This is an interesting article, but it's hard to tell what the author's sources are. There's a lot of speculation about what Saddam could have done, but not much proof. I note this paragraph towards the end:
- Indeed, the whereabouts of the full U.N. Oil-for-Food records themselves remain, to say the least, confusing. By some official U.N. accounts, they were all turned over to the Coalition Provisional Authority; by others they were not. A U.N. source explained to me last week that some of the records might be in boxes somewhere on Long Island; yet another says they were sent over to the U.S. Mission to the U.N. Especially crucial, one might suppose, would be the bank records, which should show into which accounts, and where, the Oil-for-Food funds were paid. But what is clear is that no one has so far sat down with access to the full records and begun piecing together the labyrinth of Saddam's financing with an eye, specifically, to potential terrorist ties.
Certainly the structure of the Oil-for-Food program appears to have been rife with the potential for kickbacks to the Iraqi government, much like any contract in a Third World country. Since Saddam's regime evidently decided whom to sell to, it evidently could exact a price for this. It's unclear to me, however, that there's any substance to the suggestion that Saddam was anything other than venal. That much is not really news. Clearly, though, there's more to the story that's not out yet.
