Documents from Saddam Hussein's oil ministry reveal he used oil to bribe top French officials into opposing the imminent U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
The oil ministry papers, described by the independent Baghdad newspaper al-Mada, are apparently authentic and will become the basis of an official investigation by the new Iraqi Governing Council, the Independent reported Wednesday.
"I think the list is true," Naseer Chaderji, a governing council member, said. "I will demand an investigation. These people must be prosecuted."
Such evidence would undermine the French position before the war when President Jacques Chirac sought to couch his opposition to the invasion on a moral high ground.
A senior Bush administration official said Washington was aware of the reports but refused further comment.
French diplomats have dismissed any suggestion their foreign policy was influenced by payments from Saddam, but some European diplomats have long suspected France's steadfast opposition to the war was less moral than monetary.
"Oil runs thicker than blood," is how one former ambassador put his suspicions about the French motives for opposing action against Saddam.
Al-Mada's list cites a total of 46 individuals, companies and organizations inside and outside Iraq as receiving Saddam's oil bribes, including officials in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Sudan, China, Austria and France, as well as the Russian Orthodox Church, the Russian Communist Party, India's Congress Party and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
and naturally the troll doesn't have any documentation or links to back this up either...
Hey - did saddam "bribe" 15. million people world-wide into opposing the war as well ?
The *US* did bribe several countries and punished other's as UN documents prove...
I also have rather distrubing data on what the US wants to do with France and this troll bait sets the stage perfectly for it (the demonization)
"Hey - did saddam "bribe" 15. million people world-wide into opposing the war as well ?"
No. Many of you did it for free. That's why you are their useful idiots.
The oil ministery of Bagdahd was "looted" on the same day than the historical museum, except that the looters only took care of a few offices in the building, which they emptied from all documents, but left all the furnitures around. (the kind of looters so interested by oil that they needed some bed time reading).
Then I don t know where the documents in question are comin from. Did the Us administration look from the start for those to legitimate their wars, before even lookin for the WMD they knew they wouldn t find.Everything around those documents sound weird now.
Anyways, Chirac s the same thief as Bush. He would have invaded Iraq if he had the opportunity. But most politicians and other european figures opposed the war for the same reasons than poeple in the states.
But you can be sure that Bush (father and son), Dick Cheney and other of their friends got plenty of bribes for this war, through the numerous military stock-options they own.
also, among the groups from 11 different coutries who received bribes, there are communists and religious groups...