that Saddam, as Iraqi president, used oil smuggling, bribes and kickbacks to generate up to $21.3 billion or more in illegal revenue while under international sanctions from 1991-2003.

Though smuggling accounted for most of that money, the most sensational revelations have involved on the oil-for-food program, with allegations that Saddam and his aides bribed U.N. and foreign officials in an effort to break down the sanctions.

"We all knew that Saddam was doing everything in his power to evade sanctions," the panel's top Democrat, Rep. Tom Lantos of California, said in prepared remarks. "But it is truly infuriating to discover the depth of the contempt and greed displayed by the governments of nations such as France, Russia and Syria who evidently jumped at the chance to participate in Saddam's crimes against the international community."

Hyde said the committee found evidence that Saddam used kickback revenues to make $25,000 payments to families of Palestinian suicide bombers who carried out attacks on Israel.

Lawmakers have clashed with U.N. officials over what documents would be provided to congressional investigators. The United Nations has raised concerns that congressional investigations could interfere with an inquiry by a committee led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. That committee was appointed by Secretary-General Kofi Annan in April to investigate corruption allegations.

On Tuesday, Volcker told leaders of a Senate subcommittee investigating oil-for-food that the committee won't hand over documents until its own investigative reports are issued starting in January.

Volcker also said he opposed letting U.N. staff or contractors testify before Congress because it could risk their cooperation with his investigation. Volcker was responding to a letter from Sens. Norm Coleman, R-Minn. and Carl Levin, D-Mich., respectively chairman and ranking Democrat on the Senate Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Coleman said in a statement Wednesday that Volcker assured him in a conversation Tuesday "that any efforts to thwart our investigation, or prevent my staff from interviewing witnesses, would come to an end."

Hyde warned that "if cooperation from those agencies and institutions involved in this program continues to be inadequate, then we will exercise such enforcement remedies as the law makes available to us. This inquiry is just beginning."

Lessons for the Democrats

Lessons for the Democrats
Friday, November 26, 2004
This is a partial transcript of "Special Report With Brit Hume," Nov. 17, 2004, that has been edited for clarity.

BRIT HUME, HOST: John Kerry said that there were enough voters for him, but in Ohio they just didn’t get them to the polls. Nancy Pelosi says the voters need to be better educated about where the Democrats really stand. Those are a couple of the explanations that Democratic leaders have offered for their losses in this election. But not all Democrats quite agree.

One who has a different view is Jamal Simmons, a Washington public relations consultant, who has worked for a number of Democrats, including the presidential candidate campaigns of Bob Graham and Wesley Clark.

He joins me tonight from Little Rock, where he is attending the library opening of Bill Clinton and whose administration he served.

Mr. Simmons, welcome. Thank you very much for coming in, for waiting for us to come to you. We’re glad to have you.

JAMAL SIMMONS, FORMER WESLEY CLARK PRESS SECRETARY: Thanks for having me, Brit.

HUME: Give me your thoughts about this election and what you think — what lessons you think Democrats should take away from it?

SIMMONS: Well, having spent many of the last years in the South working for southern-based candidates, including Bill Clinton who I was honored to work for in my first campaign as a paid worker, I think that what is happening here is the Democratic Party is not connecting with the majority of American voters. It’s very clear.

We’ve lost 7 of the 10 last presidential elections. We’ve lost all of the congressional majorities for the last 10 years. We’ve lost most of the governorships and we’re in danger of losing the state legislatures. So the party is now becoming a minority party. And we’ve got to do something about that.

HUME: What?

SIMMONS: Well, I think what we’ve got to do is invite people in who are winning elections in these states. People like Brian Schweitzer out in Montana who became the governor, Jan Napolitano in Arizona. Let’s bring them to the table.

HUME: What is it that they’re addressing? I mean what issues is it or what concepts are they addressing that you feel other Democrats are not? In other words, what message — what is the wrong message, what is the right message?

SIMMONS: Well, first of all we need the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates that are strong on national security. A muscular, forward-leading defense policy that shows the American people we understand that we’re at war, that there are is a terrorist threat from abroad and that we’re serious about taking the threat on. This isn’t a defensive position that we’re being offensive about and tactical about our defense.

We’re going to — we need to share with people that we understand they’re freaked out. They are upset about a culture that they feel is out of control, that is out of their hands. And that Democrats understand that and we take that seriously. Once people begin to trust us on issues of their culture, to begin to trust us on issues of defense, they’ll listen to us on protecting Social Security and giving higher wages to workers and on making sure we have health care for all Americans. But we’ve got to at least cross the threshold of the two issues that they clearly want to know, the Democrats understand.

HUME: What is missing, in your view, in the Democrats’ message on the culture?

SIMMONS: Well, for instance, Bill Clinton apparently, according to all press reports, advised John Kerry to give a speech about being against gay marriage. Instead of giving that speech about being against gay marriage, John Kerry played defense on gay marriage. He didn’t ask him to change his position, he just asked him to explain his position on the issue so the average American understands it.

If we can take an issue like that, just like Montana with Brian Schweitzer; when the governors came out against gay marriage, he then was able to shift the debate back to the economy in Montana and people voted for him.

So, the more we can talk about the economy, the more we can talk about what we all share in the social issues. But what’s more important is to get the party out of the hands of the D.C. and New York insiders, and back into the hands of people who are winning states — winning elections in states that happen to vote Republican.

HUME: Do you believe a Democratic Party argument against gay marriage, the position against gay marriage would run the risk of alienating a voting block, which has become important to the Democrats and which many Democrats feel sympathetic toward?

SIMMONS: No. I think that in fact what we’re for is what most people in America are for. We’re for making sure people have the ability to share property, making sure people who are sick can visit each other in the hospital, making sure — trying to encourage long-term relationships of whatever nature. But we wouldn’t call it marriage. Most people in America are for those things. They just don’t want it to be called marriage.

And so I don’t think we’ll alienate people by talking about that. Even the human rights campaign was against having gay marriage as an issue during this election. So Democrats have got to speak up and be strong about our values. And then we can start talking to people about the other things that are important, like healthcare, Social Security, education and the rest.

HUME: What do you draw from this poll number about which much has been made about values playing such a big part in this election, moral values? Is that part of what you’re talking about when you’re suggesting a more definite position on gay marriage? Or are there other things there as well?

SIMMONS: Well, for instance, there are times when people who are friends of ours and allies come out with a position taking the nativity scene out of a public square. Is that the issue we’re willing to forfeit our electoral future on? It maybe an important constitutional issue. But Democrats have to stand up and say hey look, we’re a people of faith, everybody should have their expression of faith allowed to be in the public square. But that’s not really the issue right now. What is more important is the war on terrorism, Social Security and the rest. Instead, we allow our agenda to be defined by these other social issues that many people feel as if are attacking their culture in the country.

And I guess the real point here is that we need to really focus in on our priorities, think about what’s really important. And are we willing to sacrifice Democratic majorities to go after social points that just really don’t have that big of an impact on people living in ghettos in cities, or in rural areas where they don’t have health care. I mean those are the people that we’re supposed to be fighting for. And if we lose elections we can’t do anything for those people.

HUME: Jamal Simmons. Very interesting. Thank you very much. Glad to have you.

SIMMONS: Thanks for having me.

Official: Russia Not Helping Probe

Official: Russia Not Helping Probe
Wednesday, November 17, 2004

UNITED NATIONS — Russia is refusing to provide witnesses or information to the independent investigation into alleged corruption in the multibillion-dollar U.N. Oil-for-Food program in Iraq, an official close to the investigation said Wednesday.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Russian diplomats "dug in their heels" during a meeting in Moscow this week with members of the independent inquiry.

Russia is a veto-wielding member of the U.N. Security Council which approved Secretary-General Kofi Annan's recommendation in April to set up an independent panel headed by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to probe all aspects of the Oil-for-Food program, including actions of U.N. member states.

Under the program, Russian companies were major recipients of contracts from Saddam Hussein's government for the sale of Iraqi oil and the supply of humanitarian goods to Iraq.

Launched in December 1996 to help Iraqis cope with U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the program allowed the former Iraqi regime to sell unlimited quantities of oil provided the money went primarily to buy humanitarian goods and pay reparations to victims of the 1991 Gulf War. Saddam's government decided on the goods it wanted, who should provide them, and who could buy Iraqi oil — but the U.N. committee overseeing sanctions monitored the contracts.

Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement earlier Wednesday that Russian exporters operating under the program did not violate sanctions.

"In particular, it was noted that during the humanitarian operation in Iraq, Russian exporters strictly adhered to the sanctions regime," the ministry said in a statement.

The resolution supporting Volcker's investigation called on the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, the Iraqis themselves, and all 191 U.N. member states and their regulatory authorities "to cooperate fully by all appropriate means with the inquiry."

Russia had initially opposed Volcker's request for a Security Council resolution on grounds that a council statement was enough and its members should not look backward and "stir up the old issue" of Oil-for-Food. But it relented and supported the resolution.

The official close to the Volcker inquiry said, however, that "the Russians have been reluctant to provide witnesses and information."

"They are being problematic and they are digging in their heels. They're not handing over materials," the official said.

A report by top U.S. arms inspector Charles Duelfer, released last month, alleged that Saddam issued secret vouchers for purchase of oil to an array of officials and political figures from various countries, dominated by Russia, France and China. That oil could then be resold at a profit.

Saddam allegedly issued the vouchers with the aim of currying favor among U.N. Security Council members.

U.S. Congressional investigators on Monday estimated that Saddam had raised more than $21.3 billion in illegal revenue, using the Oil-for-Food program and other schemes, like the illegal smuggling of oil.

In Russia, the recipients allegedly included the presidential administration's office, top oil companies Yukos and Lukoil, and ultranationalist lawmaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the report said.

At a news conference last month, Volcker said his investigators had received good cooperation from the U.S. and Iraqi governments, and a promise of cooperation from France.

But he said there had been "a little resistance here and there," citing the French bank BNP Paribas, where the Oil-for-Food program had its account, and the American accounting firm Ernst & Young which was hired by the Iraqi Board of Supreme Audit to review more than 20,000 files from Saddam's regime related to the Oil-for-Food program.

The Loss That Keeps On Giving!

The Loss That Keeps On Giving!
Ann Coulter
November 17, 2004

As we wait for CBS to concede the election, Democrats are claiming Kerry lost because Americans are stupid – and if there's one thing voters respond to, it's crude insults.

This is not only the first step of a brilliant strategy to win the red states back, but also inconsistent with the Democrats' theory that Bush was an illegitimate president for the last four years because Democratic voters in Florida were too dumb to follow an arrow to the circle by Al Gore's name. How stupid were the alleged Gore-supporters who couldn't figure out how to cast a vote in the 2000 election?

Using classical Marxist thinking, liberals can't fathom how issues like abortion and gay marriage could trump ordinary people's economic interests -– which liberals axiomatically assume are furthered by the Democrats' offers of government assistance. Democrats are saying to voters: How can you be so stupid to subordinate your own selfish economic interests to "moral values," the betterment of the country and the general welfare of people you don't even know?

It can only be false consciousness. If liberals think the Bush vote was composed of illiterate homophobes who fear women in the workplace, perhaps the Democrats should start demanding literacy tests to vote.

Garry Wills – who fills in "occupation" on his federal tax return with "self-hating Catholic" – denounced America in the New York Times as an unenlightened nation full of people who believe "more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution."

By contrast, apparently, "enlightened" people believe in the Aborted Birth more fervently than they believe in national defense. And just in the interest of fairness here, Garry: At least there's some documentation on the Virgin Birth story. For people who believe so fervently in evolution, these Bush mandate-deniers sure are resistant to it on a personal level.

On the same day, on the same nuanced Times editorial page, both Wills and Maureen Dowd wrote that Kerry was defeated by a "jihad" of Christians. The jihadists, according to Wills, were driven by "fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity." Dowd said they were "a devoted flock of evangelicals, or 'values voters,' as they call themselves ... opposing abortion, suffocating stem-cell research and supporting a constitutional amendment against gay marriage." Finally – a jihad liberals oppose!

Speaking of gay marriage, as long as liberals are so big on discussing "mandates" and whether Bush has one (they say he does not), I think the one thing we can all agree on is that there is definitely a "mandate" against gay marriage. In fact, a clear majority of us are uncomfortable with the word "mandate" because it sounds like Wayne asking Stephen out for dinner and a movie.

Reacting to Bush's re-election in that calm, reasoned way we have come to expect of liberals, they are running to psychotherapists, threatening to move to Canada and warning of a fascist police state – including their fear of a Hollywood "blacklist." (Now you understand how the myth of McCarthyism began, red states!)

One depressed Kerry voter committed suicide at Ground Zero. Meanwhile, the entire Democratic Party is also contemplating political suicide by making Howard Dean its next chairman.

Some Democrats are so despondent they've contemplated (hushed whisper) prayer. They're just not sure if they're supposed to pray to Bill Clinton or to their "Higher Power."

The day after the election, documentary filmmaker and Upper West Side denizen Mitch Wood told the New York Times: "Watching my kids this morning, going down the street, flicking things in the air, jumping around, I wondered, are they going to have that sense of freedom that I had growing up?"

As if on cue, a commercial jetliner piloted by Islamofascist hijackers did NOT crash in front of Wood at this point, killing his entire family instantly, in silent testimony to the national security we currently enjoy under President Bush. Wood gave no indication of noticing this.

A teacher on the Upper West Side, Ireena Gurvich, said, "I'm thinking of leaving the country." Gurvich said she wanted to go to Canada because, "it's a kinder and gentler United States." And yet you still ask why our children cannot read or write.

Another denizen of the Upper West Side, Patty Fondrie, said: "If it gets bad, we'll go to France," where she will probably be murdered by Muslims.

Michael Conway, an administrator at United Talent Agency in Beverly Hills, Calif., was quoted in the Times worrying, "What's going to happen, some kind of blacklist?" – suggesting an entirely new, if somewhat scatological connotation, to the term "A-list."

I think we have a long way to go from Michael Moore being an honored guest at the Democratic National Convention to a "blacklist" –- except for actors who believe abortion and gay marriage are "wrong." But here's hoping.

Why Chirac Won't be Facing His Waterloo

Why Chirac Won't be Facing His Waterloo
Sandi Toksvig
Wednesday November 17, 2004
The Guardian

Tomorrow, for one night only, the politically charged "Waterloo Chamber" at Windsor Castle becomes the breathtakingly innocuous "Music Room". Why? Because, keen to entertain the French president, Jacques Chirac, ERII, for reasons best known to herself, has decided to put on a private production of Les Miserables, that cheery musical referred to in showbiz circles as The Glums. Apparently the Waterloo Chamber is the only room big enough to fit all that flag-waving and wailing, and in the spirit of entente cordiale, no one wanted to upset Jacques, hence the change of name.

People in the production of Les Mis will not find this odd at all. It used to be common practice for artistes to alter their monikers. With some, the need to do so was clear. Betty Joan Perske clearly increased her sex appeal by becoming Lauren Bacall, while Truman Capote might have found his book In Cold Blood harder to take seriously when written under his real name of Truman Streckfus Persons. Other changes are less obvious. I can see why John Wayne didn't want to be Marion Morrison, but am less certain about Cilla Black's career having taken a different turn if she had stayed as Cilla White.

Of course, the complexity of selecting a suitable name is something with which the royal family themselves have some familiarity. It was during the first world war that King George V decided that the name Saxe-Coburg-Gotha wasn't terribly popular and named himself Windsor after the very castle of tomorrow's pageant. Renaming yourself after your house would seem a simple idea, but it has in itself caused problems. If Prince Andrew, say, decides to call himself Windsor, then, strictly speaking, he will be taking his mother's maiden name and thus making himself illegitimate, which would be bad. He can't, however, call himself Mountbatten like his dad because that was the maiden name of Prince Philip's mother, not his father, Prince Andrew of Greece, who did not have a surname. In fact, to find a legitimate surname for the poor Duke of York you have to go back to the paternal grandfather of Prince Andrew of Greece, who was King Christian IX of Denmark, of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck-Glucksburg, which is a fine name, but hell to fit on a credit card.

Naming things matters. Part of the way in which the British expanded their empire was by hopping about giving out place names willy-nilly. Coincidentally, it was on this very day in 1855 that the Scottish explorer David Livingstone is said to have discovered Victoria Falls in Africa. The fact that he had "discovered" this vast drop of water (which, frankly, if you're in the area, is difficult to miss) must have surprised the locals, who presumably had known it was there for some time. Livingstone promptly named the place after Queen Victoria, despite the fact that it already had a much better indigenous title in Mosi-oa-Tunya - "The Smoke That Thunders". Livingstone had the power to name but that didn't make him a great family man. His wife became an alcoholic; he saw little of his children; and, ironically, his estranged oldest son changed his last name.

Changing names, however, doesn't change history. It only obscures matters in the mists of time. Richard Nixon's secretary of state, that legendary pacifist, Henry Kissinger, might have been able to change his first name from Heinz to Henry, but he never did get rid of that German accent. (Apparently, some 50 years after his family had left Germany, his brother Walter Kissinger was asked why he did not share Henry's heavy accent. "I," he replied, "am the Kissinger who listens.") I expect whatever they call the Waterloo Chamber it will still have the odd portrait or souvenir which can't be changed overnight.

There is, of course, another option. In an attempt to be a polite guest, Jacques Chirac could change his title for the night: as part of being president of France, you also get to be Co-Prince of Andorra. I can't think of any major conflagration between the Brits and the Andorran peoples.

If life's a game, it's too hard

I wasn't allowed to do science at school. At an early age and after becoming unwell over a dissected frog, I was "arts-streamed", which for all I know may be illegal now. Consequently, the world of science is a great black hole in my understanding and I have the highest regard for anyone who can pass a litmus test.

Professor Sir Martin Rees, Royal Society professor of astronomy at Cambridge University, is a man with so many titles that you just know he must be clever. He has decided - and do follow me while I put this in the simplest of terms - that it is possible we are all actually living in a giant computer game. He posits that as computers get better and better, eventually they might be able "to simulate worlds perhaps even as complicated as the one we live in". If that theoretical possibility exists, claims the prof, then so too does the notion that it has already happened. That we are all, if you like, merely software pawns in some vast Sim City.

This is a thought I can't cope with. I can't decide which is worse: the image that my 10-year-old son is in charge, or that I am in the middle of a game where some fundamentalist lunatic has managed to take control of millions of players and is busy shooting down opposition with a gun attachment on his PC.

I prefer to go back to Chuang Tzu, the Chinese philosopher who died in 295BC. Chuang wondered if the whole of his life wasn't actually a dream, and I like that. I have decided that I am dreaming and, if you don't mind, would no one wake me for the next four years unless absolutely necessary.

Probe: Oil-for-Food Money Went to Palestinian Bombers' Families

Probe: Oil-for-Food Money Went to Palestinian Bombers' Families
Wednesday, November 17, 2004

WASHINGTON — Money from the United Nations Oil-for-Food program helped pay the families of Palestinian homicide bombers, the House Committee on International Relations is expected to reveal Wednesday during a hearing on corruption in the Iraqi relief program.

Investigators working for Illinois Republican Rep. Henry Hyde, chairman of the panel, are expected to say they have traced funds from former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's kickback scheme through a Jordanian bank and into the hands of families of bombers who attacked Israeli citizens.

It has long been established that Saddam paid bounties of $15,000 to $25,000 to the Palestinian families of the murderers. Hyde's committee will reveal at the hearing that some of the reward money was deposited from illegal profits Saddam made by demanding 10 percent kickbacks on all the contracts of companies that did business with the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food program.

Those funds were then deposited with other Iraqi money, such as Jordanian Oil-for-Food oil payments, into the Central Bank of Iraq account in the Rafidain Bank in Amman, Jordan. The funds were then transferred to another account in the bank controlled by Iraq's ambassador to Jordan Sabah Yaseen. It was from Yaseen's account that Saddam's officials would cut and hand out checks to the homicide bombers' families, Hyde's investigators are expected to say.

Corruption Spreads Outward

As congressional inquiries continue into the scandal-ridden Oil-for-Food program, more evidence has come to light revealing how Saddam was able to funnel more than $21 billion away from the food and medicine program into the pockets of criminals.

"In essence, the Hussein regime created a system of kickbacks, as we have heard today, skimming schemes and smuggling operations to bilk the international sanctions regime of all its potential value and profits," Juan Carlos Zarate, an assistant secretary at the Treasury Department, told lawmakers on Monday.

"He used the implements of the state, the Central Bank, commercial enterprises and his diplomatic and intelligence assets to help skirt international restrictions. In some cases, he used this system to attempt to procure weapons and other banned goods, all in an effort to fortify his regime," Zarate said.

According to U.S. officials, the former Iraqi leader spread billions of dollars around the globe, particularly targeting France, Russia and China, all permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

While diplomats from those three nations deny they were bought off, and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan says he doesn't believe they were, Saddam's oil voucher scheme was aimed at ending sanctions, and a CIA report revealed that Saddam was very generous to his friends and supporters.

According to U.S. investigators, Saddam was able to set up a system of rewarding sympathizers and supporters with pieces of paper that entitled them to sell allocations of Iraqi oil to real oil companies at an instant profit, sometimes earning in the hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars. Saddam allegedly even personally picked the lucky recipients as a reward for their support.

Witnesses at the Senate Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations told lawmakers Monday that Saddam got away with the scam because the Security Council made the mistake of letting him pick the buyers and sellers of Iraq's oil, which in effect let Saddam nearly completely control the relief program.

Subcommittee chairman Norm Coleman of Minnesota suggested that a lot of businesspeople wanted to play ball with Saddam, and cited the case of a well-known multinational corporation, Weir Group, which sells oil equipment. That company did $80 million worth of business under the Oil-for-Food program but Coleman said the company inflated one big contract by 30 percent and admitted it knew the extra money was going to Saddam.

In another example, the Al Bashier Trading Company was apparently run directly by Saddam's regime, say officials. In that situation, Saddam made money by selling items to himself. Al Bashier allegedly secretly took the Oil-for-Food money to buy weapons.

In a different situation, Saddam also ran Corsin Financial Ltd., a front company whose money is now missing. Saddam presumably grabbed the money and used it to pay for his palaces, bolster his corrupt regime and go on a weapons-buying spree.

United Nations Keeps a Tight Lip

In essence, say investigators, Saddam relied on a sophisticated worldwide financial network of both legitimate and shell companies to earn billions in illegal profits. One official who allegedly received such a voucher was the Oil-for-Food program's former director, Benon Sevan. He has denied the allegation, but the Senate panel wants to pull him in to discuss the accusations.

At the hearing, Charles Duelfer, who now heads the weapons inspections team in Iraq, told Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the investigations subcommittee, that he believes Sevan likely did get the vouchers.

"The Iraqis firmly believe that," Duelfer said. "I would conclude with high confidence from the data that the Iraqis provided, from all we saw, that that happened."

Annan has promised Sevan will cooperate with the U.N.'s own investigation, but it's not clear what Sevan would do if subpoenaed by the Senate, and he could claim diplomatic immunity to avoid testifying or even meeting with senators.

Coleman's subcommittee has also wanted to meet with U.N. officials to discuss their Oil-for-Food audits. But the U.N.'s chief in-house investigator, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, has refused to disclose information to any Senate panels, saying that to do so now would hurt his investigative efforts.

Volcker claims that "partial and premature disclosures of sensitive internal documents or demands for congressional appearances of U.N. employees will be damaging to the pursuit of investigative leads, chill participation of those called upon to cooperate, and risk misleading, prejudicial and unfair impressions on institutional, personal and member-state behavior."

Chirac Says Iraq War Made World More Dangerous

November 17, 2004
Chirac Says Iraq War Made World More Dangerous
By REUTERS, Filed at 4:28 a.m. ET

LONDON (Reuters) - Last year's U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and ousting of President Saddam Hussein has, if anything, made the world more dangerous, French President Jacques Chirac said on the eve of a state visit to key U.S. ally Britain.

The French leader's interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation, excerpts of which were aired Wednesday, indicate little chance of success for British Prime Minister Tony Blair's efforts to mend Franco-American ties damaged by the Iraq war.

``I'm not at all sure that one can say the world is safer,'' Chirac said. ``There is no doubt there has been an increase in terrorism.''

``To a certain extent Saddam Hussein's departure was a positive thing but it also provoked reaction such as the mobilization in a number of countries of men and women of Islam which has made the world more dangerous.''

The full interview with the BBC is to be aired Wednesday evening as Chirac prepares to fly to Britain Thursday to meet Blair, Queen Elizabeth and business leaders to celebrate 100 years of Entente Cordiale -- an agreement that brought about French-British cooperation after a long history of rivalry.

Chirac, whose strong opposition to the war prompted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to dismiss France as part of ``Old Europe,'' has questioned what Blair has gained from his unstinting support of the invasion.

In a newspaper interview Tuesday, Chirac said he had urged Britain before the invasion to press President Bush to revive the Middle East peace process in return for London's support for the war.

``Well, Britain gave its support but I did not see much in return,'' Chirac was quoted as saying in the Times. ``I am not sure that it is in the nature of our American friends at the moment to return favors systematically.''

Blair's support for the war prompted bitter faction fighting inside his ruling Labor Party and torpedoed his public approval ratings ahead of elections expected by mid-2005.

A poll in the Independent newspaper Wednesday showed that 64 percent of the British public believed that having good relations with continental Europe was more important than maintaining close ties with Washington.

In the Times interview, Chirac recalled a Franco-British summit last year when he asked Blair to try to influence U.S. policy on the Middle East.

``I said then to Tony Blair: 'We have different positions on Iraq. Your position should at least have some use'. That is to try to obtain in exchange a relaunch of the peace process in the Middle East.''

The French leader questioned whether Britain could act as a bridge between the United States and Europe to help heal the transatlantic rift.

``I am not sure, with America as it is these days, that it would be easy for someone, even the British, to be an honest broker,'' he said.

Blair called Monday for Europe and the United States to bury their differences over Iraq and focus on global challenges.

``It is not a sensible or intelligent response for us in Europe to ridicule American arguments and parody their political leadership,'' Blair said in a major foreign policy speech.

Come Clean, Kofi

Come Clean, Kofi
The U.N. secretary-general ducks responsibilty for the Oil for Food scam.
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Wednesday, November 17, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST

With estimates soaring of graft and fraud under the United Nations Oil for Food program in Iraq, we are hearing a lot about the need to "get to the bottom" of this scandal, the biggest ever to hit the U.N. To get to that bottom will need a much harder look at the top--where Secretary-General Kofi Annan himself resides.

That violates all sorts of taboos. But so, one might suppose, does a United Nations that allowed Saddam Hussein to embezzle at least $21.3 billion in oil money during 12 years, with the great bulk of that sum--a staggering $17.3 billion--pilfered between 1997-2003, on Mr. Annan's watch.

These are the record-breaking new estimates released Monday by the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, whose staffers, despite Mr. Annan's refusal to cooperate, have spent the past seven months voyaging deep into the muck of Oil for Food. At a hearing Monday, these investigators surfaced to tell us the theft and fraud under Oil for Food was at least twice as bad as earlier reports had suggested, and that all this is just a preview of yet more appalling disclosures they expect to release early next year. Sen. Norm Coleman, the subcommittee's chairman, underscored the urgency of such investigations, noting not only that the size of the fraud "is staggering," but that some of Saddam's vast illicit stash might right now be funding terrorists and costing American lives.

Mr. Annan, by contrast, seems to inhabit a different universe--one in which the chief problem lies not in the U.N.'s complicity, including his own, in the biggest fraud in the history of humanitarian relief, but rather in the attempts to shine any light on all that sleaze. In Annan Land, there was earlier this year no need for any probe into Oil for Food; and even now there is no need for any investigating beyond the U.N.'s own "independent inquiry" into itself, led by former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, required to funnel its findings first through Mr. Annan, funded to the tune of $30 million out of one of the old Oil for Food accounts it is supposed to be investigating, and not planning to clock in with any specific results until sometime next summer.

In the spirit of shooting the messenger, Mr. Annan has complained often in recent months about criticism of Oil for Food, denouncing it as a "campaign" that has "hurt the U.N." Monday's Oil for Food hearing evoked from Mr. Annan's spokesman, Fred Eckhard, the comment that Mr. Annan feels he has been "misjudged by certain media" and that Mr. Annan is "not being obstructionist" in his refusal to cooperate with congressional investigators. We are given to understand that Mr. Annan would help if he could, but his job entails so many over-riding responsibilities.

OK, except that when it comes to Oil for Food, Mr. Annan has labored hard in recent months to disavow his own large role and responsibilities. From both Mr. Annan and the entourage of U.N. speechwriters and spokesman who report to him have come a long series of disclaimers and protests, eye-catching less for what they tell us than for what they leave out.

Just last week, we had Mr. Annan's director of communications, Edward Mortimer, asserting in a letter to The Wall Street Journal that Mr. Annan was "not involved" in designing Oil for Food. Technically, it may be correct that Mr. Annan did not actually seal the original deal. But Mr. Annan's own official U.N. biography states that before becoming secretary-general, he "led the first United Nations team negotiating with Iraq on the sale of oil to fund purchases of humanitarian aid"--and that implies a certain familiarity with the origins of Oil for Food.

Once Mr. Annan became secretary-general, he lost little time in getting deeply involved with Oil for Food. In October 1997, just 10 months into the job, he transformed what had begun as an ad hoc, temporary relief measure into the Office of the Iraq Program, an entrenched U.N. department, which reported to him directly--and was eliminated only after the U.S.-led coalition, against Mr. Annan's wishes, deposed Saddam. To run Oil for Food, Mr. Annan picked Benon Sevan (now alleged to have received oil money from Saddam, which he denies) and kept him there until the program ended about six years later.

Mr. Annan's reorganization of Oil for Food meant a nontrivial change in the trajectory of the program. All the signs are that Saddam immediately took the cue that he could now start gaming the program with impunity--and Mr. Annan did not prove him wrong. Within the month, Saddam had created the first crisis over the U.N. weapons inspectors, who were supposed to be part of the sanctions and Oil for Food package. Mr. Annan's response was not to throttle back on Oil for Food but to go before the Security Council a few months later and urge that Baghdad be allowed to import oil equipment along with the food and medicine to which the program had been initially limited. This set the stage for the ensuing burst in Saddam's oil production, kickbacks, surcharges and smuggling.

Mr. Annan then flew to Baghdad for a private powwow with Saddam and returned to declare that this was a man he could do business with. The weapons inspectors returned to Iraq for a short spell, but by the end of 1998, Saddam had evicted them for the next four years. Mr. Annan, however, went right on doing business. And big business it was, however humanitarian in name. Under the Oil for Food deal, Mr. Annan's Secretariat pulled in a 2.2% commission on Saddam's oil sales, totaling a whopping $1.4 billion over the life of the program, to cover the costs of supervising Saddam. Yet somehow the Secretariat never found the funding to fully meter oil shipments, ensure full inspections of all goods entering Iraq, or catch the pricing scams that by the new estimates of Senate investigators let Saddam rake in $4.4 billion in kickbacks on relief contracts.

Mr. Annan and his aides would also have us believe that Oil for Food had nothing to do with Saddam's smuggling of oil--which generated the lion's share of his illicit income. But it was only after Oil for Food geared up that Saddam's oil smuggling really took off, totaling $13.6 billion during his entire 12 years between wars, but with more than two-thirds of that--an estimated $9.7 billion--earned during the era of Oil for Food. Those were precisely the years in which Mr. Annan repeatedly went to bat to enable Saddam, under Oil for Food, to import the equipment to rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure, whence came all that smuggled oil.

Transparency from the start might have flagged the world and stopped the scams as things turned deeply rotten under Oil for Food. But Mr. Annan's policy to this day has been secrecy. On Monday, Sen. Coleman summed up his subcommittee's efforts to get at the truth, as having required so far, eight subpoenas, 13 chairman's letters, "numerous interviews with key participants, and receipt of over a million pages of evidence" to begin to understand "the behind-the-scenes machinations of the participants in the Oil for Food program."

"Participants" are generally understood to have been Saddam's chosen contractors. But we need to recognize that one of the biggest of those contractors was, in effect, the U.N. itself. As Oil for Food was not only designed but expanded, embellished upon and run for more than six years under Mr. Annan's stewardship, it became not so much a supervisory operation, but a business deal with Saddam, in which the U.N. in effect provided money laundering services, the Secretariat collected a percentage fee from Saddam--and somewhere in there, between the kickbacks, surcharges, importation of oil equipment and smuggling out of oil, they jointly ran a storefront relief operation.

Who at the U.N. took illicit money from Saddam--if, indeed, anyone did--is an important question, and worth pursuing. But so is the matter of who covered up for Saddam; who pushed to continue and expand a program so derelict that it failed to nab more than $17 billion in illicit deals, and so secretive that investigators have spent much of the past year trying simply to get their hands on information the U.N. should have made public at the time. It is worth asking whose welfare was enhanced, whose domain was expanded, whose coffers filled with $1.4 billion delivered as a percentage cut of Saddam's oil revenues--and who has failed to this day to take on board the thumping lessons about the need for transparency at the U.N.

That would be Mr. Annan. He is not protecting the U.N. At great cost to whatever noble aspirations the U.N. once had, and to all societies that value integrity over Potemkin institutions, he is protecting himself.

Ms. Rosett is a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the Hudson Institute. Her column appears here and in The Wall Street Journal Europe on alternate Wednesdays.