Senate Committee - Oil for Food

Sen. Norm "Vince" Coleman (R-Minnesota) is introducing the session. He's the Chairman of the Governmental Affairs Subcommittee.

This is from last monday so it's kind of old news, but I don't really know much about the whole Oil for Food scandal so I feel like I should watch it. I guess the main problem is that this might have been the result of some curruption at the United Nations. Oh, and Cole says that blue chip companies also gave Saddam illegal kickbacks.

Now Carl Levin (D-Michigan) is being boring. He seems like a nice guy though. He's talking about how effective the economic sanctions were. I mean, that's pretty boring, but if you are interested in international diplomacy it must be a pretty crucial topic.

Ok, so this is how I read what he's saying: one problem with the Oil for Food program is that it allowed Saddam to pick which contractors got contracts, and that allowed him to pick ones that would give him kickbacks. Is that right? Someone help me here.

(message on the bottom of the screen, unrelated to Oil for Food: Since Oct 1, most government spending has been done with temporary money. That money runs out tonight, so that's why they are in such a hurry to pass this bill today. Still though, I would rather just have them get some more temporary money and just read the damn bill. Oh, I guess the Republicans are the ones that wrote a lot of the bill, so that's why they aren't that keen on giving people time to read it. Maybe that's it.)

6.84 miles