18 February 2006 @ 12:20PM >> This seems reasonable to me:

Two U.S. Democratic senators said on Friday they would introduce legislation aimed at blocking Dubai Ports World from buying a company that operates several U.S. shipping ports because of security concerns.

Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Hillary Clinton of New York said they would offer a measure to ban companies owned or controlled by foreign governments from acquiring U.S. port operations.

“We wouldn’t turn the border patrol or the customs service over to a foreign government, and we can’t afford to turn our ports over to one either,” Menendez said in a statement. The Senate Banking Committee also plans to hold a hearing on the issue later this month.

P&O, the company Dubai Ports World plans to buy for $6.8 billion, is already foreign-owned, by the British, but the concern is that the purchaser is backed by the United Arab Emirates government.

The UAE company would gain control over the management of major U.S. ports in New York and New Jersey, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Orleans and Miami and that has sparked national security concerns among lawmakers.

10 February 2006 >> Shortly after September 11th, when President Bush said Islamic terrorists “hate freedom,” critics derided his statement as a simplistic dodge. Freedom couldn’t be the problem, it must be U.S. foreign policy. It must be arrogant American imperialism. It must be anything that places the blame on us and absolves the terrorists of responsibility. After all, no rational person could hate freedom, right? Well, take a look around. To a frighteningly large number of people on this planet, freedom is the enemy.

2 February 2006 @ 10:39AM >> Some protesters in Chicago’s Daley Plaza seem to think so. Documentarian Andrew Marcus has the video.

The patriots protesting are still calling for revolution, it seems. Wake me up when it starts.

31 January 2006 >> The one story that can unite conspiracy theorists on the right and the left.

8 December 2005 @ 6:51PM >> 60 minuteman Mike Wallace was apparently turned down by President Bush for an interview. He recently revealed what he would have asked the president if given the chance:

What in the world prepared you to be the commander in chief of the largest superpower in the world? In your background, Mr. President, you apparently were incurious. You didn’t want to travel. You knew very little about the military. . . . The governor of Texas doesn’t have the kind of power that some governors have. . . . Why do you think they nominated you? . . . Do you think that has anything to do with the fact that the country is so [expletive] up?

11 November 2005 >> Former news producer Mary Mapes is still defiant.

Shortly before last fall’s election, Mapes was forced to resign in disgrace from CBS News after she and Dan Rather were caught peddling bogus memos intended to hurt President Bush’s chances for re-election. But Mapes still can’t figure out why people questioned her reporting:

In her first television interview since the National Guard story, Mapes sat with ABC’s Brian Ross to talk about the events surrounding the story and her book. She defended the story and asserted, “I think I’m somebody who got fired for trying to do their job in a difficult atmosphere,” adding, “I don’t think I committed bad journalism. I really don’t.”

Ross asked Mapes if she still believed the story on President Bush’s National Guard service was true and she answered, “absolutely.” She said of the Killian memos, which were used to validate the story before their authenticity came under intense scrutiny, that they have not proven to be inauthentic, adding, “I’m perfectly willing to believe those documents are forgeries if there’s proof I haven’t seen.” Ross asked Mapes if the standard ought not to have been for her to prove their authenticity, to which she responded, “I don’t think that’s the standard.”

Mapes assumes everything she sees is true, assuming it fits with her preconceived political notions. Apparently, she’s not alone in the media these days.

Many media outlets have breathlessly reported the charges of Jimmy Massey, a former Marine who became a prominent peace activist after witnessing what he says were war atrocities in Iraq. Problem is, none of the reporters who repeated his accusations ever bothered to check them out. And now that Massey’s been exposed as a fraud, it leaves a bunch of credulous reporters with egg on their faces:

For more than a year, former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey has been telling anybody who will listen about the atrocities that he and other Marines committed in Iraq.

In scores of newspaper, magazine and broadcast stories, at a Canadian immigration hearing and in numerous speeches across the country, Massey has told how he and other Marines recklessly, sometimes intentionally, killed dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians.

[...]

Each of his claims is either demonstrably false or exaggerated - according to his fellow Marines, Massey’s own admissions, and the five journalists who were embedded with Massey’s unit, including a reporter and photographer from the Post-Dispatch and reporters from The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:

Editors at some papers look back at the Massey articles and are surprised that they ran them without examining whether the claims were true or without ever asking the Marine Corps about them.

“I’m looking at the story and going, ‘Why, why would we have run this without getting another side of the story?’” said Lois Wilson, managing editor of the Star Gazette in Elmira, N.Y.

David Holwerk, editorial page editor for The Sacramento Bee, said he thought the newspaper handled its story, a question and answer interview with Massey, poorly.

“I feel fairly confident that we did not subject this to the rigorous scrutiny that we should have or to which we would subject it today,” he said.

Rex Smith, editor of the Albany (N.Y.) Times Union, said he thought the newspaper’s story about Massey could have “benefited from some additional reporting.” But he didn’t necessarily see anything particularly at odds with standard journalism practices.

[...]

“You could take any day’s newspaper and probably pick out a half dozen or more stories that ought to be subjected to a more rigorous truth test,” he said.

“Yes, it would have been much better if we had the other side. But all I’m saying is that this is unfortunately something that happens every day in our newspapers and with practically every story on television.”

20 October 2005 @ 8:06AM >> Did President Bush pick Harriet Miers for all the wrong reasons? The White House has been quietly touting Miers’s religious background for the apparent purpose of signaling her position on the abortion debate. But if that’s the sole reason she was chosen, then her Supreme Court nomination might be even worse than I originally feared.

Abortion-rights advocates argue in favor of Roe v. Wade, not because it was based on sound judicial reasoning, but because it resulted in an outcome they favor. If Miers would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade because of personal beliefs—as opposed to reasons of law—then she might be casting a sensible legal vote, but she would be doing so for all the wrong reasons.

Conservatives tend to favor justices whose philosophy is to interpret the Constitution as written, not as they would like it to be personally or as Europeans might want. Conservatives recognize that this philosophy would restrict the unlimited growth of government and would preserve individual rights in the way that the Founders intended. In my mind, having the correct judicial philosophy is far more important than casting one or two votes any particular direction, especially when those votes are cast for political reasons.

Despite what the abortion debaters say, overturning Roe v. Wade would have a relatively limited effect. In many states, abortion would still be legal, in some, it would be more restricted, and in a few, it could be outlawed. Sure, a post-Roe world would be different, but it wouldn’t be so vastly different that anti-abortion conservatives should sell out all their other beliefs to secure it.

I’ve got a bad feeling about Miers. If she gets on the court, she could be issuing decisions decades from now that would make Constitutional conservatives cringle. Long after George W. Bush has left the White House, conservatives could be cursing his name. Is President Bush willing to risk leaving that legacy by putting Miers on the Supreme Court? We already know the answer, and this is one of those instances where the president’s legendary steadfastness runs the risk of driving a permanent wedge between himself and many of the people who voted for him. Luckily for President Bush, he doesn’t have to run again.

8 October 2005 @ 5:25PM >> Is the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court the biggest political misstep of the Bush presidency? After assessing the mood of the guests at the White House’s dinner for the 50th Anniversary of National Review magazine, James Taranto believes he sees “a political disaster in the making.”

We talked to quite a few people, and we heard not a single kind word about the nomination from anyone who wasn’t on the White House staff. A couple of our soundings led us to think that such support as it has received has been more sycophantic than sincere. One putative proponent privately distanced himself from his public praise of Miers. Another person, whose employer has strongly backed the Miers nomination, told us, “Of course, I disagree wholeheartedly.”

[...]

Conventional wisdom still has it that Miers is a shoo-in for confirmation. We’re not so sure. From what we saw last night, the right is furious at President Bush for appointing someone they see as manifestly underqualified and for ducking a fight with the Democratic left—a fight that, in their view (and ours), would be good for the country, the conservative cause and the Republican Party.

Charles Krauthammer zeroes in on the problem:

When in 1962 Edward Moore Kennedy ran for his brother’s seat in the Senate, his opponent famously said that if Kennedy’s name had been Edward Moore, his candidacy would have been a joke. If Harriet Miers were not a crony of the president of the United States, her nomination to the Supreme Court would be a joke, as it would have occurred to no one else to nominate her.

[N]ominating a constitutional tabula rasa to sit on what is America’s constitutional court is an exercise of regal authority with the arbitrariness of a king giving his favorite general a particularly plush dukedom. [...]

It is particularly dismaying that this act should have been perpetrated by the conservative party. For half a century, liberals have corrupted the courts by turning them into an instrument of radical social change on questions — school prayer, abortion, busing, the death penalty — that properly belong to the elected branches of government. Conservatives have opposed this arrogation of the legislative role and called for restoration of the purely interpretive role of the court. To nominate someone whose adult life reveals no record of even participation in debates about constitutional interpretation is an insult to the institution and to that vision of the institution.

Absolutely. The best conservative argument for the philosophy of the court is that the Constitution should be interpreted as written, not through some sort of deconstructionist psychic reading of what the Founders might or might not want if they were alive today and informed by supposedly enlightened European jurisprudence. If there is no public record whatsoever of where Miers stands on this debate, I wonder whether she has any underlying philosophy at all. Maybe I just naturally recoil when a President Bush puts forth an unknown quantity for the Supreme Court. The Harriet Miers nomination was a disaster the first time when it went by the name David Souter.

“A disaster on every level” is also what Robert Bork—nominated for the Supreme Court by President Reagan in 1987—said of the Miers nomination. He added:

It’s a little late to develop a constitutional philosophy or begin to work it out when you’re on the court already. It’s kind of a slap in the face to the conservatives who’ve been building up a conservative legal movement for the last 20 years.

Just as there’s a reason the judiciary shouldn’t assume the role of the legislature, there’s also a reason the judicial branch is supposed to be separate from the executive. When President Bush tries to put someone on the court whose only real qualification seems to be her proximity to him, he is neglecting the core principle that defines conservative court philosophy, and he is sinking to the very sort of behavior that conservatives have been decrying for years: using the court as a political tool. By putting forth Harriet Miers, President Bush is almost daring principled conservatives to oppose her, because if we didn’t, we’d be hypocrites.

President Bush places a high value on personal loyalty, and for that reason, he’s unlikely to withdraw the nomination of Harriet Miers. Well, I pledge my loyalty not to a particular leader or party, but to a set of ideas. And those ideas require me to oppose Harriet Miers because she is simply too close to the president and because there don’t seem to be any other arguments in her favor.

I hope there are still enough principled leaders in the Senate to give this nomination the kind of scrutiny it deserves. As Democrats are often fond of reminding Republican presidents, the Senate is under no obligation to rubber-stamp any of the president’s judicial nominations. Republican Senators should remember that as well.

26 September 2005 >> The International Freedom Center, the controversial Ground Zero memorial, has a powerful new foe: Senator Hillary Clinton. The New York Post reported this weekend:

“I cannot support the IFC,” Clinton declared last night in a strongly worded statement in response to an inquiry from The Post.

Her tough comments are Clinton’s first significant remarks about the controversy raging at Ground Zero over the Freedom Center, which 9/11 families and other critics fear will become a center of anti-Americanism.

“While I want to ensure that development and rebuilding in lower Manhattan move forward expeditiously, I am troubled by the serious concerns family members and first responders have expressed to me,” Clinton said.

“The LMDC [Lower Manhattan Development Corp.] has authority over the site and I do not believe we can move forward until it heeds and addresses their concerns.”

In the face of obscene political correctness, Senator Clinton is demonstrating a levelheadedness that is all too rare from Democrats these days. If more Democratic politicians took regular stands like this, they’d probably enjoy much more success at the ballot box. Of course, the triangulating Clintons understand this too, which may or may not be the sole reason Hillary adopted this position. Either way, she deserves credit if her opposition helps prevent the International Freedom Center from defiling the graveyards of so many people.

Update: Governor George Pataki finally pulls the plug. The IFC is dead. Finished. It won’t be disgracing Ground Zero. Special thanks should go to Debra Burlingame, whose tireless efforts pushed this issue onto the radar screen of New York’s politicians.

5 August 2005 @ 2:24PM >> ScrappeFace “reports“:

Encouraged by their close loss in this week’s special election for a vacant House seat in Ohio, the Democrat National Committee (DNC) has mapped a 50-state “virtual victory” strategy for 2006 and 2008.

“It feels so good to almost win,” said DNC chairman Howard Dean. “We now believe we can rally our base around the hope of down-to-the-wire losses in traditionally Republican districts coast-to-coast.”

1 August 2005 @ 5:26PM >> Esquire Magazine gives Dan Rather a platform to demonstrate what a corny relic sounds like.

22 July 2005 @ 12:44PM >> This editorial in the Los Angeles Times makes me wonder: is there anything about George W. Bush that his opponents don’t hate?

30 June 2005 >> From The Times (of London):

In person, Mr. Bush is so far removed from the caricature of the dim, war-mongering Texas cowboy of global popular repute that it shakes one’s faith in the reliability of the modern media.

30 June 2005 >> A good point in an excellent piece called “Making markets in the political economy“:

I watched Howard Dean on The Daily Show last night, and rarely have I seen a major political figure so thoroughly, even painstakingly, inept at appealing to voters. His remarks elicited cheers from the true-blue supporters in the audience, but only at the expense of alienating every single other person in the country. If he wasn’t making ham-fisted attempts to prove Democratic moralistic superiority by selective and theologically shallow quotation from the bible—an activity that even bible-thumping Republican congressmen undertake with more caution (and erudition) than Mr Dean did—he was claiming that his was the party of real moral values. Cringe. When was the last time you heard an RNC chair say something like that? Answer: you don’t, because the “Family values” guys know that you do not garner votes by saying “Everyone who voted for the other guy is immoral” . . . especially when the other guy got a majority.

29 June 2005 @ 12:21PM >> A columnist for Newsday (Long Island, New York) thinks that CNN should hire Dan Rather. Among the author’s arguments is that Dan Rather would bring “credibility” to CNN.

24 June 2005 @ 5:52PM >> A press release from World Ahead Publishing—a publisher of conservative and libertarian books—charges that Google banned an ad for a book critical of Bill and Hillary Clinton:

Popular search engine Google reversed course late last week and banned a previously approved online ad campaign for a new book that documents abuses of power by Bill and Hillary Clinton. The surprise move prompted the book’s author and publishing house to publicly question if the politics of Google’s CEO - a financial backer of Hillary Clinton - played a role in this change of course.

“Google’s decision to reverse its prior approval and shut down this banner ad campaign reeks of political bias,” charges [author] Candice E. Jackson. [...]

The controversy comes at a time when the search engine giant is facing increasing scrutiny for claims of editorial unfairness by conservative organizations. Last month RightMarch.com, a conservative activist group, went public with claims that Google was rejecting its ads targeting House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi while at the same time running identical ads attacking Republican Leader Tom DeLay.

Representatives for Google - whose corporate motto is “don’t be evil” - attempted to defend the surprise ban on the book’s ads by claiming their policies prohibit ads that are against an individual. But while the ads for the book - which featured images of the book’s cover and pictures of the former First Couple - were suddenly deemed too offensive, Google happily accepts advertisements with headlines such as “Hate Bush? So Do We,” “Bush Belongs Behind Bars,” and “George W. Bush Fart Doll.”

Early last month, a similar controversy erupted when Google accepted ads targeting Republican Congressman Tom DeLay while rejecting similar ads targeting Democratic Congressman Nancy Pelosi. On May 9th, WorldNetDaily reported:

Google, the Internet’s No. 1 search engine, is still running attack ads against besieged House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, despite assurances by the company’s spokesman they were all pulled last week.

The issue of the anti-DeLay ads came to light when a conservative activist group discovered the ads and designed a similar campaign, using the same verbiage, targeting House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

When the anti-Pelosi ads were rejected by Google, RightMarch.com protested what it saw as political bias in Google’s content.

When questioned about the apparent double-standard by WND, Mike Mayzel, spokesman for Google, said both the anti-Pelosi ad and the anti-DeLay ad were pulled.

“Both ads were taken down,” he told WND. “Any assertion to the contrary is false. As soon as an ad is reviewed and found to be in violation of our policies, we take it down as soon as possible. Any suggestion we would leave some ads up longer than others for reasons of political bias is false.”

However, a search of Google’s site yesterday shows at least three more anti-DeLay ads still running[.]

As of this writing nearly two months later, anti-Tom DeLay ads are still running, despite Google’s assurances that they wouldn’t be. However, one anti-Nancy Pelosi ad is also running, which makes me wonder whether the problem is one of corporate political bias or simply one of bias—or incompetence—on the part of individual staffers who administer the ad approval process. Google may have dozens of employees who approve these ads, which could explain the inconsistent application of its policy.

Whatever the explanation, this kind of information doesn’t exactly help Google’s case:

A WorldNetDaily search of Google executive and employee political contributions filed with the Federal Election Commission showed nearly 99 percent of its $469,500 went to Democrats over the last three election cycles.

As a private company, Google is fully within its rights to accept or reject any ad it sees fit. However, if these charges are true, then the public should at least be aware of the fact that Google is making political calculations in the selective application of its ad policy. Google would also be wise to tighten up the application of this policy; the appearance of bias for a company that aspires to be the world’s gateway to the Internet would be devastating.

17 April 2005 >> The New York Times reports that more mass graves have been found in Iraq:

Investigators have discovered several mass graves in southern Iraq that are believed to contain the bodies of people killed by Saddam Hussein’s government, including one estimated to hold 5,000 bodies, Iraqi officials say.

[...]

If the estimated body counts prove correct, the new graves would be among the largest in the grim tally of mass killings that have gradually come to light since the fall of Mr. Hussein’s government two years ago. At least 290 grave sites containing the remains of some 300,000 people have been found since the American invasion two years ago, Iraqi officials say.

Armies of the self-proclaimed compassionate marched across the world to keep Saddam Hussein in power. A reckless cowboy, a dangerous warmonger, a stupid, conniving cretin stood up to the masses. If not for the cowboy, the compassionate would have succeeded and murders would still be rolling corpses into those mass graves. Now all that’s left of the thugs is weakening insurgency and an aging leadership rotting in jail. The Iraqis defied threats of death to go out and vote, and by doing so, they validated the actions of that idiotic cowboy and gave the finger, tipped in purple, to the compassionate whose actions would have consigned them to a lifetime of oppression. Peace might come to the world much faster if only there were more of those cowboy criminals.

14 April 2005 >> Some kind, compassionate, tolerant, pacifist New York liberal(s)* have recently taken to posting George W. Bush shooting targets—complete with simulated bullet holes penetrating various parts of the body—around town. This picture was taken on the west side of Second Avenue, between 72nd and 73rd Streets.

Despite the cartoonish look, it is a bit eerie that these posters, which implicitly advocate the assassination of a sitting U.S. president, could remain unmolested in the nation’s largest city for days on end. (No, I won’t be taking it down, since it stands as a graphic monument to the mentality of today’s left.)

PowerLine and Michelle Malkin have recently noticed similar examples. One has to wonder whether we’re seeing a modern fascist movement being born before our very eyes.

* Yes, I am making some assumptions here. Since I don’t actually know who’s been posting these, perhaps it is a bit unfair to be blaming liberals. Still, given the prevailing political views of New York City residents, combined with my extensive first-hand experience witnessing liberals advocating violence, I feel fairly comfortable making this assertion.

25 March 2005 @ 5:40PM >> Victor Davis Hanson asks:

[W]hat do Linda Ronstadt, Harold Pinter, Scott Ritter, Ted Rall, and George Soros all have in common? The same thing that unites Fidel Castro, the European street, the Iranians, and North Koreans: an evocation of some aspects of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany to deprecate President Bush in connection with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

President Bush’s political opponents have been comparing him to Adolf Hitler for years. (I’ve made an online cottage industry out of documenting it myself.) Hanson psychoanalyzes the “Bush is Hitler” left, and concludes that—while the extreme rhetoric is evidence of their waning political influence—the environment it creates risks “unleashing even greater extremism by the unhinged.”

18 March 2005 >> In response to this story, a friend e-mails:

Why is it OK for Bill Clinton to commit perjury under oath but not Lil’ Kim? Is it because she’s a sistah?

Maybe that, and the fact she didn’t have the entire political establishment of one party working to excuse her perjury...

8 March 2005 >> How many times can Walter Cronkite gleefully fork the corpse of Dan Rather in a single interview? Find out.

Meanwhile:

It is barely six weeks since the U.S. President delivered his second inaugural address, a paean to liberty and democracy that espoused the goal of “ending tyranny in our world”. Reactions around the world ranged from alarm to amused scorn, from fears of a new round of “regime changes” imposed by an all-powerful American military, to suspicions in the salons of Europe that this time Mr Bush, never celebrated for his grasp of world affairs, had finally lost it. No one imagined that events would so soon cause the President’s opponents around the world to question whether he had got it right.

That debate is now happening, in America and beyond, as the first waves of reform lap at the Arab world. Post-Saddam Iraq has held its first proper election. In their own elections, Palestinians have overwhelmingly chosen a moderate leader. Hosni Mubarak, who for 24 years has permitted no challenge to his rule in Egypt, has announced a multi-candidate presidential election this year. Even Saudi Arabia is not immune, having just held its first municipal elections. Next time around, Saudi spokesmen promise, women too will be permitted to vote.

Not gonna gloat. Wouldn’t be prudent. Not at this juncture.

7 March 2005 >> Bogus memos may have been Dan Rather’s downfall, but it certainly wasn’t his first foray into outright political fraud. Apparently, in 1963, Dan Rather lied when he reported that a group of school children cheered the assassination of President Kennedy:

The tale was perfect for the moment, reinforcing the notion among distant media elites that Dallas was a reactionary “City of Hate.” It slyly played to a local audience, too: The school named was in upper-income University Park, one of two adjacent municipal enclaves that shared a school district and a reputation for fiercely protected, lily-white privilege.

So, if Rather’s four-decades-plus career is capped on each end by politically-motivated lies, it’s natural to wonder how many times in between he’s gotten away with it.

2 March 2005 @ 1:24PM >> As Dan Rather’s career comes to a close, it’s a good time to look back at some of his greatest hits.

14 February 2005 @ 4:28PM >> Presto Chango: Meet Teresa Heinz, formerly Teresa Heinz Kerry.

26 January 2005 >> President Bush’s re-election left some Americans distraught and depressed. And with Inauguration Day set to rub salt in those still-healing wounds, I decided to act in the interest of national unity and extend an olive branch across the great Red/Blue divide. Would my overtures of peace be rebuffed? Video >>

24 January 2005 >> The New York Sun profiles Evan Coyne Maloney. More >>

28 December 2004 @ 2:16PM >> I recently received this joke in an e-mail:

Dan Rather and Peter Jennings, along with a U.S. Marine assigned to protect them, were hiking through the Iraqi desert one day when they were captured by terrorists. They were tied up, led to a village, and brought before the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al Qaeda leader in Iraq.

Zarqawi said, “I am familiar with your western custom of granting the condemned a last wish; so, before we kill and dismember you, do you have any last requests?”

Dan Rather said, “Well, I’m a Texan; so I’d like one last bowlful of hot spicy chili.” Zarqawi nodded to an underling who left and returned with the chili. Rather ate it all and said, “Now I can die content.”

Peter Jennings said, “I am Canadian, so I’d like to hear the song ‘O Canada’ one last time.” Zarqawi nodded to a terrorist who had studied the Western world and knew the music. He returned with some rag-tag musicians and played the anthem. Jennings sighed and declared he could now die peacefully.

Zarqawi turned and said, “And now, Mr. U.S. Marine, what is your final wish?”

“Kick me in the ass,” said the Marine.

“What?” asked Zarqawi. “Will you mock us in your last hour?”

“No, I’m not kidding. I want you to kick me in the ass,” insisted the Marine. So the leader shoved him into the open, and kicked him in the ass.

The Marine went sprawling, but rolled to his knees, pulled out a 9mm pistol hidden in his cammies, and shot Zarqawi dead.

In the resulting confusion, he leapt to his knapsack, pulled out his M4 carbine, and sprayed the remaining terrorists with gunfire. In a flash, they were either dead or fleeing for their lives.

As the Marine was untying Rather and Jennings, they asked him, “Why didn’t you just shoot them? Why did you ask them to kick you in the ass?”

“What,” replied the Marine, “and have you assholes call me the aggressor?”

14 December 2004 @ 7:49PM >> The New York Post is reporting that Marc Rich, the billionaire financier who was awarded a “midnight pardon” in one of President Clinton’s last acts in office, is “a central figure” in the U.N. Oil-for-Food corruption scandal:

Billionaire Marc Rich has emerged as a central figure in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal and is under investigation for brokering deals in which scores of international politicians and businessmen cashed in on sweetheart oil deals with Saddam Hussein, The Post has learned.

Rich, the fugitive Swiss-based commodities trader who received a controversial pardon from President Bill Clinton in January 2001, is a primary target of criminal probes under way in the U.S. attorney’s office in New York and by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, sources said.

“We think he was a major player in this — a central figure,” a senior law-enforcement official told The Post.

[...]

Investigators say they have received information that Rich and Ben Pollner, a New York-based oil trader who heads Taurus Oil, set up a series of companies in Liechtenstein and other countries that they used to put together deals between Saddam and his international supporters in the controversial oil-voucher scheme — which the dictator designed to win international support against U.S. sanctions at the United Nations.

Under the scam, hundreds of international political and financial figures from France, Russia and other countries were awarded middleman vouchers allowing them to purchase set quantities of Iraqi oil at discount rates.

[...]

Investigators now believe Rich and Pollner brokered many of the deals by finding buyers for the oil allocated to people who were bribed by Saddam. The discount Iraqi oil would be resold to major oil companies at higher prices and Rich and Pollner would pocket percentages of the profits, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, sources said.

[...]

In January 2001, in the final hours his presidency, Clinton bypassed law-enforcement and intelligence agencies to wipe the books clean for Rich after being subjected to intense lobbying from former Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Rich’s jet-setting ex-wife, Denise, who donated more than $1 million to Democratic campaigns — including Sen. Hillary Rodham’s first Senate race — along with an additional $450,000 to Clinton’s library fund.

Interesting.

22 November 2004 @ 4:38PM >> The New York Sun reports: “President Clinton’s new $165 million library here was funded in part by gifts of $1 million or more each from the Saudi royal family and three Saudi businessmen. The governments of Dubai, Kuwait, and Qatar and the deputy prime minister of Lebanon all also appear to have donated $1 million or more for the archive and museum that opened last week.”

Let’s see how long it takes Michael Moore to denounce President Clinton’s ties to the Saudi Royal Family.

28 October 2004 >> The choice we have on election day is between the worldview of September 10th—embodied by John Kerry—and President Bush’s September 12th worldview. More >>