Will the French Indict Cheney?
- Thread starter moghrabi
- Start date
The French? The biggest bunch of cowards and back stabbers? Hah ... that's a good one.
Where do you think the expression "Blame France" comes from? Which by the way is a registered trademark.
Where do you think the expression "Blame France" comes from? Which by the way is a registered trademark.
RE: Will the French Indic
I don't think you understand, James. You Vice President is being investigated for criminal acts. He could be indicted because he broke the law. The judge has a long record of not caring about political affilliations or the mindless bluster spewed by those who would protect corporate criminals because of their wealth of political connections.
You can rant about the French all you want, Nero. Your Vice President is a dirty little criminal and there's a pretty good chance he's just been caught.
Oh yeah...don't count on diplomatic immunity either. Cheney had no such immunity when he committed the crimes and will likely lose any official status when he is forced to resign over the Plame incident. By this time next year it is very probable that if Dick Cheney steps out of the United States, he will be arrested on a French warrant.
I don't think you understand, James. You Vice President is being investigated for criminal acts. He could be indicted because he broke the law. The judge has a long record of not caring about political affilliations or the mindless bluster spewed by those who would protect corporate criminals because of their wealth of political connections.
You can rant about the French all you want, Nero. Your Vice President is a dirty little criminal and there's a pretty good chance he's just been caught.
Oh yeah...don't count on diplomatic immunity either. Cheney had no such immunity when he committed the crimes and will likely lose any official status when he is forced to resign over the Plame incident. By this time next year it is very probable that if Dick Cheney steps out of the United States, he will be arrested on a French warrant.
"Nigeria has been rated by the anticorruption watchdog Transparency International as the second-most corrupt country in the world, surpassed only by Bangladesh. "
---according to the article quoted by Moghrabi.
The only association Cheney has to that Nigerian Haliburton joint job with the French company Technip is that he is now retired from it.
Depending on how blinding your bias is, you can read all sorts of things into that article.
Man, all you have to mention Nigeria and you'll all have to nod that you've gotten a Nigerian email offering to make you a fortune.
And then the French company joining in or contracted by the Nigerians and some arm of Haliburton ---- now there's a carnival of screw ups beyond any other combination you can create.
---according to the article quoted by Moghrabi.
The only association Cheney has to that Nigerian Haliburton joint job with the French company Technip is that he is now retired from it.
Depending on how blinding your bias is, you can read all sorts of things into that article.
Man, all you have to mention Nigeria and you'll all have to nod that you've gotten a Nigerian email offering to make you a fortune.
And then the French company joining in or contracted by the Nigerians and some arm of Haliburton ---- now there's a carnival of screw ups beyond any other combination you can create.
Prelude to a Leak
Gang fight: How Cheney and his tight-knit team launched the Iraq war, chased their critics—and set the stage for a special prosecutor's dramatic probe.
Newsweek http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9787692/site/newsweek/[/code]
Gang fight: How Cheney and his tight-knit team launched the Iraq war, chased their critics—and set the stage for a special prosecutor's dramatic probe.
Newsweek http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9787692/site/newsweek/[/code]
the plot thickens......
could get xtremely interesting/dynamic. wonder what these blokes will do when they are actually cornered. we gotta remember that they are a very slippery/slimy lot. :x
could get xtremely interesting/dynamic. wonder what these blokes will do when they are actually cornered. we gotta remember that they are a very slippery/slimy lot. :x
Background
In late May 2003, the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC) informed me that a former U.S. ambassador named Joseph Wilson would be sharing keynote duties with me at a large EPIC conference on June 14.
I was delighted—for two reasons. This was a chance to meet the “American hero” (per George H. W. Bush) who faced down Saddam Hussein, freeing hundreds of American and other hostages taken when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. More important, since Wilson had served as an ambassador in Africa, I thought he might be able to throw light on a question bedeviling me since May 6, when New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote an intriguing story about a mission to Niger by “a former U.S. ambassador to Africa.”
There Once Was an Ambassador in Niger...
According to Kristof, that mission was undertaken at the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney’s office to investigate a report that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger. The report was an entirely convenient “smoking gun.” Since Iraq lacked any nonmilitary use for such uranium, it had to be for a nuclear weapons program, if the report were true. Or so went the argument. The former ambassador sent to Niger had found no basis for the report, pulling the rug out from under the “intelligence” the administration had used during the previous fall to conjure up the “mushroom cloud” that intimidated Congress into authorizing war.
Kristof’s May 6 column had caused quite a stir in Washington. The only one to have totally missed the story was then-National Security Adviser and now Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (assuming she is to be taken at her word). Rice claimed that the information did not come to her attention until more than a month later. Right. (And the celebrated aluminum tubes were for nuclear enrichment—not artillery. Right.)
This ostensibly nuclear-related “evidence” was no mere sideshow; it went to the very core of the disingenuous justification for war. The Iraq-Niger report itself was particularly suspect. The uranium mined in Niger is very tightly controlled by a French-led international consortium, and the chances of circumventing or defeating the well established safeguards and procedures were seen as virtually nil. On March 7, Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, announced to the U.N. Security Council that the documents upon which the Iraq-Niger reporting was based were “not authentic.” Colin Powell swallowed hard but took it as well as could be expected under the circumstances. A few days later he conceded the point entirely—with neither apology nor embarrassment, as befits the world’s sole remaining superpower.
The Sixteen Words
Powell had long since decided that the Iraq-Niger report did not pass the smell test. But he was apparently afraid to incur Cheney’s wrath by telling the president. Powell’s own intelligence analysts at the State Department had branded the story “highly dubious,” so he had chosen to drop it from the long litany of spurious charges against Iraq that he recited at the U.N. on February 5, 2003, a performance that Powell now admits constitutes a “blot” on his record. Asked to defend President George W. Bush’s use of the Iraq-Africa story in his state-of-the-union address in January 2003, the best Powell could do was to describe the president’s (in)famous “16 words” as “not totally outrageous,” a comment that did not help all that much.
Those in Congress who felt they had been misled by the story, which the White House PR machine had shaped into a “mushroom cloud,” were in high dugeon. For example, in the days before the attack on Iraq, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) wrote the president to complain that Waxman and his colleagues had been deceived out of their constitutional prerogative to declare or otherwise authorize war. None of this put the brakes on the intrepid Cheney, who three days before the war told NBC’s Tim Russert, “We believe he [Saddam Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”
Cheney, of course, had been assured by the likes of neo-conservative armchair general Kenneth Adelman that the war would be a “cakewalk,” that U.S. forces would be greeted as “liberators,” and that in the glow of major victory, only the worst kind of spoilsport would complain that the “justification” was based largely on a forgery. By May 2003, however, it had become clear that the cakewalk was a pipedream and that no sign of a “reconstituted” nuclear weapons program was likely to be found. In this context, the information in Kristof’s May 6 op-ed was like pouring salt into an open wound.
Do You Know the Ambassador?
When introduced to former ambassador Wilson at the June 14 conference, I wasted no time asking him—rather naively, it turned out—if he knew who the former U.S. ambassador who went to Niger was. He smiled and said, “You’re looking at him.” I asked when he intended to go public; in a couple of weeks, was the answer.
Wilson then turned dead serious and, with considerable emphasis, told me the White House had already launched a full-court press in an effort to dredge up dirt on him. He added, “When I do speak out, they are going to go after me big time. I don’t know the precise nature the retaliation will take, but I can tell you now it will be swift and vindictive. They cannot afford to have people thinking they can escape unscathed if they spill the beans on the dishonesty undergirding this war.” (Sad to say, the White House approach has worked. There are perhaps a hundred of my former C.I.A. colleagues who know about the lies; none—not one—has been able to summon the courage to go public.)
Wilson’s tone was matter of fact; the nerves were of steel. Hardly surprising, thought I. If you can face down Saddam Hussein, you can surely face down the likes of Dick Cheney. Wilson’s New York Times op-ed of July 6, 2003, “What I Didn’t Find in Africa,” pulled no punches. Worse still from the administration’s point of view, Wilson then dropped the other shoe during an interview with the Washington Post also on July 6.
Consummate diplomats like Wilson typically do not speak of “lies.” So outraged was Wilson, though, that this bogus story had been used to “justify” an unprovoked war, that he made a point to note that the already proven dishonesty begs the question regarding “what else they are lying about.”
It was a double whammy. And, as is now well known, the White House moved swiftly—if clumsily (and apparently illegally)—to retaliate.
It was clear from the start that Vice President Dick Cheney and Kemosabe (Amer. Indian for “Scotter”) Libby, as well as Karl Rove, were taking the lead in this operation to make an object lesson of Wilson and his wife. And it is somewhat reassuring to notice that some newly tenacious mainstream pundits are now waking up to this. Better late than never, I suppose.
Still Good Advice: Fire Cheney
Watching matters unfold at the time, we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity on July 14, 2003 issued a Memorandum for the President, with chapter and verse on how “your vice president led this campaign of deceit.” We pointed out that this was no case of petty corruption of the kind that forced Vice President Spiro Agnew out by the side door. It was, rather, a matter of war and peace, with thousands already killed and no end in sight. We offered the president the following suggestion:
“Recommendation #1: We recommend that you call an abrupt halt to attempts to prove Vice President Cheney “not guilty.” His role has been so transparent that such attempts will only erode further your own credibility. Equally pernicious, from our perspective, is the likelihood that intelligence analysts will conclude that the way to success is to acquiesce in the cooking of their judgments, since those above them will not be held accountable. We strongly recommend that you ask for Cheney’s immediate resignation.” http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0714-01.htm
President George W. Bush rejected our advice (not for the first time). But now the president may have to let Cheney go after all. Why? Because special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is taking his job seriously.
Frog Marching
During a speech in Seattle in August 2003, former ambassador Wilson imagined a scene in which police are frog marching presidential adviser Karl Rove out of the White House. This appeared a bit far-fetched at the time, but not now. Indeed, it seems there will be a need for multiple handcuffs and marshals.
From the beginning of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation in January 2004, Wilson expressed confidence that the truth would emerge. And because of Fitzgerald’s professionalism and tenacity, we are about to see at least some of the perpetrators of this fraud get their comeuppance. Normally, Schadenfreude is exceedingly hard to resist in such circumstances. But it is harder still to allow oneself any joy at the misfortune of others, when the focus needs to be placed on the huge damage already done to our country, its values, and its reputation.
Fire the Special Prosecutor? Shades of Watergate
When the Watergate scandal reached a similar stage in October 1973, President Richard Nixon, ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire the intrepid special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Richardson resigned rather than carry out Nixon’s order; and so did his deputy William Ruckleshaus. So Nixon had to reach farther down into the Justice department where he found Robert Bork, who promptly dismissed Cox in the so-called Saturday Night Massacre.
Fitzgerald is at least as vulnerable as Cox was. Indeed, in recent days some of the fourth estate, Richard Cohen in the Washington Post and John Tierney in The New York Times, for example, seem to have accepted assignments to help lay the groundwork for Fitzgerald’s dismissal.
Will the White House decide to fire special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, and simply absorb the PR black eye, as Nixon did? There is absolutely nothing to prevent it. Can you imagine Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refusing on principle an order from President Bush?
Could Bush himself be named an un-indicted co-conspirator? If that or something like it happens, we can expect a circling of the wagons and Fitzgerald cashiered.
If the case Fitzgerald has built, however, is not strong enough to implicate Bush personally, it seems likely that the president will acquiesce in wholesale frog marching of others from the White House and then go off for a Thanksgiving vacation in Crawford—opps, more likely, Camp David. For Cindy Sheehan is planning Thanksgiving in Crawford: she still hopes to see the president so that he can explain to her personally what the “noble cause” was for which her son died.
It promises to be an interesting autumn. By all means stay tuned.
Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He was a C.I.A. analyst for 27 years, and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
In late May 2003, the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC) informed me that a former U.S. ambassador named Joseph Wilson would be sharing keynote duties with me at a large EPIC conference on June 14.
I was delighted—for two reasons. This was a chance to meet the “American hero” (per George H. W. Bush) who faced down Saddam Hussein, freeing hundreds of American and other hostages taken when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. More important, since Wilson had served as an ambassador in Africa, I thought he might be able to throw light on a question bedeviling me since May 6, when New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote an intriguing story about a mission to Niger by “a former U.S. ambassador to Africa.”
There Once Was an Ambassador in Niger...
According to Kristof, that mission was undertaken at the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney’s office to investigate a report that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger. The report was an entirely convenient “smoking gun.” Since Iraq lacked any nonmilitary use for such uranium, it had to be for a nuclear weapons program, if the report were true. Or so went the argument. The former ambassador sent to Niger had found no basis for the report, pulling the rug out from under the “intelligence” the administration had used during the previous fall to conjure up the “mushroom cloud” that intimidated Congress into authorizing war.
Kristof’s May 6 column had caused quite a stir in Washington. The only one to have totally missed the story was then-National Security Adviser and now Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (assuming she is to be taken at her word). Rice claimed that the information did not come to her attention until more than a month later. Right. (And the celebrated aluminum tubes were for nuclear enrichment—not artillery. Right.)
This ostensibly nuclear-related “evidence” was no mere sideshow; it went to the very core of the disingenuous justification for war. The Iraq-Niger report itself was particularly suspect. The uranium mined in Niger is very tightly controlled by a French-led international consortium, and the chances of circumventing or defeating the well established safeguards and procedures were seen as virtually nil. On March 7, Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, announced to the U.N. Security Council that the documents upon which the Iraq-Niger reporting was based were “not authentic.” Colin Powell swallowed hard but took it as well as could be expected under the circumstances. A few days later he conceded the point entirely—with neither apology nor embarrassment, as befits the world’s sole remaining superpower.
The Sixteen Words
Powell had long since decided that the Iraq-Niger report did not pass the smell test. But he was apparently afraid to incur Cheney’s wrath by telling the president. Powell’s own intelligence analysts at the State Department had branded the story “highly dubious,” so he had chosen to drop it from the long litany of spurious charges against Iraq that he recited at the U.N. on February 5, 2003, a performance that Powell now admits constitutes a “blot” on his record. Asked to defend President George W. Bush’s use of the Iraq-Africa story in his state-of-the-union address in January 2003, the best Powell could do was to describe the president’s (in)famous “16 words” as “not totally outrageous,” a comment that did not help all that much.
Those in Congress who felt they had been misled by the story, which the White House PR machine had shaped into a “mushroom cloud,” were in high dugeon. For example, in the days before the attack on Iraq, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) wrote the president to complain that Waxman and his colleagues had been deceived out of their constitutional prerogative to declare or otherwise authorize war. None of this put the brakes on the intrepid Cheney, who three days before the war told NBC’s Tim Russert, “We believe he [Saddam Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”
Cheney, of course, had been assured by the likes of neo-conservative armchair general Kenneth Adelman that the war would be a “cakewalk,” that U.S. forces would be greeted as “liberators,” and that in the glow of major victory, only the worst kind of spoilsport would complain that the “justification” was based largely on a forgery. By May 2003, however, it had become clear that the cakewalk was a pipedream and that no sign of a “reconstituted” nuclear weapons program was likely to be found. In this context, the information in Kristof’s May 6 op-ed was like pouring salt into an open wound.
Do You Know the Ambassador?
When introduced to former ambassador Wilson at the June 14 conference, I wasted no time asking him—rather naively, it turned out—if he knew who the former U.S. ambassador who went to Niger was. He smiled and said, “You’re looking at him.” I asked when he intended to go public; in a couple of weeks, was the answer.
Wilson then turned dead serious and, with considerable emphasis, told me the White House had already launched a full-court press in an effort to dredge up dirt on him. He added, “When I do speak out, they are going to go after me big time. I don’t know the precise nature the retaliation will take, but I can tell you now it will be swift and vindictive. They cannot afford to have people thinking they can escape unscathed if they spill the beans on the dishonesty undergirding this war.” (Sad to say, the White House approach has worked. There are perhaps a hundred of my former C.I.A. colleagues who know about the lies; none—not one—has been able to summon the courage to go public.)
Wilson’s tone was matter of fact; the nerves were of steel. Hardly surprising, thought I. If you can face down Saddam Hussein, you can surely face down the likes of Dick Cheney. Wilson’s New York Times op-ed of July 6, 2003, “What I Didn’t Find in Africa,” pulled no punches. Worse still from the administration’s point of view, Wilson then dropped the other shoe during an interview with the Washington Post also on July 6.
Consummate diplomats like Wilson typically do not speak of “lies.” So outraged was Wilson, though, that this bogus story had been used to “justify” an unprovoked war, that he made a point to note that the already proven dishonesty begs the question regarding “what else they are lying about.”
It was a double whammy. And, as is now well known, the White House moved swiftly—if clumsily (and apparently illegally)—to retaliate.
It was clear from the start that Vice President Dick Cheney and Kemosabe (Amer. Indian for “Scotter”) Libby, as well as Karl Rove, were taking the lead in this operation to make an object lesson of Wilson and his wife. And it is somewhat reassuring to notice that some newly tenacious mainstream pundits are now waking up to this. Better late than never, I suppose.
Still Good Advice: Fire Cheney
Watching matters unfold at the time, we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity on July 14, 2003 issued a Memorandum for the President, with chapter and verse on how “your vice president led this campaign of deceit.” We pointed out that this was no case of petty corruption of the kind that forced Vice President Spiro Agnew out by the side door. It was, rather, a matter of war and peace, with thousands already killed and no end in sight. We offered the president the following suggestion:
“Recommendation #1: We recommend that you call an abrupt halt to attempts to prove Vice President Cheney “not guilty.” His role has been so transparent that such attempts will only erode further your own credibility. Equally pernicious, from our perspective, is the likelihood that intelligence analysts will conclude that the way to success is to acquiesce in the cooking of their judgments, since those above them will not be held accountable. We strongly recommend that you ask for Cheney’s immediate resignation.” http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0714-01.htm
President George W. Bush rejected our advice (not for the first time). But now the president may have to let Cheney go after all. Why? Because special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is taking his job seriously.
Frog Marching
During a speech in Seattle in August 2003, former ambassador Wilson imagined a scene in which police are frog marching presidential adviser Karl Rove out of the White House. This appeared a bit far-fetched at the time, but not now. Indeed, it seems there will be a need for multiple handcuffs and marshals.
From the beginning of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation in January 2004, Wilson expressed confidence that the truth would emerge. And because of Fitzgerald’s professionalism and tenacity, we are about to see at least some of the perpetrators of this fraud get their comeuppance. Normally, Schadenfreude is exceedingly hard to resist in such circumstances. But it is harder still to allow oneself any joy at the misfortune of others, when the focus needs to be placed on the huge damage already done to our country, its values, and its reputation.
Fire the Special Prosecutor? Shades of Watergate
When the Watergate scandal reached a similar stage in October 1973, President Richard Nixon, ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire the intrepid special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Richardson resigned rather than carry out Nixon’s order; and so did his deputy William Ruckleshaus. So Nixon had to reach farther down into the Justice department where he found Robert Bork, who promptly dismissed Cox in the so-called Saturday Night Massacre.
Fitzgerald is at least as vulnerable as Cox was. Indeed, in recent days some of the fourth estate, Richard Cohen in the Washington Post and John Tierney in The New York Times, for example, seem to have accepted assignments to help lay the groundwork for Fitzgerald’s dismissal.
Will the White House decide to fire special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, and simply absorb the PR black eye, as Nixon did? There is absolutely nothing to prevent it. Can you imagine Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refusing on principle an order from President Bush?
Could Bush himself be named an un-indicted co-conspirator? If that or something like it happens, we can expect a circling of the wagons and Fitzgerald cashiered.
If the case Fitzgerald has built, however, is not strong enough to implicate Bush personally, it seems likely that the president will acquiesce in wholesale frog marching of others from the White House and then go off for a Thanksgiving vacation in Crawford—opps, more likely, Camp David. For Cindy Sheehan is planning Thanksgiving in Crawford: she still hopes to see the president so that he can explain to her personally what the “noble cause” was for which her son died.
It promises to be an interesting autumn. By all means stay tuned.
Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He was a C.I.A. analyst for 27 years, and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
oh boy it just gets worse all the time 8O How anyone can defend these actions speaks to what kind of person they are :?
second aide to Vice President Dick Cheney is cooperating with the special prosecutor's probe into the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, those close to the investigation say.
Late Monday, several sources familiar with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s probe said John Hannah, a key aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and one of the architects of the Iraq war, was cooperating with Fitzgerald after being told that he was identified by witnesses as a co-conspirator in the leak. Sources said Hannah was not given immunity, but was likely offered a “deal” in exchange for information that could result in indictments of key White House officials.
Now, those close to the investigation say that a second Cheney aide, David Wurmser, has agreed to provide the prosecution with evidence that the leak was a coordinated effort by Cheney’s office to discredit the agent's husband. Her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, was one of the most vocal critics of the Iraq war.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/19/p...74400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
So its pretty clear that the american people were lied to, not a mistake either, a delibrate plan to invade another country based on lies. Now jimmy and your bubs...lets hear you defend this :roll: :roll: :roll: At least more than half of the american people say different. btw...check out this website :wink:
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/index.html
second aide to Vice President Dick Cheney is cooperating with the special prosecutor's probe into the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, those close to the investigation say.
Late Monday, several sources familiar with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s probe said John Hannah, a key aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and one of the architects of the Iraq war, was cooperating with Fitzgerald after being told that he was identified by witnesses as a co-conspirator in the leak. Sources said Hannah was not given immunity, but was likely offered a “deal” in exchange for information that could result in indictments of key White House officials.
Now, those close to the investigation say that a second Cheney aide, David Wurmser, has agreed to provide the prosecution with evidence that the leak was a coordinated effort by Cheney’s office to discredit the agent's husband. Her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, was one of the most vocal critics of the Iraq war.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/19/p...74400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
So its pretty clear that the american people were lied to, not a mistake either, a delibrate plan to invade another country based on lies. Now jimmy and your bubs...lets hear you defend this :roll: :roll: :roll: At least more than half of the american people say different. btw...check out this website :wink:
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/index.html
can anyone say "meltdown"?????
hmm. heating up.
thanks for the links guys.
Ya know........there is so much happening and from so many directions now..... it is almost hard to keep track. But holding true to form..........the same theme is starting to run through most new bulletins now.
"get those sleazeballs out of the oval office.........and restore a modicum of respect for the US. "..........but restoring respect could take a very long time. Too much damage in too short a time.
(an aside : but it is SO CATHARTIC to call them all sleazeballs....;-)
hmm. heating up.
thanks for the links guys.
Ya know........there is so much happening and from so many directions now..... it is almost hard to keep track. But holding true to form..........the same theme is starting to run through most new bulletins now.
"get those sleazeballs out of the oval office.........and restore a modicum of respect for the US. "..........but restoring respect could take a very long time. Too much damage in too short a time.
(an aside : but it is SO CATHARTIC to call them all sleazeballs....;-)
I've been following this story for a while, Jimmy. You should do some back reading. I suggest you start with The Nation and be sure that you don't miss the le Monde stories.
Judge van Ruymbeke has an impeccable reputation and is known for going after corrupt politicians and corporate hacks. Cheney was a corporate hack, the CEO of Halliburton, during the time period being investigated. It is highly unlikely that a slush fund involving millions of dollars could have existed without his knowledge.
While you are reading The Nation to find out why van Ruymbeke is investigating Cheney, you should read the stories they've done about the outing of Valerie Plame as well.
Since you like asking questions so much, Jimmy, here's some you should have been asking since well before the last election. Why haven't these stories been covered extensively on the networks and cable news outlets? Why haven't they been featured in major newpapers and magazines on a regular basis?
French envoys admit taking oil payoffs
By Charles Bremner
France has distanced itself from two former ambassadors facing corruption charges
TWO former French ambassadors have admitted earning hundreds of thousands of dollars from the sale of oil that Iraq had assigned to them under the United Nations Oil-for-Food programme.
The disclosure tarnished France’s moral stand against the invasion of Iraq, and its Foreign Ministry scrambled to distance itself from the alleged illicit activities of Serge Boidevaix, a former director of the ministry, and of Jean-Bernard Mérimée, a former French Ambassador to the UN. Both are facing corruption charges.
Jean-Baptiste Mattei, spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said: “There is no link . . . with the decision of France not to participate in the Iraq war. This stemmed from our concept of international law.”
Word that the two men had acknowledged payoffs from Baghdad has embarrassed the ministry, which fears that the actions of two retired diplomats will be used to discredit President Chirac’s opposition towards the invasion of Iraq.
Prosecution proceedings have been opened against both men on charges of influence peddling and corruptly acting for a foreign power. Le Monde reported that M Mérimée, 68, who served as UN Ambassador in the early 1990s, told Philippe Courroye, the investigating judge, that he had made $150,000 (£85,800) from two million barrels of oil that had been assigned to him in 2001.
Tariq Aziz, the former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, had given him the oil vouchers as thanks for his lobbying efforts on behalf of Iraq, Le Monde said. He was serving at the time as a special adviser to Kofi Annan, the UN SecretaryGeneral. M Boidevaix, 77, told investigators that he had received 29 million barrels between 1998 and 2003 in reward for lobbying on Iraq’s behalf against the international oil embargo, Le Monde said. According to the investigators, M Boidevaix had made $250,000 from selling on the vouchers.
He told Judge Courroye that he had kept the Foreign Ministry informed of his activities and the payments made to him after 1997. This appeared to conflict with the ministry’s assertion that it had no knowledge of the activities of the two ambassadors. The ministry also appeared to contradict itself, saying that in 2001 it had warned both men to observe caution in view of their status as former representatives of France. Last year, when US investigators reported evidence of French beneficiaries of the Iraqi oil handout, the ministry reacted indignantly.
Judge Courroye is investigating 11 French-based officials, business figures, politicians and a journalist who are alleged to have benefited from Baghdad’s largesse during the seven-year programme, which ended in 2003. Six have been told that they face charges. M Boidevaix told the judge that he believed that Senator Charles Pasqua, a former Gaullist Interior Minister, and others had enjoyed favours from Baghdad “because they lobbied hard for it with the Iraqis”.
The French media deplored the apparent involvement of senior state officials in corrupt dealings with the regime of Saddam Hussein. Le Monde said the image of France was at stake. Le Figaro said that “French diplomacy has been stained by ‘Oil for Food’.”
www.timesonline.co.uk . . .
By Charles Bremner
France has distanced itself from two former ambassadors facing corruption charges
TWO former French ambassadors have admitted earning hundreds of thousands of dollars from the sale of oil that Iraq had assigned to them under the United Nations Oil-for-Food programme.
The disclosure tarnished France’s moral stand against the invasion of Iraq, and its Foreign Ministry scrambled to distance itself from the alleged illicit activities of Serge Boidevaix, a former director of the ministry, and of Jean-Bernard Mérimée, a former French Ambassador to the UN. Both are facing corruption charges.
Jean-Baptiste Mattei, spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said: “There is no link . . . with the decision of France not to participate in the Iraq war. This stemmed from our concept of international law.”
Word that the two men had acknowledged payoffs from Baghdad has embarrassed the ministry, which fears that the actions of two retired diplomats will be used to discredit President Chirac’s opposition towards the invasion of Iraq.
Prosecution proceedings have been opened against both men on charges of influence peddling and corruptly acting for a foreign power. Le Monde reported that M Mérimée, 68, who served as UN Ambassador in the early 1990s, told Philippe Courroye, the investigating judge, that he had made $150,000 (£85,800) from two million barrels of oil that had been assigned to him in 2001.
Tariq Aziz, the former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, had given him the oil vouchers as thanks for his lobbying efforts on behalf of Iraq, Le Monde said. He was serving at the time as a special adviser to Kofi Annan, the UN SecretaryGeneral. M Boidevaix, 77, told investigators that he had received 29 million barrels between 1998 and 2003 in reward for lobbying on Iraq’s behalf against the international oil embargo, Le Monde said. According to the investigators, M Boidevaix had made $250,000 from selling on the vouchers.
He told Judge Courroye that he had kept the Foreign Ministry informed of his activities and the payments made to him after 1997. This appeared to conflict with the ministry’s assertion that it had no knowledge of the activities of the two ambassadors. The ministry also appeared to contradict itself, saying that in 2001 it had warned both men to observe caution in view of their status as former representatives of France. Last year, when US investigators reported evidence of French beneficiaries of the Iraqi oil handout, the ministry reacted indignantly.
Judge Courroye is investigating 11 French-based officials, business figures, politicians and a journalist who are alleged to have benefited from Baghdad’s largesse during the seven-year programme, which ended in 2003. Six have been told that they face charges. M Boidevaix told the judge that he believed that Senator Charles Pasqua, a former Gaullist Interior Minister, and others had enjoyed favours from Baghdad “because they lobbied hard for it with the Iraqis”.
The French media deplored the apparent involvement of senior state officials in corrupt dealings with the regime of Saddam Hussein. Le Monde said the image of France was at stake. Le Figaro said that “French diplomacy has been stained by ‘Oil for Food’.”
www.timesonline.co.uk . . .
RE: Will the French Indic
Not sure what that's supposed to have to do with the Cheney thing, Blackleaf. Pointing at the French and saying that they are guilty of corruption absolves Cheney of nothing. The fact that the French are actually doing something about it should show the Americans the problem with their government.
By the way...the British are cooperating fully with the investigation into Cheney's crimes in Nigeria.
Not sure what that's supposed to have to do with the Cheney thing, Blackleaf. Pointing at the French and saying that they are guilty of corruption absolves Cheney of nothing. The fact that the French are actually doing something about it should show the Americans the problem with their government.
By the way...the British are cooperating fully with the investigation into Cheney's crimes in Nigeria.