Jack Kemp, Jimmy Carter & Saddam Hussein
by Jude Wanniski
Memo To: Political
Reporters, Editors Back in 1997, I did everything I could to get you folks interested
in a story about how Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction,
but all I got was blank stares. I did, though, manage to persuade
my old friend Jack Kemp that we should at least make contact with
the Iraqis at the United Nations to explore the possibility that
Saddam Hussein might agree to allow intrusive inspections before
President Clinton decided to start bombing Iraq. I’d earlier met
with Iraq’s UN Ambassador at the time, Nizar Hamdoon, and not only
found his representations credible, but supported by official UN
records going back to the first Gulf War. To make a long story short,
Jack met with Hamdoon in NYC, then with U.N. General Secretary Kofi
Annan, and in early 1998, just when the neo-cons and their friends
in the press were screaming for war against Saddam, a deal was made
with Baghdad to permit the UN inspectors to go anywhere they wished,
even if they wished to look under the beds in Saddam's palaces.
According to the NYTimes,
now it turns out that “an Iraqi-American businessman who pleaded
guilty this week to secretly lobbying influential Americans on behalf
of Saddam Hussein pursued contacts with Democrats like former President
Jimmy Carter and Republicans like Jack Kemp, the former vice presidential
candidate, government officials said Friday. The businessman, Samir
A. Vincent, is now cooperating with a federal investigation into
corruption in the United Nations oil-for-food aid program for Iraq.
He pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges that he had pocketed millions
in hidden oil profits in exchange for helping the Iraqi government
in its efforts to end economic sanctions imposed in 1990.”
Now I never heard of Samir A. Vincent before, but it is perfectly
obvious that he learned of Kemp’s interest from those in Baghdad
who knew Jack had met with Hamdoon, and did not contact Jack on
a lucky guess. I don’t know why Vincent would “plead guilty to secretly
lobbying” Kemp in '97 and Jimmy Carter in '99, to help end the sanctions,
which the UN had estimated resulted in the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi
children. I was openly lobbying Jack, and if not for me, he never
would have met Vincent. I do know that Jack and Jimmy Carter and
former Georgia Democratic Senator Sam Nunn were in discussions about
how to get the sanctions lifted. (Why not give Nunn a buzz, folks?).
Is there a federal law against secretly asking three men who are
out of office to help lift totally outrageous, deadly sanctions
that are killing 500,000 kids?
Pardon me, political reporters and editors, but it sounds Orwellian
to me, and I am baffled as to why your newspapers are not yelling
in their editorial pages about why Mr. Vincent is being hounded
by the Justice Department. It must be because, as a friend of the
Baghdad government of Saddam Hussein, he was favored in the oil-for-food
program in getting tickets to export Iraqi oil over all those who
were enemies of the Baghdad government.
As for the “oil-for-food” scandal, you surely know my opinion,
conveyed to you a number of times, that there was no scandal at
all. The neo-cons of the Perle Cabal cooked that up with their pals
in Congress (Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota at the top of the pile)
and the right-wing news media, the WSJournal editorial page
on the top of that heap. Where they first led us to believe that
Saddam made off with $26 billion ($26,000,000,000) in funds because
of U.N. mismanagement, now we’re advised that the audits show $1.5
million in questionable transactions. That’s $1,500,000. I’ve yet
to see a news report pointing out that this kind of misplaced pocket
change can be identified by the General Accounting Office for practically
any administration bureaucracy, down to the tiniest. You know I
don't exaggerate.
It should be plain to you that Mr. Salim Vincent has copped a
plea in exchange for spilling the beans on who he “secretly lobbied,”
just so the Wall Street Journal could announce to its readers,
as it did last week, that the oil-food-scandal has moved into the
“criminal” phase. Should we wonder how Jack and Jimmy will look
behind bars, with Martha Stewart in the next wing, for “secretly”
trying to get sanctions lifted?
Pardon me if today I am generally disgusted with the Washington
press corps.
Dear Website Fans, browsers, clients – Here are some interesting items from the past: “Saddam,
a Perfectly Reasonable Statesman” Jack Kemp’s Iraq Initiative Memo To: President Bill Clinton I’m sending this to you through your chief-of-staff, Mr. President, on the chance that you have not been told about Jack Kemp's initiative on the Iraq problem. On Friday afternoon, he issued a statement at Empower America recommending that the UN Security Council consider the idea of a limited number of snap inspections each month for six months, including the palace sectors, after which the economic sanctions would be lifted if no evidence of weapons of mass destruction is uncovered. It is important that you read the statement carefully and take the initiative seriously, Mr. President, because your diplomatic team is now conveying the impression that your administration has no intention of lifting the sanctions, no matter if Iraq complies with UN demands or not. On FoxNews Sunday, your UN Ambassador Bill Richardson stated that full UN compliance with demands that he open all of Iraq to unlimited inspections will only "ameliorate" the situation. He indicated there was not much chance the sanctions would be lifted under any circumstances. On Meet the Press, your Secretary of State Madeleine Albright also indicated there would be no lifting of the sanctions unless Saddam Hussein exhibited good conduct in other unspecified areas. This is the public position she took last year that led the Iraqi government and the world diplomatic community to conclude that we are playing a game of charades, at the cost of several thousand civilian lives each month in Iraq. The record is now becoming clear enough, Mr. President, that I believe you will not be able to avoid an extremely harsh verdict by history if you continue on this path. Yes, you inherited a policy from the Bush administration which assumed that the suffering of the Iraqi people would cause them to pull down Saddam. It is plain that the Iraqi people continue to support Saddam and that they blame the United States for the deaths of 1.4 million civilians – including some 800,000 children under the age of 12. Unless you find a way off the path we are now on, it is plain enough that you are going to ask the American people to support unilateral military action against Iraq – and that you will have to goad Saddam into providing a casus belli. If you watched the McLaughlin Group on Sunday, you will note that a definite impression is developing in our press corps that your people are looking for a way to provoke a war. This is why Jack Kemp's initiative is so important and why you should not dismiss it out of hand, as Ambassador Richardson did on Sunday, rejecting any "political deal." Iraq's Ambassador Nizar Hamdoon, who also appeared on Fox News Sunday, indicated his government would be prepared to discuss any idea that could lead to the lifting of the sanctions when asked about the Kemp initiative. If you were to embrace the initiative and Iraq refused, it would help persuade the rest of the world that Saddam really does have a secret cache of weapons of mass destruction. The American people and the world would be much more agreeable to the use of military force to resolve the problem, if that is what it would take. On the other hand, if you reject this reasonable diplomatic solution, you would not have the support of the American people, who I believe would see it as a sensible way out of the logjam. Economic sanctions that cause great suffering to a civilian population can be justified in war, but not in peacetime. This is only my opinion, but I think it is also the opinion of mankind and of history. You must have been informed, Mr. President, that during the Gulf War our military destroyed a significant fraction of the water and sewage treatment facilities of Iraq. This is one of the primary reasons for the continued high mortality rates among the children and elderly. On the excuse that Iraq could turn chlorine into a weapon of mass destruction, it is on the prohibited list of imports, as are a great many other chemicals that are critical to protecting the health of modern, urban populations. It is my personal opinion that we would not have permitted this degree of suffering if the people of Iraq were Protestants, Catholics or Jews, but that we have hardened our hearts to it because the people are Muslim. The 1.4 billion Muslims in the world may be of the same opinion, as I note that we have little support for our policy even in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Mr. President, please do not look upon the Kemp initiative as a political ploy. You may know that as a matter of principle he opposes the use of economic sanctions in any case. The fact that the initiative comes from a Republican, who is prepared to defend his position within his own party, clearly makes it easier for you to move in this preferable diplomatic direction, even while making it more difficult to move in a military direction. The flow is in the right direction, especially with Pope John Paul II calling for a lifting of the sanctions. Reconciliation is in the air. PRESS RELEASE FROM JACK KEMP AT EMPOWER AMERICA:
Empower America Co-director Jack Kemp today recommended that the United Nations Security Council consider the idea of "snap inspections" anywhere in Iraq as a way of breaking the diplomatic logjam that continues to threaten peace in the Middle East. Mr. Kemp said he believed that if Saddam Hussein would be willing to permit the U.N. inspectors to make a limited number of unannounced "snap inspections" each month of any site they choose, including all the presidential palaces, for six months or so, and they find absolutely nothing suspicious, then the economic sanctions could be lifted. January 24, 2005 Jude Wanniski [send him mail] runs the financial/political advisory service Wanniski.com. (If you subscribe, and check LewRockwell.com in the referring website pull-down, LRC gets 10%.) Copyright © 2005 Jude Wanniski |