Long-time New York Times and Wall St Journal Middle East correspondent Youssef Ibrahim, who is quite knowledgeable, recently wrote that a large part of current revenues from oil are being siphoned off by the Allawi government and other Iraqi officials and traders. In addition there is almost nothing known about huge amounts of funding that supposedly passed through US corporations. It’s not unlikely that all of this dwarfs whatever may be found about the “bad guys”. Probably more will come out of the Volcker report.

It should also be stressed that all of this is a total scam, a transparent effort to divert attention from the fact that the US sanctions (called “UN sanctions,” but everyone knows that without US pressures they wouldn’t have been imposed the way they were) had a horrendous impact on Iraqis (and probably helped keep Saddam in power). Not the right story, therefore sidelined, though occasionally something comes out, for example, right after the abduction of the Care director a few days ago, who had apparently been doing marvellous and courageous work for decades in Iraq, and was a bitter and public critic of the sanctions (and the war).

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