Bigger Than The Oil-For-Food Scandal

Juan Cole makes the perceptive point the breaking scandal that over USD$1 billion has been stolen from the Iraq military is a bigger scandal than Saddam’s oil for food corruption.

Juan Cole makes the perceptive point the breaking scandal that over USD$1 billion has been stolen from the Iraq military is a bigger scandal than Saddam’s oil for food corruption. While the oil-for-food corruption was reprehensible and responsible in part for the deaths of over 500 thousand Iraqi children from ’91 to ’01, the diversion of $1 billion intended for weapons purchases has resulted in the Iraqi military being unequipped to overwhelm the resistance and so has kept the U.S. military in Iraq.

The ongoing presence of U.S. military has fed the argument it is an occupation force, legitimizing the resistance and contributing to the descent into civil war. Sizeable portions of the Iraqi parliament itself has demanded the U.S. withdraw it’s military from Iraq, due to the conflict their presence promotes.

Bearing in mind Shaalan and Cattan, the two individuals overseeing military equipment expenditure were both appointed under the Allawi interim government, undemocratically installed by the U.S. administration and empowered under the control of L. Paul Bremer, the Bush administration proconsul, the investigation of corruption has to now turn to the U.S. administration.