The mother of all scandals

Tim Blair brought this to my attention yesterday and I dug up the list of companies, politicians, and organizations from 51 countries that had received bribes in oil from the former regime in return for their 'services' in defending the regime and opposing the US campaign against him.

These shady deals were all done under the auspices of the UN and the Oil for Food program. The bribes add up to a total of 3.3 billion barrels of Iraqi crude oil (worth over 70 billion dollars). Here is the translated list. And here the original in Arabic.

Now you know why Iraqis suffered from the UN sanctions. Now you know why hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children had to die during the last ten years. Now you know why those people were vehemently anti-war.

The list was published in Al-Mada, an independent Iraqi newspaper, it was leaked from the Ministry of Oil archives. There may be a few errors in my translation, so if you can find any of these please point them out to me so I can make the proper corrections.

Here are some links on the story. From Reuters, commercial appeal, New York post, and the Seattle Post. Sam also posted about it here.