Kevin Drum with an update on the so-called oil-for-food scandal (or "scandal"):
Quote:
[W]e also learn that the Chalabi friend who has been investigating the UN oil-for-food scandal (based, you might recall, on documents Chalabi collected from burned out ministry buildings and has not allowed anyone to see) has suffered a setback:
- Last night, it emerged that on the same day as the raid, computer files belonging to the British consultant investigating the oil-for-food scandal were destroyed by hackers and a back-up databank in his Baghdad office wiped out.
Claude Hankes Drielsma, a British businessman and long-time acquaintance of Mr Chalabi, accused America and Britain of mounting a "dirty tricks" campaign to obstruct his inquiry.
Wow. They got both his computer and his backup database! Those are some pretty sharp hackers!
It's been known for years that Saddam Hussein managed to skim off money from the oil-for-food program, and I'm perfectly willing to believe that the the corruption also includes the UN and runs deeper than previously imagined. But it certainly is peculiar that it was Chalabi of all people who managed to sweep up all the relevant documents after the war, that he's been unwilling to show them to any outside investigators, and that his own investigation has suddenly been delayed several months. Peculiar indeed.
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“It was fortunate that so few men acted according to moral principle, because it was so easy to get principles wrong, and a determined person acting on mistaken principles could really do some damage." - Larissa MacFarquhar
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