We'll Make You Pay": How the U.S. Dismantled the UN Oil-for-Food Program The New York Times has published a series of blockbuster stories about bribery and corruption in the United Nations program to provide food for the poor in Iraq. In the first article of this series, Charles Lane looks at a case where the oil-for-food program ended in tragedy. Told by people who worked for it or who were affected by it, the stories describe a program that was abused for political purposes by Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq, who used the UN to steal oil money, divert funds to his regime, and even, in the accounts of Iraqis and Iraqi-Americans working on the program, direct aid to himself and his family, while starving hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. The stories, and an internal memo from the State Department that surfaced in 1997, contradict UN arguments that the program was never really corruption-free, and indeed the program's many weaknesses may have made it fertile ground for corruption. But the most damning aspect of the article is the description of how the Bush administration came to a decision to cut off food aid to Iraq just over a year after it had been increased in reaction to the horrors of the Gulf War. The articles raise all sorts of questions about Bush and his administration: why did the State Department oppose making aid to Iraq conditional on better access to UN inspectors, which Saddam Hussein was eager for? What was the role of Colin Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage, who is described in the articles as being in favor of cutting off aid? Why did the Pentagon appear to have a veto over how much and when food aid would be given? And why did the Pentagon fail to anticipate a huge increase in the price of oil, which wiped out the cost savings of using the oil-for-food program rather than a direct sale? One thing that is clear is that this was a decision not made out of spite, but because of a desire for political advantage. The New York Times has published a series of blockbuster stories about bribery and corruption in the United Nations program to provide food for the poor in Iraq. In the first article of this series, Charles Lane looks at a case where the oil-for-food program ended in tragedy. Told by people who worked for it or who were affected by it, the stories describe a program that was abused for political purposes by Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq, who used the UN to steal oil money, divert funds to his regime, and even, in the accounts of Iraqis and Iraqi-Americans working on the program, direct aid to himself and his family, while starving hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. The stories, and an internal memo from the State Department that surfaced in 1997, contradict UN arguments that the program was never really corruption-free, and indeed the program's many weaknesses may have made it fertile ground for corruption. But the most damning aspect of the article is the description of how the Bush administration came to a decision to cut off food aid to Iraq just over a year after it had been increased in reaction to the horrors of the Gulf War. The articles raise all sorts of questions about Bush and his administration: why did the State Department oppose making aid to Iraq conditional on better access to UN inspectors, which Saddam Hussein was eager for? What was the role of Colin Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage, who is described in the articles as being in favor of cutting off aid? Why did the Pentagon appear to have a veto over how much and when food aid would be given? And why did the Pentagon fail to anticipate a huge increase in the price of oil, which wiped out the cost savings of using the oil-for-food program rather than a direct sale? One thing that is clear is that this was a decision not made out of spite, but because of a desire for political advantage. The article explains how the White House gave the "seeds of the oil-for-food program" to an Iraqi businessman named Nadhmi Auchi who agreed to raise money in exchange. Although the White House did not want to use his name, Auchi confirmed that he was the source. According to the article, Bush met with Auchi in 2001 and "asked him to raise money for Mr. Bush's charitable foundation to feed children in Iraq." It then quotes one businessman who said, "There's an old saying that charity begins at home. In the case of Mr. Auchi, it clearly began at the White House." The article also claims that there is evidence that Auchi used $1.6 million in UN food aid as a kind of donation to secure the construction of his first office complex. "Bush got into a heated battle with a group of Republican senators who were outraged by his refusal to include a condition for additional aid: better monitoring and verification, which they believed was the best way to ensure that Iraq would not divert the food from the needy." But Bush got his way: "Bush obtained a congressional waiver that removed the condition, and by October 2004, the oil-for-food program's funds were in fact used to help Iraqis purchase food and fuel," according to the article. A former assistant secretary for the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs told the New York Times that the decision was "very hard to understand" in light of the failure to establish effective monitoring. The Bush administration was not always determined to cut off aid. At one point, it had a different view of how to use the program to deal with Saddam Hussein, and even after it turned against the program, it still gave the Iraqi government enough aid to help it in negotiations with the UN, according to the article. "The decision to reduce aid came as senior administration officials, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, lobbied internally for allowing Iraq to get as much as half the money remaining in the oil-for-food program," the article said. The article reports: "From the outset of the program, which was meant to provide badly needed aid to the Iraqi people, Pentagon officials expressed skepticism that it would achieve much success." An internal Pentagon memo from June 2003, which the article reported came from the Defense Intelligence Agency and not from Powell himself, said, "The Iraqi regime will continue to pay kickbacks, keep oil revenues in offshore accounts, and allow looted funds to be used for insurgent violence. Although the regime will take steps to make its system look better, the Iraqi regime will never change the way it governs and conducts its affairs." The article reports: When officials at the United States Agency for International Development objected to that analysis in July 2002, Mr. Rumsfeld replied: "I just want to know if the facts support your view of the facts." Mr. Powell said the agency should look at Iraq's behavior before trying to judge it in the future, but Ms. Bremer said it did not matter that the behavior might change in the future because the United States would have cut off the aid. "The State Department did not want any more aid money to go to Iraq unless it could be tied to an American interest, like helping American companies," the article says, explaining that the decision to cut off the aid came as part of a broader opposition to the program that the Bush administration decided was hurting American businesses. The article says that the State Department officials believed that the program would continue, with or without its support. At the time, Bremer said in an interview, "We are a humanitarian operation, we have nothing to hide from. As soon as there's a viable program, we will be more than happy to have everybody take a look at it." But Bremer, the former diplomat now working for Bechtel, the engineering firm, says that she never believed that the decision to cut off aid had anything to do with the Bush administration's opposition to the program. The State Department declined to comment on the article. A White House official said that the program would not have worked for reasons beyond "trying to fix Iraq policy based on a flawed premise" and that the New York Times report was an attempt to rewrite history. As for her comments to the press after leaving the government in 2004, Bre