UNSCAM Update

The story the press is bending over backward to ignore is slowly getting some play:

WASHINGTON — Transcripts of secret U.N. Security Council sessions show that U.S. and British diplomats were constantly thwarted by their French, Russian and Chinese counterparts while investigating Saddam Hussein's dirty deals under the oil-for-food program.

Minutes of meetings of the so-called 661 Committee — the U.N. Security Council panel that oversaw Iraq sanctions and the oil-for-food program — have been recently turned over to U.S. congressional committees investigating the $10 billion bribery kickback scandal, officials said.

According to a top congressional investigator who has read the highly sensitive documents, the minutes confirm that there was widespread knowledge inside the United Nations years before the war that Saddam's regime was ripping off the $100 billion program by demanding kickbacks from oil traders and suppliers of humanitarian aid to Iraq.

The investigator said the transcripts reveal that U.S. and British diplomats repeatedly raised questions about suspicious contracts, but efforts to investigate corruption were blocked by Russia, France, China and, at times, Syria.

"The Russians and Chinese made clear their position was that they were against sanctions on Iraq and didn't like this program, so they were not going to help in any way," the investigator said.

"The French were two-faced about it. They would respond to American and British requests to halt contracts by saying there was not enough evidence, or more information was needed. In the end, the Americans and British were often forced to back down on these inquiries."

The French are two-faced? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you. This is going to break really big, really soon, and the rats will go in evasion mode. I want to be in the front row.