Declassified Docs: U.S. condoned Iraq oil smuggling

international | anti-war / imperialism | other press

Friday February 04, 2005 12:21

by redjade

pot + kettle = black

Documents: U.S. condoned Iraq oil smuggling
- Trade was an open secret in administration, UN

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/02/02/iraq.oil.smuggle/index.html

Documents obtained by CNN reveal the United States knew about, and even condoned, embargo-breaking oil sales by Saddam Hussein's regime, and did so to shore up alliances with Iraq's neighbors.

The oil trade with countries such as Turkey and Jordan appears to have been an open secret inside the U.S. government and the United Nations for years.

The unclassified State Department documents sent to congressional committees with oversight of U.S. foreign policy divulge that the United States deemed such sales to be in the "national interest," even though they generated billions of dollars in unmonitored revenue for Saddam's regime.

The trade also generated a needed source of oil and commerce for Iraq's major trading partners, Turkey and Jordan.

"It was in the national security interest, because we depended on the stability in Turkey and the stability in Jordan in order to encircle Saddam Hussein," Edward Walker, a former assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, told CNN when asked about the memo documents.

[....]

Rep. Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, one of five panels probing the oil-for-food program, told CNN the United States was "complicit in undermining" the U.N. sanctions on Iraq.

"How is it that you stand on a moral footing to go after the U.N. when they're responsible for 15 percent maybe of the ill-gotten gains, and we were part and complicit of him getting 85 percent of the money?" Menendez asked.

"Where was our voice on the committee that was overseeing this on the Security Council?

"The reality is that we were either silent or complicit, and that is fundamentally wrong."

Former State Department diplomat Walker said, "It was almost a 'don't ask, don't tell' kind of policy. It was accepted in the Security Council. No one challenged it."