Word: saddamism
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...envelope calculations" about commercial transactions worth millions of dollars, and junior officers (with inadequate security clearance) end up conducting seat-of-the-pants investigations about highly sensitive matters for their ministers. Like most people touched by the scandal that saw almost $A300 million in kickbacks diverted from AWB to Saddam, Australian bureaucrats trusted the company's executives - and ignored the allegations made by those countries (such as Canada) who wanted a larger slice of Iraq's wheat purchases as well as a more favorable free-trade deal...
...When the Prime Minister was prosecuting the case for war in Iraq in early 2003, he pointed to Saddam's cynical and cruel manipulation of the Oil-for-Food scheme. How did the P.M. know? In the background, in classified intelligence and diplomatic cables, a picture was emerging of fees and commissions paid to intermediaries - and then on to Baghdad's monster. When the dust began to settle after the invasion, a June 2003 memo from U.S. military Capt. Blake Puckett reported that every contract in the Oil-for-Food scheme contained a kickback to the regime of between...
...accept the argument that the escalating sectarian violence in Iraq has nothing to do with 24 years of Sunni oppression of Shi'ites and Kurds under Saddam but is the result of the incompetent U.S. invasion. What about the passion to avenge atrocities committed by the former regime? The U.S. can't be blamed for that. Still, Iraqis are probably better off with a dictator, somebody to force them to get along. They are a people who thrive on dictatorships and blood feuds. Michael Klena Baltimore, Maryland...
...Before the usual voices claim that the sectarian violence in Iraq is evidence of the futility of toppling Saddam Hussein, consider that the worst repressor of individual freedom in the Middle East?Iran?is still busy fomenting strife among its neighbors. Its hand shows up in not just Iraq but also Syria and Lebanon. It is convenient for Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, to blame the U.S. for Iraq's current troubles while his agents are busy there. Iran's militant regime is sowing chaos in the Middle East as it goes flat out to develop nuclear weapons...
...What even the ordinary man in the street foresaw before the Bush Administration started its war has at last come true: a country that the dictator Saddam held together with a brutal, tight grip is spinning out of control. People unaccustomed to democracy and split by long-lasting rivalries are unlikely to seek peaceful coexistence. Maybe the American ideal of a national melting pot enticed the Bush Administration into irresponsibly simplifying the complicated situation in Iraq. Hans Gerbig Gersthofen, Germany...