A news story I can believe

Apparently both the Clinton and Bush administrations were completely complicit in the so-called "oil for food" scandal. From CNN:

Documents obtained by CNN reveal the United States knew about, and even condoned, embargo-breaking oil sales by Saddam Hussein's regime, and did so to shore up alliances with Iraq's neighbors.

The oil trade with countries such as Turkey and Jordan appears to have been an open secret inside the U.S. government and the United Nations for years.

The unclassified State Department documents sent to congressional committees with oversight of U.S. foreign policy divulge that the United States deemed such sales to be in the "national interest," even though they generated billions of dollars in unmonitored revenue for Saddam's regime.

The trade also generated a needed source of oil and commerce for Iraq's major trading partners, Turkey and Jordan.
...
The memos obtained by CNN explain why both administrations waived restrictions on U.S. economic aid to those countries for engaging in otherwise prohibited trade with Iraq.

The justifications came at a time when the United States was a staunch backer of U.N. sanctions on Iraq imposed after it invaded Kuwait in 1990.

"Despite United Nations Security Council Resolutions," a 1998 memo signed by President Clinton's deputy secretary of state, Strobe Talbott, said, "Jordan continues to import oil from Iraq."

But Jordan had a "lack of economically viable alternatives" to Iraqi oil, Talbott's memo said.

Talbott's memo lauded Jordan's commitment to the Middle East peace process, citing the late King Hussein's personal efforts to broker a resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

"Timely, reliable assistance from the United States fosters the political stability and economic well-being critical to Jordan's continuing role as a regional leader for peace," Talbott said.

Identical language was used four years later in a 2002 memo by Richard Armitage, undersecretary of state under President George W. Bush.

"Jordan has made clear its choice for peace and normalization with Israel," Armitage said, calling Jordan "an important U.S. friend" and citing its 2001 free trade treaty with the United States.

"U.S. assistance provides the Jordanian government needed flexibility to pursue policies that are of critical importance to U.S. national security and to foreign policy objectives in the Middle East," Armitage said.

So, even while both administrations were blathering away about Iraq's non-existent WMD's and supposed violations of UN resolutions (and bombing Iraq every now and then, too), they were condoning and even encouraging the violation of UN resolutions that they themselves (or the previous Bush administration) had forced on Iraq.

My "aha!" moment in life came shortly after 9/11, with W's "with us or with the terrorists" nonsense. I realized that our government did not have good intentions. At first, I confined this to W's pack of crazies, but over three years of study have led me to conclude that all recent administrations have been major league criminal organizations (and a Kerry administration certainly would have been as well). They lie, lie, and when they get caught, they lie some more.

Anyway, since my "aha!" moment, everything has made much more sense--and seemed much scarier as well.