Dio Denaro C'e'

I never expected to find myself linking to FreeRepublic and especially not for a translation of an article al Mada, a paper owned by Fakhri Kareem a former member of the Politburo of the Iraqi Communist Party. I mean I have nothing against the Iraqi communist party, but did you ever expect to link to al Mada ? And what do you make of Freepers eagerly translating communists ?

In the USA the only people interested in the list seem to be the UN bashing right. The idea appears to be that the Oil for Food program was supervised by the UN so if Saddam was bribing politicians and journalists it is their fault. One might as well say that it was a cost of the sanctions regime and the fault is shared by Bush I, Clinton and Bush II.

I can see why responsible journalists don't want to touch this one witha 20 foot pole, but where are the bloggers ?

The list is irresistable.

Like the al Mada correspondent I wondered if "President Sukarno's daughter" is the current president Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of the late former president Sukarno, or is president Megawati Sukarnoputri's daughter (if she has one). I too found the "Megawati" 3 names further down pretty clear evidence that the democratically elected president of the world's largest Moslem country took a bribe from Saddam.

I was delighted to find the name of the well known arabofilic islamofile Charles Pasqua on the list ahhh Frankly I never hoped to live to see the day in which I could seriously and honestly type "former Iraqi communist politiburo member and FreeRepublic.com accuse Pasqua of taking a bribe from Saddam Hussein"

The name which fascinates me most is

Roberto Frimigoni an Italian who got vouchers 1 million. barrles worth on the order of roughtly 300,000 dollars or Euros (that's how rough the guess is). I am fairly certain that is a typo and that the entry refers to Roberto Formigoni, the president of Lombardy. Roberto Formigoni is the founder of "comunione e libert?" an ultra catholic political youth movement. He is the most outspokenly catholic politician in Italy as well as a former political ally of Bettino Craxi the late presumably atheist Kleptosocialist former prime minister and a current ally of Silvio Berlusconi.

He was also the Italian opponent of desert storm most often seen on TV during desert storm. This made sense, since the Pope was opposed to desert storm. A slightly similar name in FreeRepublic.com's translation of an unconfirmed story in a commie rag is plenty but I mean plenty for me to accuse Mr Formigoni.

He will sue me (in my dreams)