For those Canadian readers who aren’t familiar with the scandal finally being dragged into the light of day, involving UN complicity and exploitation of the Iraq Oil-For-Food debacle, this article outlines it quite neatly.

The short version of the Oil-for-Food scandal is that the U.N. let Saddam Hussein draw up his own rules, contacts, and business deals. Then U.N. then did all it could to either cover up the transactions and accounts, or worse, allow Hussein to operate without any real supervision at all. The program, whose intentions were supposed to be humanitarian, ended up empowering Saddam Hussein with both money and influence while the U.N. was paid a handsome commission by Saddam to ‘supervise’.

This past weekend I mentioned it to a number of my friends. They did not know there is a scandal at all. Not surprising with the low priority it’s recieved on the pro-UN Canadian airwaves.

With such a lucrative scheme at stake three members of the U.N. Security Council — Russia, France, and China — asked only that the program be expanded. So how did it work and why was it so lucrative to these nations?
Rosett, writing this time in Commentary magazine, says, “It worked like this. Saddam would sell at below-market prices to his hand- picked customers — the Russians and the French were special favorites — and they could then sell the oil to third parties at a fat profit. Part of this profit they would keep, part they would kick back to Saddam as a ‘surcharge,’ paid into bank accounts outside the UN program, in violation of UN sanctions.”

James Joyner distills current Bush administration criticism down to the bare essentials: “Damned if You Do…”

Watching several of the Sunday morning talk shows, I’ve noticed two themes:
The Bush Administration didn’t do enough with sketchy pieces of intelligence that al Qaeda was going to do something, somewhere, at some time and is therefore responsible for not preventing the 9/11 attacks.
The Bush Administration relied too heavily on now-discredited intelligence that Saddam Hussein was ramping up WMD production and used it to launch a war before we were attacked.

But of course, this is far too black and white an analysis.
A more sophisticated president would have understood the complexities of the history and culture of the Middle East, and made reparations for past insults to Islam.
A true diplomat would have negotiated the peaceful retirement of Saddam, with seats on the UN Human Rights Committee for his sons, and disarmed and rehabilitated the Fedayeen. This would have freed the Iraqis from the chokehold of the “US” sanctions, removing their troops from Saudi Arabia and the no-fly zone, thereby avoiding intelligence altogether.
See? Is that so hard?

Greg Easterbrook points out the obvious, and does a masterful job of it.

On August 7, 2001, Bush had ordered the United States military to stage an all-out attack on alleged terrorist camps in Afghanistan. Thousands of U.S. special forces units parachuted into this neutral country, while air strikes targeted the Afghan government and its supporting military. Pentagon units seized abandoned Soviet air bases throughout Afghanistan, while establishing support bases in nearby nations such as Uzbekistan. Simultaneously, FBI agents throughout the United States staged raids in which dozens of men accused of terrorism were taken prisoner.
Reaction was swift and furious. Florida Senator Bob Graham said Bush had “brought shame to the United States with his paranoid delusions about so-called terror networks.” British Prime Minister Tony Blair accused the United States of “an inexcusable act of conquest in plain violation of international law.” White House chief counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke immediately resigned in protest of “a disgusting exercise in over-kill.”

Read it all. It will make you laugh – and cry .

Jeff Goldstein contends that Canadian prisons have been “Oprah-fied”.
Does Oprah really golf? Ron Wiebe – Warden, Ferndale Institution

The golf course that we built at Ferndale has become a focal point for criticism, if people need a target. It became a major feature for those who wanted to highlight the issue about attractiveness and comfort.
…
The other major criticism came when we began exploring the possibility of opening up a driving range. There was support from the people in Mission, but not a lot of support from one of the driving-range operators in Abbotsford.

He also has interesting things to say about the “politics of escape”. They’re missing a couple of suspected murderers, but as time passes, it looks like they won’t be charged, so – no harm, no foul!

Douglas Hansen, at the American Thinker, has an article that examines the strange locations of barrels of “pesticides” found by WMD teams in Iraq, and questions why such discoveries have been dismissed.

Specifically, the DIA noted that Baghdad had rebuilt segments of its industrial chemical infrastructure under the “guise of a civilian need for pesticides, chlorine, and other legitimate chemical products.”� Pesticides are the key elements in the chemical agent arena.� In fact, the general pesticide chemical formula (organophosphate) is the “grandfather” of modern day nerve agents.� Pesticides are also precursors of many other chemical weapons including Mustard-Lewisite (HL), Phosgene (CG) a choking agent, and Hydrogen Cyanide (AC) a blood agent.�
It was not surprising then, as Coalition forces attacked into Iraq, that huge warehouses and caches of “commercial and agricultural” chemicals were seized and painstakingly tested by Army and Marine chemical specialists.� What was surprising was how quickly the ISG refuted the findings of our ground forces, and how silent they have been on the significance of these caches.
…
One of the reported incidents occurred near Karbala where there appeared to be a very large “agricultural supply” area of 55-gallon drums of pesticide.� In addition, there was also a camouflaged bunker complex full of these drums that some people entered with unpleasant results.� More than a dozen soldiers, a Knight-Ridder reporter, a CNN cameraman, and two Iraqi POWs came down with symptoms consistent with exposure to nerve agent.� A full day of tests on the drums resulted in one positive for nerve agent, and then one resulted in a negative.� Later, an Army Fox NBC [nuclear, biological, chemical] Recon Vehicle confirmed the existence of Sarin.� An officer from the 63d Chemical Company thought there might well be chemical weapons at the site.�
But later ISG tests resulted in a proclamation of negative, end of story, nothing to see here, etc., and the earlier findings and injuries dissolved into non-existence. Left unexplained is the small matter of the obvious pains taken to disguise the cache of ostensibly legitimate pesticides. One wonders about the advantage an agricultural commodities business gains by securing drums of pesticide in camouflaged bunkers six feet underground.� The “agricultural site” was also co- located with a military ammunition dump, evidently nothing more than a coincidence in the eyes of the ISG.
…
Then in January of this year, Danish forces discovered 120mm mortar shells with a mysterious liquid inside that initially tested positive for blister agents.� Further tests in Southern Iraq and in the US were, of course, negative.� The Danish Army said, “It is unclear why the initial field tests were wrong.”� This is the understatement of the year, and also points to a most basic question: If it wasn’t a chemical agent, what was it?� More pesticides?� Dishwashing detergent?� From this old soldier’s perspective, I gain nothing from putting a liquid in my mortar rounds unless that stuff will do bad things to the enemy.

Read the whole thing.
hat tip – Occam’s Toothbrush

“In the contemporary world, the world of human rights, when you call a person a right-winger, this is the first step toward his or her delegitimization. ”

But I soon noticed that I had lost the innocence of the good Jew, of the very special Jewish friend, their Jew: I was now connected with the Jews of the State of Israel, and slowly I was put out of the dodecaphonic, psychoanalytic, Bob Dylan, Woody Allen, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Philip Roth, Freud shtetl, the coterie that sanctified my Judaism in left wing eyes.
I have tried for a long time to bring back that sanctification, and they tried to give it back to me, because we desperately needed each other, the left and the Jews. But today’s anti Semitism has overwhelmed any good intention.
…
The Left blessed the Jews as the victim “par excellence,” always a great partner in the struggle for the rights of the weak against the wicked. In return for being coddled, published, filmed, considered artists, intellectuals and moral judges, Jews, even during the Soviet anti- Semitic persecutions, gave the Left moral support and invited it to cry with them at Holocaust memorials. Today the game is clearly over. The left has proved itself the real cradle of contemporary anti-Semitism.
…
Why is the war on terrorism often looked upon as a strategic problem that the world still must solve (look at the US war against Afghanistan and Iraq) and Israel is treated like a guilty defendant for fighting it? Is it not anti-Semitism, when you act as if Jews must die quietly? Why is Israel officially accused by the human rights commission in Geneva of violating human rights, while, China, Libya, Sudan, have never ever been accused? Why has Israel been denied a fixed place in regional groups in the UN while Syria sits in the Security Council? Why can everybody join a war against Iraq except Israel, despite the fact that Saddam has always threatened Israel with complete destruction? When sovereign states and organizations threaten death to Israel, why does nobody raise the question at the UN? Has Italy been threatened by France or Spain like those Iranian leaders who openly say that they will destroy Israel with an atomic bomb? And what is said when a large part of the world newspapers, TV, radio and school textbooks recommend kicking the Jews out of Israel and killing them all over the world using terrorist bombers? The international community doesn’t consider this a problem. Israel is an “unterstate”, denied the basic rights of every other state, to exist in honor and peace. The Jewish state is not equal.

Converting bad leaders into dead saints

As everyone knows, the Middle East suffers from bad leadership. We have number of aging, corrupt and undemocratic leaders who represent extremist ideas. Until now, these gentleman have proven to be insuperable obstacles to peace, democracy, progress and improvements of the well-being of the populace. However, Middle East innovation and ingenuity have now come up with a solution. Any fanatic, illogical, corrupt or bloodthirsty leader can be instantly converted into a revered saint and martyr by assassination.

Go read the rest.

The Belmont Club has a wealth of analysis on the fallout from the extermination of Yassin and the subsequent destabilization of Hamas.

The frenzy in the Gaza strip tonight probably has less to do with the preparations to strike back at Israel then a frantic attempt to locate the secret bank account numbers that Sheik Yassin may have had in his possession.

And this –

Before this is over the world will have had a bellyful of war. Each morning’s unbearable news will cast the net wider. Neither the man commuting to work in Central Madrid nor the peace marchers in costume on Market Street can escape being combatants. Leftist sympathies, whether in Israel, America or Europe will prove no armor against car bomb fragments. War was Osama Bin Laden’s goal in attacking the United States on September 11. He hoped to force America into fruitless and ineffectual reprisals against the Islamic world, then offer a hudna at intervals while he prepared his next blow. George Bush’s counterstroke, which history will either judge as an act of supreme folly or genius, was to go beyond Afghanistan into Iraq. In a worthy riposte to Osama’s, he escalated the struggle to the point where it was mutually mortal. If the fall of the Twin Towers was a gauntlet in America’s face, the fall of Baghdad was a glove shoved down the Islamist’s throat. Both Bin Laden and Bush have made compromise impossible. If the jihadis believed they could control the tempo of the conflict they were misinformed; American forces in the Arab heartland have forced a zugzwang to compel the game to the bitter end.

IMAO – Bite Sized Wisdom

Protection on the Slopes: So Kerry was skiing in Idaho (Idaho! I don’t care how much he skis; he ain’t winning that state), and then fall downs when he runs into a Secret Service agent. Then he exclaims, “I don’t fall down!” and uses and expletive to describe the Secret Service Agent. Makes him seem a wee bit haughty. And why is the Secret Service skiing with him anyway? Why can’t they just post snipers to watch Kerry? Then, if a Secret Service agent caused Kerry to crash, Kerry would have a better excuse.
“I don’t fall; that son of a bitch shot me!”
And then you’d hear up in the trees, “My bad.”*

Dr. Rusty Shackleford on Type I and Type II errors and the eggs of paint destruction.

Frank Lavigne has been an online friend for many years, so his photoessay was something I have known about since the day he put it up. It crossed my mind today that it’s probably not that well known. It deserves to be.

“I thought to myself, “One more shot and I’m out of here.”

“Dazed, angry, and confused, I felt along the wall of buildings to keep at least some sense of direction. Next thing I knew everything turned from pitch black to brilliant white. I thought I had died. began to think of all the things I hadn’t done; of all the promises I hadn’t kept.
“But then, just as hope seemed to fade away, a man named John pulled me into a store that he himself found only seconds before. He saw the light from my digital camera and grabbed at me, effectively saving my life by pulling me into a shoe store on Nassau Street.
In there, I was able to catch my breath and regain my composure. After I thanked him profusely for saving me, he told me that his pregnant wife was working in one of the towers. I wanted to get his last name or phone number, but before I knew it, he was gone.”

At first, I thought it might be better to save the link for later – an anniversary. But “never forget” means exactly that.
“Please remember”, saved for days on a calendar, means the forgetting has begun.

Wizbang makes a case for bombing Spain.

Rather than kill 200 people he should kill maybe 300 or so to show our power. Then, before the Spanish have time to bury their dead, he should release a grainy, low quality video saying that if the Spanish do not return Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar to power we will bomb them again. If history is our guide, we will be rewarded with a U.S. friendly administration.

If it worked for Al Queda…

All of this of course begs the question, why stop at Spain? When Jacques Chirac’s reelection is at hand, a single bomber could insure the French see us as an ally again. German elections are always fun to watch anyway, why not let a few kilotons fly their way?

Hat tip – Outside The Beltway

Bill Hobbs has a devastating analysis of the approach the Man Who Would Be President wants to take to terror.

For John Kerry, our “first responders” in the War on Terror are the people who respond to an attack with firehoses, bulldozers and cadaver dogs. For President George Bush, our “first responders” are the 101st Airborne, the Third Infantry Division, the Navy and the Air Force. They get no mention in Kerry’s self-described “Agenda to Support Front Lines in America’s War on Terror,” which contains not a single single word about offense.

If we don’t think the choice Americans make at the polls this November matters to the security of Canadians, try Stewart Bell’s newly released “Cold Terror: How Canada Nurtures and Exports Terrorism to the World”.
A fence straddling, appeasing, left-leaning administration to the south is unlikely to kick our own politicians into taking action to reverse Canada’s shameful immigration and refugee policies.
Hat tip – Instapundit

The Death Of Europe

For the Americans, it doesn’t make much difference whether the Austro-Swedish or Eurabian option prevails. This is nothing to do with disagreements over Iraq: you can’t “mend bridges” when the opposite bank is sinking into the river.

Well, I’m nothing if not a woman of diverse talents….
Colby Cosh is lamenting the arrival of a book he is to review, and the accompanying GST and postal handling fee.

Good news: the postman finally arrived with the latest book I’m supposed to review for The American Spectator! The bad news: he held out his hand for $7.51 when he handed it over. Huh? Surely they don’t send packages postage-due anymore… No, the $7.51 was a smidgen of GST, plus, naturally, a $5 “handling fee”, because it requires rather a lot of work for Customs to do the math of figuring out 7% of the price of a book.
But I haven’t bought this book, I told the postman: it’s been sent to me free so I can review it. How can you charge me GST on an article when no sale has taken place?

From the firm of McMillan, McMillan and McMillan, I can offer readers this bit of advice: I think Mr. Cosh is screwed in this instance, unless he plans to alter the book and return it – a few strokes of yellow highlighter, perhaps ?
Under the EOPS Program (Exporter of Processing Services) goods imprted for repair or alteration:
Customs memorandum D8-I-I Temporary importation of goods into Canada.
Special tariff item 9993.00.00 – duty free
GST – special authority # 16-08921663
No postal handling fee is applicable.
Well, sometimes that works. Often, despite chapter and verse loudly displayed on the box, the bike helmets I recieve for custom painting still have an invoice attached. This is no small irritation – to get a helmet insured for several hundred bucks released by the post office, I have to pay their 7% ransom. That’s a pretty good chunk of my profit, you know? But if I send it back, I have a cranky customer and no profit at all.
But at least I can claim a 100% refund of the fees upon shipping it back to the owner. (The application form for the refund is on the Customs invoice itself). I always include a snarky letter though, informing them of the meaning of the word “exempt” and suggesting they check into an employee literacy program.
That also applies to the GST invoices you recieve from customs brokers (UPS is a master at this) after the fact. Don’t pay those fees if your package has been properly marked – tell them to shove it. Send them the memorandum info and inpugn their professional credentials. They have no right to collect, don’t have to remit, and it’s not up to you to solve their self inflicted accounting problems.

Donald Sensing just saved me a lot of typing.

All of which is to say that the accidental characteristics of marriage – love, affection, property and other rights – spring from what marriage is rather than define what marriage is. Therefore, whatever relationship homosexuals may have with one another, and whatever legal rights civil authority may confer upon them, marriage is inherently – indeed, metaphysically – the province only of men and women united in matrimony.

Agreed. I have not found an argument to support the extension of legal marriage to include same-sex couples that I could not use in equal measure to demand the right to marry my sister.
Being of the same gender, society’s interest in the health of potential offspring is nullified – though it can also be argued that removing the ability to procreate as a defining property of marriage opens the door pretty wide. I don’t know how you can arbitrarily set aside something as fundamental as procreation to broaden the definition of marriage to include homosexual relationships, but stick it back in to narrow that same definition to exclude incestuous ones.
If it is discriminatory to deny persons the right to legally marry on the basis of same-sex orientation (be it choice or chance), is it not equally discriminatory to deny persons the right to marry on the basis of sexual ambivilance? Being homosexual or heterosexual is not a product of having sex with a person of the same or opposite gender, or having sex at all! Celibacy, whether voluntary or involuntary, does not affect orientation.
(Indeed, the entire discussion of sexual orientation is a red herring. This issue rests on gender, not orientation. Same-sex orientation has never been used to deny a man or woman the right to marry a person of the opposite sex.)
This is not a frivolous suggestion. It’s not uncommon for siblings to live their entire adult lives together, to share incomes, property, to support, comfort, care for, love and commit to each other. Why should such a couple be denied the societal benefits afforded to other such couples – pension benefits, spousal deductions. That they may or may not be having sex is no one’s business but their own.
As Pierre Trudeau remarked many years ago when he started us down this long slippery road, “The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.”
Either we take the father of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms at his word, or we don’t.
Feb 26: take a trip round the Beltway for more.