Scandal at the U.N.
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
The cover-up in the office of the U.N. secretary general of a multibillion-dollar financial fraud known as the Iraqi oil-for-food program is beginning to come apart.
The scandal has been brewing for years. The first I learned of it was in a New York Times Op-Ed article last April by the journalist Claudia Rosett charging that the U.N.'s secretive oversight of more than $100 billion in Iraqi oil exports and supposed humanitarian imports was "an invitation to kickbacks, political back-scratching and smuggling done under cover of relief operations."
After checking with Kurdish sources in Iraq, I reported that half the money allocated to their people had been blocked by Saddam "conspiring with bureaucrats in the U.N. Plaza."
Kofi Annan's right-hand man, Benon Sevan, had been named by the secretary general to head the oil-for-food program and report directly to him. Though he could not deny a favored French banking connection, Sevan branded as "inaccuracies" charges by Ms. Rosett and me of secrecy, citing a hundred audits in five years. But he refused to make public what companies in what countries got Saddam's largess.
Now, thanks to evidence of systematic thievery on a huge scale, discovered by free Iraqis in Baghdad, the whole rotten mess of 10 percent kickbacks on billions in contracts is coming to light. In detailed accounts, Susan Sachs in The Times, Therese Raphael in The Wall Street Journal, and Charles Laurence and Inigo Gilmore of London's Daily Telegraph have flipped over the flat rock of corruption.
Assistant Secretary General Sevan, now on an extended vacation until his retirement next month, denied through a spokesman "that I had received oil or oil monies from the former Iraqi regime" and demanded that his doubters produce documentary evidence. The Journal then produced a document in Arabic that suggests Sevan received an allocation of 1.8 million barrels of oil.
Under the U.N. bureaucracy's nose — and I suspect, in some cases, with its collusion — nearly three-quarters of the suppliers jacked up their prices to pay the 10 percent kickback. These included European manufacturers, Arab trade brokers, Russian factories and Chinese state-owned companies. Corruption's take — out of the mouths of hungry Iraqi children — was estimated by Sachs of The Times at $2.3 billion.
Hired by the U.N. to monitor these imports was a Swiss-based firm, Cotecna, which was paid out of the exorbitant fee the U.N. charged for overhead. Ms. Rosett, writing in National Review last week, notes that Kojo Annan, the secretary general's son, was once on staff and later a consultant to that tight-lipped company. In denying to The Telegraph in 1999 that he worked on the U.N. oil-for-food account, Kojo Annan said, "The decision is made by the contracts committee, not by Kofi Annan."
About that "661 compliance committee," on which the U.S. has a seat and to which the secretary general now wants to pass the buck: a U.S. official familiar with its operation tells me that "its purpose was formally to approve what the U.N. staff recommended. Only the U.S. and the U.K. experts ever put a hold on a contract, and that about items that had dual use in weaponry. Few U.S. firms got contracts, and those that did worked through middlemen to avoid the General Accounting Office."
Annan's office kept blaming the 661 committee and stonewalling the press until an irate Iraqi Governing Council hired the accountants KPMG and a law firm to investigate what its advisers told Annan was "one of the world's most disgraceful scams."
Under mounting pressure, this week the U.N. let it be known that its laughably titled Office of Internal Oversight Services would look into the matter. An internal whitewash? Not nearly good enough.
Will the Security Council appoint an independent counsel to clean house in an inept or corrupt Secretariat? No, because France and Russia had their hands in the kickback till.
But free Iraq, backed up by the U.S., is not helpless. Our Congress supplies 22 percent of the U.N. budget, and we have a right to an accounting. Chairman Henry Hyde, of House International Relations, calls this "an outrage" and will arrange for a G.A.O. briefing this week, to be followed by open hearings in April.
The U.N. can redeem its sullied reputation by helping to shape Iraq's future. To take up that challenge, it must have clean hands.
not so much a discussion, but something i wanted to share...
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joel the ornery
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theCryptofishist
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in the land of the pundits
Ah cummon--we all get to be Pundits, endlessly running our mouths like we know something. Cheif export--hot air to run our generators. It'll be a lot like eplaya, only not so civilized.Force wrote:Well, you probably consider yourself a pretty intelligent guy, Mr. Safire- maybe you could spell out for us exactly what kind of jobs we should be training ourselves for when physical labor, telephone customer service, software creation, accounting, and design jobs are all going outside america? Or in simpler terms, now that we've gone from exporting jobs that only require physical labor to exporting jobs that basically process knowledge, where does one go from knowledge?WILLIAM SAFIRE wrote:Optimistic America responds to competition, opportunity, openness, freedom — ready to do the business that not only creates tomorrow's jobs but spreads the prosperity that leads to peace around the world.
Joel,
You're right, you don't have to explain yourself. But please own up to the fact that you're being an asshole. While ypur posts may fit the letter of the topic they do not fit the spirit of the first posts.
And like Tzimisce, I'm always up for a good political discussion; the March 20 thread proves that. But you're not discussing. You're copying, verbatim, other people's words and posting them prodigiously. There's no way that the rest of us, using only our own ideas and writing, can keep up.
So take the damn thread. I wasn't mine to begin with, but Tzimisce and her friends seem to have abandoned it. Just do me a favor; use your own words, not somebody else's. Any idiot can point to something and say "Uh, yeah... What he said." Think for yourself and you may one day find yourself being taken seriously.
And if, along the way, you could pick up some sense of social grace, however simple, it would be appreciated.
You're right, you don't have to explain yourself. But please own up to the fact that you're being an asshole. While ypur posts may fit the letter of the topic they do not fit the spirit of the first posts.
And like Tzimisce, I'm always up for a good political discussion; the March 20 thread proves that. But you're not discussing. You're copying, verbatim, other people's words and posting them prodigiously. There's no way that the rest of us, using only our own ideas and writing, can keep up.
So take the damn thread. I wasn't mine to begin with, but Tzimisce and her friends seem to have abandoned it. Just do me a favor; use your own words, not somebody else's. Any idiot can point to something and say "Uh, yeah... What he said." Think for yourself and you may one day find yourself being taken seriously.
And if, along the way, you could pick up some sense of social grace, however simple, it would be appreciated.
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joel the ornery
- Posts: 2657
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Exercising my constitional rights and Black Rock Citizen
The Price of Freedom in Iraq
By DONALD H. RUMSFELD
WASHINGTON
This week, as we mark the one-year anniversary of the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, it is useful to recount why we have fought. Not long ago I visited South Korea, just as the Korean government was debating whether to send troops to Iraq. In Seoul, I was interviewed by a Korean journalist who was almost certainly too young to have firsthand recollection of the Korean War. She asked me, "Why should Koreans send their young people halfway around the globe to be killed or wounded in Iraq?"
As it happened, I had that day visited a Korean War memorial, which bears the names of every American soldier killed in the war. On it was the name of a close friend of mine from high school, a wrestling teammate, who was killed on the last day of the war. I said to the reporter: "It's a fair question. And it would have been fair for an American to ask, 50 years ago, `Why should young Americans go halfway around the world to be killed or wounded in Korea?' "
We were speaking on an upper floor of a large hotel in Seoul. I asked the woman to look out the window — at the lights, the cars, the energy of the vibrant economy of South Korea. I told her about a satellite photo of the Korean peninsula, taken at night, that I keep on a table in my Pentagon office. North of the demilitarized zone there is nothing but darkness — except a pinprick of light around Pyongyang — while the entire country of South Korea is ablaze in light, the light of freedom.
Korean freedom was won at a terrible cost — tens of thousands of lives, including more than 33,000 Americans killed in action. Was it worth it? You bet. Just as it was worth it in Germany and France and Italy and in the Pacific in World War II. And just as it is worth it in Afghanistan and Iraq today.
Today, in a world of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and states that sponsor the former and pursue the latter, defending freedom means we must confront dangers before it is too late. In Iraq, for 12 years, through 17 United Nations Security Council resolutions, the world gave Saddam Hussein every opportunity to avoid war. He was being held to a simple standard: live up to your agreement at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf war; disarm and prove you have done so. Instead of disarming — as Kazakhstan, South Africa and Ukraine did, and as Libya is doing today — Saddam Hussein chose deception and defiance.
Repeatedly, he rejected those resolutions and he systematically deceived United Nations inspectors about his weapons and his intent. The world knew his record: he used chemical weapons against Iran and his own citizens; he invaded Iran and Kuwait; he launched ballistic missiles at Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain; and his troops repeatedly fired on American and British aircraft patrolling the no-flight zones.
Recognizing the threat, in September 2002 President Bush went to the United Nations, which gave Iraq still another "final opportunity" to disarm and to prove it had done so. The next month the president went to Congress, which voted to support the use of force if Iraq did not.
And, when Saddam Hussein passed up that final opportunity, he was given a last chance to avoid war: 48 hours to leave the country. Only then, after every peaceful option had been exhausted, did the president and our coalition partners order the liberation of Iraq.
Americans do not come easily to war, but neither do Americans take freedom lightly. But when freedom and self-government have taken root in Iraq, and that country becomes a force for good in the Middle East, the rightness of those efforts will be just as clear as it is today in Korea, Germany, Japan and Italy.
As the continuing terrorist violence in Iraq reminds us, the road to self-governance will be challenging. But the progress is impressive. Last week the Iraqi Governing Council unanimously signed an interim Constitution. It guarantees freedom of religion and expression; the right to assemble and to organize political parties; the right to vote; and the right to a fair, speedy and open trial. It prohibits discrimination based on gender, nationality and religion, as well as arbitrary arrest and detention. A year ago today, none of those protections could have been even imagined by the Iraqi people.
Today, as we think about the tens of thousands of United States soldiers in Iraq — and in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world fighting the global war on terrorism — we should say to all of them: "You join a long line of generations of Americans who have fought freedom's fight. Thank you."
Donald H. Rumsfeld is the secretary of defense.
By DONALD H. RUMSFELD
WASHINGTON
This week, as we mark the one-year anniversary of the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom, it is useful to recount why we have fought. Not long ago I visited South Korea, just as the Korean government was debating whether to send troops to Iraq. In Seoul, I was interviewed by a Korean journalist who was almost certainly too young to have firsthand recollection of the Korean War. She asked me, "Why should Koreans send their young people halfway around the globe to be killed or wounded in Iraq?"
As it happened, I had that day visited a Korean War memorial, which bears the names of every American soldier killed in the war. On it was the name of a close friend of mine from high school, a wrestling teammate, who was killed on the last day of the war. I said to the reporter: "It's a fair question. And it would have been fair for an American to ask, 50 years ago, `Why should young Americans go halfway around the world to be killed or wounded in Korea?' "
We were speaking on an upper floor of a large hotel in Seoul. I asked the woman to look out the window — at the lights, the cars, the energy of the vibrant economy of South Korea. I told her about a satellite photo of the Korean peninsula, taken at night, that I keep on a table in my Pentagon office. North of the demilitarized zone there is nothing but darkness — except a pinprick of light around Pyongyang — while the entire country of South Korea is ablaze in light, the light of freedom.
Korean freedom was won at a terrible cost — tens of thousands of lives, including more than 33,000 Americans killed in action. Was it worth it? You bet. Just as it was worth it in Germany and France and Italy and in the Pacific in World War II. And just as it is worth it in Afghanistan and Iraq today.
Today, in a world of terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and states that sponsor the former and pursue the latter, defending freedom means we must confront dangers before it is too late. In Iraq, for 12 years, through 17 United Nations Security Council resolutions, the world gave Saddam Hussein every opportunity to avoid war. He was being held to a simple standard: live up to your agreement at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf war; disarm and prove you have done so. Instead of disarming — as Kazakhstan, South Africa and Ukraine did, and as Libya is doing today — Saddam Hussein chose deception and defiance.
Repeatedly, he rejected those resolutions and he systematically deceived United Nations inspectors about his weapons and his intent. The world knew his record: he used chemical weapons against Iran and his own citizens; he invaded Iran and Kuwait; he launched ballistic missiles at Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain; and his troops repeatedly fired on American and British aircraft patrolling the no-flight zones.
Recognizing the threat, in September 2002 President Bush went to the United Nations, which gave Iraq still another "final opportunity" to disarm and to prove it had done so. The next month the president went to Congress, which voted to support the use of force if Iraq did not.
And, when Saddam Hussein passed up that final opportunity, he was given a last chance to avoid war: 48 hours to leave the country. Only then, after every peaceful option had been exhausted, did the president and our coalition partners order the liberation of Iraq.
Americans do not come easily to war, but neither do Americans take freedom lightly. But when freedom and self-government have taken root in Iraq, and that country becomes a force for good in the Middle East, the rightness of those efforts will be just as clear as it is today in Korea, Germany, Japan and Italy.
As the continuing terrorist violence in Iraq reminds us, the road to self-governance will be challenging. But the progress is impressive. Last week the Iraqi Governing Council unanimously signed an interim Constitution. It guarantees freedom of religion and expression; the right to assemble and to organize political parties; the right to vote; and the right to a fair, speedy and open trial. It prohibits discrimination based on gender, nationality and religion, as well as arbitrary arrest and detention. A year ago today, none of those protections could have been even imagined by the Iraqi people.
Today, as we think about the tens of thousands of United States soldiers in Iraq — and in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world fighting the global war on terrorism — we should say to all of them: "You join a long line of generations of Americans who have fought freedom's fight. Thank you."
Donald H. Rumsfeld is the secretary of defense.
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joel the ornery
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Something I want to share but don't want to discuss...
Axis of Appeasement
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
The new Spanish government's decision to respond to the attack by Al Qaeda by going ahead with plans to pull its troops from Iraq constitutes the most dangerous moment we've faced since 9/11. It's what happens when the Axis of Evil intersects with the Axis of Appeasement and the Axis of Incompetence.
Let's start with the Axis of Evil. We are up against a terrible nihilistic enemy. Think about what the Islamist terrorists are doing: they are trying to kill as many people in Iraq and elsewhere as possible so the U.S. fails in Iraq, so Iraq collapses into civil war, so even a glimmer of democracy never takes root in the Arab world and so America is weakened.
But if they are so bad, why aren't we doing better? It has to do with the pigheadedness of the Bush team and the softheadedness of many allies. Regarding the Bush team, let me say yet again: We do not have enough troops in Iraq, and we never did. From the outset, the Bush Pentagon has treated Iraq as a lab test to prove that it can win a war with a small, mobile high-tech Army. Well, maybe you can defeat Saddam that way, but you can't build a new Iraq — and control its borders to prevent foreign terrorists from coming in — with so few troops, especially when you disband the Iraqi Army on top of it.
Don't tell me we have enough troops in Iraq when our soldiers are getting picked off daily by roadside bombs, when our aid workers are getting murdered and when Iraqis are getting massacred by suicide missions. Don't tell me we are not fighting this war on the cheap when our diplomats in Baghdad don't have enough armored cars, cellphones, bulletproof vests or escort troops to protect them as they try to travel around the country. We are now paying for the contradiction between Mr. Bush's two great projects: his war on taxes and his war on terrorism.
Yes, we can still win this, but right now, despite Paul Bremer's heroic success in helping Iraqis forge a progressive interim constitution, we can still lose it. If we do, it will be largely due to the Pentagon's inability to secure Iraq, which has encouraged Iraqis to turn to sectarian militias for security, undermining nation-building and planting the seeds of civil war. Second, it will be because we have so few real allies. As Spain proves, we had a few friendly governments, but most people in Europe and Asia have never been with the Bush team — especially when it continues to insist that we are going to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to justify the war. It's time for the Bush team to admit it was wrong about this and move on.
Unless President Bush dispenses with his discredited argument for the war — W.M.D. — no one will hear or listen to what I believe was always the only right argument for the war and is now the only rationale left: to depose the genocidal Saddam regime in order to partner with the Iraqi people to build a decent government in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world — because it is the pathologies and humiliations produced by Arab misgovernance that are the root causes of terrorism and Muslim extremism.
Spain is planning to do something crazy: to try to appease radical evil by pulling Spain's troops out of Iraq — even though those troops are now supporting the first democracy-building project ever in the Arab world.
I understand that many Spanish voters felt lied to by their rightist government over who was responsible for the Madrid bombings, and therefore voted it out of office. But they should now follow that up by vowing to keep their troops in Iraq — to make clear that in cleaning up their own democracy, they do not want to subvert the Iraqis' attempt to build one of their own. Otherwise, the Spanish vote will not be remembered as an act of cleansing, but of appeasement.
My dream is that the U.S., Britain, France, Germany and Spain announce tomorrow that in response to the Madrid bombing, they are sending a new joint force of 5,000 troops to Iraq for the sole purpose of protecting the U.N.'s return to Baghdad to oversee Iraq's first democratic election.
The notion that Spain can separate itself from Al Qaeda's onslaught on Western civilization by pulling its troops from Iraq is a fantasy. Bin Laden has said that Spain was once Muslim and he wants it restored that way. As a friend in Cairo e-mailed me, a Spanish pullout from Iraq would only bring to mind Churchill's remark after Chamberlain returned from signing the Munich pact with Hitler: "You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war."
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
The new Spanish government's decision to respond to the attack by Al Qaeda by going ahead with plans to pull its troops from Iraq constitutes the most dangerous moment we've faced since 9/11. It's what happens when the Axis of Evil intersects with the Axis of Appeasement and the Axis of Incompetence.
Let's start with the Axis of Evil. We are up against a terrible nihilistic enemy. Think about what the Islamist terrorists are doing: they are trying to kill as many people in Iraq and elsewhere as possible so the U.S. fails in Iraq, so Iraq collapses into civil war, so even a glimmer of democracy never takes root in the Arab world and so America is weakened.
But if they are so bad, why aren't we doing better? It has to do with the pigheadedness of the Bush team and the softheadedness of many allies. Regarding the Bush team, let me say yet again: We do not have enough troops in Iraq, and we never did. From the outset, the Bush Pentagon has treated Iraq as a lab test to prove that it can win a war with a small, mobile high-tech Army. Well, maybe you can defeat Saddam that way, but you can't build a new Iraq — and control its borders to prevent foreign terrorists from coming in — with so few troops, especially when you disband the Iraqi Army on top of it.
Don't tell me we have enough troops in Iraq when our soldiers are getting picked off daily by roadside bombs, when our aid workers are getting murdered and when Iraqis are getting massacred by suicide missions. Don't tell me we are not fighting this war on the cheap when our diplomats in Baghdad don't have enough armored cars, cellphones, bulletproof vests or escort troops to protect them as they try to travel around the country. We are now paying for the contradiction between Mr. Bush's two great projects: his war on taxes and his war on terrorism.
Yes, we can still win this, but right now, despite Paul Bremer's heroic success in helping Iraqis forge a progressive interim constitution, we can still lose it. If we do, it will be largely due to the Pentagon's inability to secure Iraq, which has encouraged Iraqis to turn to sectarian militias for security, undermining nation-building and planting the seeds of civil war. Second, it will be because we have so few real allies. As Spain proves, we had a few friendly governments, but most people in Europe and Asia have never been with the Bush team — especially when it continues to insist that we are going to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to justify the war. It's time for the Bush team to admit it was wrong about this and move on.
Unless President Bush dispenses with his discredited argument for the war — W.M.D. — no one will hear or listen to what I believe was always the only right argument for the war and is now the only rationale left: to depose the genocidal Saddam regime in order to partner with the Iraqi people to build a decent government in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world — because it is the pathologies and humiliations produced by Arab misgovernance that are the root causes of terrorism and Muslim extremism.
Spain is planning to do something crazy: to try to appease radical evil by pulling Spain's troops out of Iraq — even though those troops are now supporting the first democracy-building project ever in the Arab world.
I understand that many Spanish voters felt lied to by their rightist government over who was responsible for the Madrid bombings, and therefore voted it out of office. But they should now follow that up by vowing to keep their troops in Iraq — to make clear that in cleaning up their own democracy, they do not want to subvert the Iraqis' attempt to build one of their own. Otherwise, the Spanish vote will not be remembered as an act of cleansing, but of appeasement.
My dream is that the U.S., Britain, France, Germany and Spain announce tomorrow that in response to the Madrid bombing, they are sending a new joint force of 5,000 troops to Iraq for the sole purpose of protecting the U.N.'s return to Baghdad to oversee Iraq's first democratic election.
The notion that Spain can separate itself from Al Qaeda's onslaught on Western civilization by pulling its troops from Iraq is a fantasy. Bin Laden has said that Spain was once Muslim and he wants it restored that way. As a friend in Cairo e-mailed me, a Spanish pullout from Iraq would only bring to mind Churchill's remark after Chamberlain returned from signing the Munich pact with Hitler: "You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war."
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tzimisce1313
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well, i wasn't initially planning to abandon the post... however... it has become more of a political discussion as opposed as a place to share thoughts and the like.Zephryus wrote: So take the damn thread. I wasn't mine to begin with, but Tzimisce and her friends seem to have abandoned it.
however, if anyone would like to keep with the creative spirit i have created a new thread.
http://eplaya.burningman.org/viewtopic. ... 1841#41841
i think this might clear up any confusion there may have been.
thanks and enjoy.
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joel the ornery
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joel the ornery
- Posts: 2657
- Joined: Sun Aug 31, 2003 3:28 pm
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Follow-Up to Kofigate
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
WASHINGTON — Never has there been a financial rip-off of the magnitude of the U.N. oil-for-food scandal.
At least $5 billion in kickbacks went from corrupt contractors — mainly French and Russian — into the pockets of Saddam and his thugs. Some went to pay off his protectors in foreign governments and media, and we may soon see how much stuck to the fingers of U.N. bureaucrats as well.
Responding to a harangue in this space on March 17, the spokesman for Kofi Annan confirmed that the secretary general's soft-spoken son, Kojo, was on the payroll of Cotecna Inspections of Switzerland until December 1998. In that very month, the U.N. awarded Cotecna the contract to monitor and authenticate the goods shipped to Iraq.
Prices were inflated to allow for 10 percent kickbacks, and the goods were often shoddy and unusable. As the lax Cotecna made a lot of corporate friends, Iraqi children suffered from rotted food and diluted medicines.
The U.N. press agent also revealed that Benon Sevan, Annan's longtime right-hand man in charge of the flow of billions, was advised by U.N. lawyers that the names of companies receiving the contracts were "privileged commercial information, which could not be made public." Mr. Sevan had stonewalling help.
To shift responsibility for the see-no-evil oversight, the U.N. spokesman noted that "details of all contracts were made available to the governments of all 15 Security Council members." All the details, including the regular 10 percent kickback to the tune of $5 billion in illegal surcharges? We'll see.
To calm the belated uproar, Annan felt compelled to seek an "independent high-level inquiry," empowered by a Security Council resolution, as some of us called for.
Nothing doing, said France's U.N. ambassador, Jean-Marc de la Sablière. The money for the huge heist known as the Iraq-U.N. account passed exclusively through BNP Paribas. French companies led all the rest (what's French for "kickback"?), though Vladimir Putin's favorite Russian oligarchs insisted on sharing the wealth. That explains why Paris and Moscow were Saddam's main prewar defenders, and why their politicians and executives now want no inquiry they cannot control.
Nor are the White House and State Department so eager for a real investigation, because as the truth emerges, the U.N. may use the furor as cover for refusal to confer its blessing on the new Iraq. Our present and former U.S. ambassadors to the U.N. would have to take issue with Annan if he tried to hide under their wing. Peter Burleigh and Andrew Hillman, our frequent representatives on the "661 committee" — so named for a sanctions resolution — are not about to be the U.N.'s scapegoats.
If the secretary general appoints a Franco-Russian Whitewash Team, to whom can the world turn?
1. The Iraqi government-in-formation. Spurred by Kurds who have been blowing the whistle on this superscam for five years, free Iraq has hired accountants and lawyers to sift through captured bills and contracts in Baghdad. Former spooks are freelancing usefully. Paul Bremer, our man in Baghdad, has placed a trove of additional half-corrupted tapes and damaged and damaging documents under seal to be turned over after June 30, Sovereignty Day.
2. The House International Relations Committee's chairman, Henry Hyde, whose interviewers are in New York today, will hold initial hearings on April 21. Congress's investigative arm, the General Accounting Office, will testify about the scope of the chicanery that it estimates at $10 billion (including Saddam's clandestine oil smuggling to Syria and Jordan). It's a start that should awaken Senate Foreign Relations as well as Justice.
3. The press, stimulated by U.N. stonewalling, is on the trail.
Al Mada led the way. Already denying the feisty Iraq newspaper's findings are a former French interior minister, a pro-Saddam member of Britain's Parliament, Arab writers and a financier reportedly behind a Scott Ritter film. The Times, Wall Street Journal and Sunday Telegraph have been exposing the outline of what Newsday admits is "the most underreported story of the year." Among magazines, National Review is out front with no interest shown by The New Yorker and Newsweek.
All of us need an embittered whistleblower. If an ex-U.N. type named Shaukat Fareed reads this — call me.
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
WASHINGTON — Never has there been a financial rip-off of the magnitude of the U.N. oil-for-food scandal.
At least $5 billion in kickbacks went from corrupt contractors — mainly French and Russian — into the pockets of Saddam and his thugs. Some went to pay off his protectors in foreign governments and media, and we may soon see how much stuck to the fingers of U.N. bureaucrats as well.
Responding to a harangue in this space on March 17, the spokesman for Kofi Annan confirmed that the secretary general's soft-spoken son, Kojo, was on the payroll of Cotecna Inspections of Switzerland until December 1998. In that very month, the U.N. awarded Cotecna the contract to monitor and authenticate the goods shipped to Iraq.
Prices were inflated to allow for 10 percent kickbacks, and the goods were often shoddy and unusable. As the lax Cotecna made a lot of corporate friends, Iraqi children suffered from rotted food and diluted medicines.
The U.N. press agent also revealed that Benon Sevan, Annan's longtime right-hand man in charge of the flow of billions, was advised by U.N. lawyers that the names of companies receiving the contracts were "privileged commercial information, which could not be made public." Mr. Sevan had stonewalling help.
To shift responsibility for the see-no-evil oversight, the U.N. spokesman noted that "details of all contracts were made available to the governments of all 15 Security Council members." All the details, including the regular 10 percent kickback to the tune of $5 billion in illegal surcharges? We'll see.
To calm the belated uproar, Annan felt compelled to seek an "independent high-level inquiry," empowered by a Security Council resolution, as some of us called for.
Nothing doing, said France's U.N. ambassador, Jean-Marc de la Sablière. The money for the huge heist known as the Iraq-U.N. account passed exclusively through BNP Paribas. French companies led all the rest (what's French for "kickback"?), though Vladimir Putin's favorite Russian oligarchs insisted on sharing the wealth. That explains why Paris and Moscow were Saddam's main prewar defenders, and why their politicians and executives now want no inquiry they cannot control.
Nor are the White House and State Department so eager for a real investigation, because as the truth emerges, the U.N. may use the furor as cover for refusal to confer its blessing on the new Iraq. Our present and former U.S. ambassadors to the U.N. would have to take issue with Annan if he tried to hide under their wing. Peter Burleigh and Andrew Hillman, our frequent representatives on the "661 committee" — so named for a sanctions resolution — are not about to be the U.N.'s scapegoats.
If the secretary general appoints a Franco-Russian Whitewash Team, to whom can the world turn?
1. The Iraqi government-in-formation. Spurred by Kurds who have been blowing the whistle on this superscam for five years, free Iraq has hired accountants and lawyers to sift through captured bills and contracts in Baghdad. Former spooks are freelancing usefully. Paul Bremer, our man in Baghdad, has placed a trove of additional half-corrupted tapes and damaged and damaging documents under seal to be turned over after June 30, Sovereignty Day.
2. The House International Relations Committee's chairman, Henry Hyde, whose interviewers are in New York today, will hold initial hearings on April 21. Congress's investigative arm, the General Accounting Office, will testify about the scope of the chicanery that it estimates at $10 billion (including Saddam's clandestine oil smuggling to Syria and Jordan). It's a start that should awaken Senate Foreign Relations as well as Justice.
3. The press, stimulated by U.N. stonewalling, is on the trail.
Al Mada led the way. Already denying the feisty Iraq newspaper's findings are a former French interior minister, a pro-Saddam member of Britain's Parliament, Arab writers and a financier reportedly behind a Scott Ritter film. The Times, Wall Street Journal and Sunday Telegraph have been exposing the outline of what Newsday admits is "the most underreported story of the year." Among magazines, National Review is out front with no interest shown by The New Yorker and Newsweek.
All of us need an embittered whistleblower. If an ex-U.N. type named Shaukat Fareed reads this — call me.
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DVD Burner
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DVD Burner
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DVD Burner
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joel the ornery
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Rapid growth of "dead zones" in oceans threatens planet
Mon Mar 29,12:04 AM ET
JEJU, South Korea, (AFP) - The spread of oxygen-starved "dead zones" in the oceans, a graveyard for fish and plant life, is emerging as a threat to the health of the planet, experts say.
For hundreds of millions of people who depend on seas and oceans for their livelihoods, and for many more who rely on a diet of fish and seafood to survive, the problem is acute.
Some of the oxygen-deprived zones are relatively small, less than one square kilometre (0.4 square miles) in size. Others are vast, measuring more than 70,000 square kilometres.
Pollution, particularly the overuse of nitrogen in fertilizers, is responsible for the spread of dead zones, environment ministers and experts from more than 100 countries were told.
The number of known oxygen-starved areas has doubled since 1990 to nearly 150, according to the UN Environmental Program (UNEP), holding is annual conference here.
"What is clear is that unless urgent action is taken to tackle the sources of the problem, it is likely to escalate rapidly," UNEP executive director Klaus Toepfer said.
"Hundreds of millions of people depend on the marine environment for food, for their livelihoods and for their cultural fulfilment."
The world at present gets 17 percent of its animal protein from fish, UN figures show.
That supply is now endangered on at least two fronts: overfishing that has depleted stocks in recent decades and now the challenge of widening dead zones.
The issue was identified as a key emerging problem in the Global Environment Year Book 2003, a health report on the planet released at the start of the UNEP's three-day conference that concludes Wednesday.
The spread of low-level oxygen zones in seas and oceans, identified as early as in the 1960s, is closely related to the overuse of fertilizers in agriculture, whose main ingredient is nitrogen.
On land, nitrogen boosts plant growth. But when it washes into the sea in rivers and rainwater overrun, it triggers an explosive bloom of algae.
When these tiny plants growing on the ocean surface sink to the bottom and decompose, they use up all the oxygen and suffocate other marine life.
Fossil fuel waste from motor vehicles and power plants increases nitrogen content in oceans.
With oxygen depletion, fish, oysters and other marine life eventually die out along with important habitats such as sea grass beds.
Relatively large zones are found in the Gulf of Mexico, the Chesapeake Bay off the US East Coast, the Baltic and Black seas, and parts of the Adriatic.
Others have appeared off South America, Japan, China, Australia and New Zealand. Some zones are permanent, while other occur annually or intermittently.
Most of the 160 million tonnes of nitrogen used as fertiliser annually ends up in the sea.
UNEP said efforts should focus on cutting back on overuse of nitrogen to bring the seas back to life.
With a joint accord, European states within the Rhine River basin successfully cut the amount of nitrogen entering the North Sea by 37 percent between 1985 and 2000, it said.
The UNEP advocates planting of more forests and grasslands to soak up excess nitrogen and better sewage treatment.
Its conference is the first ever held in Asia with more than 100 ministers and high-level officials attending from 155 countries.
Mon Mar 29,12:04 AM ET
JEJU, South Korea, (AFP) - The spread of oxygen-starved "dead zones" in the oceans, a graveyard for fish and plant life, is emerging as a threat to the health of the planet, experts say.
For hundreds of millions of people who depend on seas and oceans for their livelihoods, and for many more who rely on a diet of fish and seafood to survive, the problem is acute.
Some of the oxygen-deprived zones are relatively small, less than one square kilometre (0.4 square miles) in size. Others are vast, measuring more than 70,000 square kilometres.
Pollution, particularly the overuse of nitrogen in fertilizers, is responsible for the spread of dead zones, environment ministers and experts from more than 100 countries were told.
The number of known oxygen-starved areas has doubled since 1990 to nearly 150, according to the UN Environmental Program (UNEP), holding is annual conference here.
"What is clear is that unless urgent action is taken to tackle the sources of the problem, it is likely to escalate rapidly," UNEP executive director Klaus Toepfer said.
"Hundreds of millions of people depend on the marine environment for food, for their livelihoods and for their cultural fulfilment."
The world at present gets 17 percent of its animal protein from fish, UN figures show.
That supply is now endangered on at least two fronts: overfishing that has depleted stocks in recent decades and now the challenge of widening dead zones.
The issue was identified as a key emerging problem in the Global Environment Year Book 2003, a health report on the planet released at the start of the UNEP's three-day conference that concludes Wednesday.
The spread of low-level oxygen zones in seas and oceans, identified as early as in the 1960s, is closely related to the overuse of fertilizers in agriculture, whose main ingredient is nitrogen.
On land, nitrogen boosts plant growth. But when it washes into the sea in rivers and rainwater overrun, it triggers an explosive bloom of algae.
When these tiny plants growing on the ocean surface sink to the bottom and decompose, they use up all the oxygen and suffocate other marine life.
Fossil fuel waste from motor vehicles and power plants increases nitrogen content in oceans.
With oxygen depletion, fish, oysters and other marine life eventually die out along with important habitats such as sea grass beds.
Relatively large zones are found in the Gulf of Mexico, the Chesapeake Bay off the US East Coast, the Baltic and Black seas, and parts of the Adriatic.
Others have appeared off South America, Japan, China, Australia and New Zealand. Some zones are permanent, while other occur annually or intermittently.
Most of the 160 million tonnes of nitrogen used as fertiliser annually ends up in the sea.
UNEP said efforts should focus on cutting back on overuse of nitrogen to bring the seas back to life.
With a joint accord, European states within the Rhine River basin successfully cut the amount of nitrogen entering the North Sea by 37 percent between 1985 and 2000, it said.
The UNEP advocates planting of more forests and grasslands to soak up excess nitrogen and better sewage treatment.
Its conference is the first ever held in Asia with more than 100 ministers and high-level officials attending from 155 countries.
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joel the ornery
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>>Al Franken radio
that's "air america", and doesn't actually launch until this wednesday.
kpfk is radio pacifica, and comes across as a bunch of of stoned and tweaked out hippies whining about the unfairness of it all. it's the true counterpart to conservative talk radio, and is just as mind numbingly annoying.
i'm actually looking forward to air america. aside from al, it's also got chuck d & janeane garofalo...
that's "air america", and doesn't actually launch until this wednesday.
kpfk is radio pacifica, and comes across as a bunch of of stoned and tweaked out hippies whining about the unfairness of it all. it's the true counterpart to conservative talk radio, and is just as mind numbingly annoying.
i'm actually looking forward to air america. aside from al, it's also got chuck d & janeane garofalo...
[url]http://3playa.cultureshark.net/[/url]
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Simply Joel
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- Location: Land of Lincoln
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Simply Joel
- Posts: 3483
- Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2004 9:08 am
- Location: Land of Lincoln
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April 16, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
A Soldier's Sacrifice
By BOB HERBERT
WASHINGTON
It was about 3 a.m. and pitch-black when the convoy of U.S. Army trucks, traveling south on Highway 1, turned right and began moving along a rutted dirt road near Bayji, a small town in the Sunni Triangle about 25 miles north of Tikrit.
Tyler Hall, a baby-faced 23-year-old sergeant from Wasilla, Alaska, was among the six soldiers in the second truck, which took the brunt of the explosion when the bomb that was buried in the road detonated.
Sergeant Hall puts the matter quite succinctly: "I was blown up in an I.E.D. attack on Aug. 22." I.E.D. stands for improvised explosive device.
That the sergeant survived at all is incredible. He will never be the same.
"All I remember is, like, sparks," he said during an interview this week at the Washington headquarters of Disabled American Veterans. "I saw these sparks, and then the whole truck kind of caved in."
The first time he regained consciousness, he was lying on his back in the road. And he remembers, with the dark humor common to troops in combat, a brief John Wayne-like moment.
"My buddy was trying to resuscitate me. He thought I was dead. I came to for a very brief time, and he was about to give me mouth-to-mouth. I said, `What do you think you're doing, trying to make out with me or something?' And he said, `Sergeant Hall, you're alive!' And everybody's like, `Hey, Sergeant Hall's alive!' All I remember after that is hearing the Blackhawk helicopter coming down, and I just lost consciousness from there."
He wouldn't wake up again for another 45 days.
Sergeant Hall's mother, Kim, who is 40, sat beside him during the interview. From time to time she rubbed salve on the burns that have disfigured both of her son's hands. The sergeant also has a burn across the bridge of his nose. The lower half of his face, which had to be reconstructed because both of his jaws were broken and 10 of his teeth were blown out and part of his palate was destroyed, looks surprisingly normal. The surgeons at Walter Reed Army hospital seem to have done a good job.
Sergeant Hall also sustained a brain injury, but you can't tell that from talking to him. He's not just lucid — he's bright and funny. (He compared the negotiating process for his enlistment bonus to plea-bargaining.) But he tires easily. And he gets headaches.
He also had three bones in his back broken, and his arm was broken, and he lost his left leg below the knee.
This, of course, is what war does to people. It takes the human body and grinds it up like sausage meat.
Sergeant Hall was the most severely wounded victim of the attack. When his mother was informed by phone that he had been hurt, the caller said his death was most likely "imminent."
"He was in the hospital in Germany," Ms. Hall said, "and it took me a few days with the visa and everything to get over there. So every night I would call and beg the nurse in the middle of the night to please put the phone by his ear and I would talk to him, even though he was unconscious. I don't know for sure that he heard me, but I like to believe that he did."
Ms. Hall recalled a moment at Walter Reed when a decision had to be made about the amputation of Sergeant Hall's leg. She spotted a young man her son knew who was a triple amputee. "He had lost three limbs and his father was pushing him in the wheelchair, and they were laughing and talking. And I thought, `You know, if they can do that, well——' I kind of knew then that we would be all right."
Sergeant Hall said he doesn't dwell on his injuries, and he hasn't had to wrestle with bouts of rage or bitterness. "You try to have a good attitude," he said, "because there are other people around you with injuries that are more severe. Even on your worst days, you kind of feel, you know, that if you don't keep a good attitude you're letting down the people around you."
He said he joined the Army to earn money for college and to serve his country, and that he didn't regret enlisting.
Ms. Hall leaned over and gently rubbed more lotion onto his hands.
Sergeant Hall said he expected he'd be able to run pretty soon. He is looking forward to it. Keeping busy, he said, helps keep his spirits up. He said he felt he was doing pretty well, considering all the "amazing stuff" that had happened to him.
OP-ED COLUMNIST
A Soldier's Sacrifice
By BOB HERBERT
WASHINGTON
It was about 3 a.m. and pitch-black when the convoy of U.S. Army trucks, traveling south on Highway 1, turned right and began moving along a rutted dirt road near Bayji, a small town in the Sunni Triangle about 25 miles north of Tikrit.
Tyler Hall, a baby-faced 23-year-old sergeant from Wasilla, Alaska, was among the six soldiers in the second truck, which took the brunt of the explosion when the bomb that was buried in the road detonated.
Sergeant Hall puts the matter quite succinctly: "I was blown up in an I.E.D. attack on Aug. 22." I.E.D. stands for improvised explosive device.
That the sergeant survived at all is incredible. He will never be the same.
"All I remember is, like, sparks," he said during an interview this week at the Washington headquarters of Disabled American Veterans. "I saw these sparks, and then the whole truck kind of caved in."
The first time he regained consciousness, he was lying on his back in the road. And he remembers, with the dark humor common to troops in combat, a brief John Wayne-like moment.
"My buddy was trying to resuscitate me. He thought I was dead. I came to for a very brief time, and he was about to give me mouth-to-mouth. I said, `What do you think you're doing, trying to make out with me or something?' And he said, `Sergeant Hall, you're alive!' And everybody's like, `Hey, Sergeant Hall's alive!' All I remember after that is hearing the Blackhawk helicopter coming down, and I just lost consciousness from there."
He wouldn't wake up again for another 45 days.
Sergeant Hall's mother, Kim, who is 40, sat beside him during the interview. From time to time she rubbed salve on the burns that have disfigured both of her son's hands. The sergeant also has a burn across the bridge of his nose. The lower half of his face, which had to be reconstructed because both of his jaws were broken and 10 of his teeth were blown out and part of his palate was destroyed, looks surprisingly normal. The surgeons at Walter Reed Army hospital seem to have done a good job.
Sergeant Hall also sustained a brain injury, but you can't tell that from talking to him. He's not just lucid — he's bright and funny. (He compared the negotiating process for his enlistment bonus to plea-bargaining.) But he tires easily. And he gets headaches.
He also had three bones in his back broken, and his arm was broken, and he lost his left leg below the knee.
This, of course, is what war does to people. It takes the human body and grinds it up like sausage meat.
Sergeant Hall was the most severely wounded victim of the attack. When his mother was informed by phone that he had been hurt, the caller said his death was most likely "imminent."
"He was in the hospital in Germany," Ms. Hall said, "and it took me a few days with the visa and everything to get over there. So every night I would call and beg the nurse in the middle of the night to please put the phone by his ear and I would talk to him, even though he was unconscious. I don't know for sure that he heard me, but I like to believe that he did."
Ms. Hall recalled a moment at Walter Reed when a decision had to be made about the amputation of Sergeant Hall's leg. She spotted a young man her son knew who was a triple amputee. "He had lost three limbs and his father was pushing him in the wheelchair, and they were laughing and talking. And I thought, `You know, if they can do that, well——' I kind of knew then that we would be all right."
Sergeant Hall said he doesn't dwell on his injuries, and he hasn't had to wrestle with bouts of rage or bitterness. "You try to have a good attitude," he said, "because there are other people around you with injuries that are more severe. Even on your worst days, you kind of feel, you know, that if you don't keep a good attitude you're letting down the people around you."
He said he joined the Army to earn money for college and to serve his country, and that he didn't regret enlisting.
Ms. Hall leaned over and gently rubbed more lotion onto his hands.
Sergeant Hall said he expected he'd be able to run pretty soon. He is looking forward to it. Keeping busy, he said, helps keep his spirits up. He said he felt he was doing pretty well, considering all the "amazing stuff" that had happened to him.
-
Simply Joel
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When holding your ground, you still need soldiers...
NAJAF, Iraq - A U.S. Army patrol stops suspicious vehicles on the edges of this insurgent-controlled city.
Some 500 yards away, lying prone and hidden in the sand, two expert marksmen stalk Iraqis emerging from cars through the cross-hairs of their rifles.
If they detect a sudden, hostile move, the snipers should be able to kill the assailant with a single bullet before the patrol itself can react.
"We can't get enough of them," says Capt. Damien Mason, from Maui, Hawaii, a company commander who ordered the two shooters into position. "Snipers are vital in this kind of warfare."
Mason's commanding officer, Lt. Col. Karl Reed, describes snipers in Iraq as a "political weapon," ideally able to isolate and knock out combatants without harming civilians whom insurgents often use as human shields.
"You run into bad guys in a school with children. A regular infantry squad can't really cope. That's when you need snipers. They prevent civilian casualties, and thus political problems," said Reed, who commands the Stryker's Brigade 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment.
Officers say snipers in Iraq have inflicted the greatest number of casualties during counter-sniper fire or protecting an advancing unit by hanging back and watching for an insurgent to appear at a window or peer around a corner.
Despite thermal targeting devices and other battlefield wizardry, the technological advantage of U.S. forces drops sharply the moment a unit moves into the warrens of alleys, walled compounds and low, flat-roofed buildings that dominate Iraq's urban centers.
At such times, the finely honed skills of the snipers must kick in, and the fighting becomes close-up and dependent on raw instinct.
"It's more personal than regular combat. You see the man's expression before you pull the trigger, then the blood and the fall," says Cpl. Omar Torres, a sniper with the 2nd Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division.
The 23-year-old soldier and others rate their Iraqi counterparts low on training and ingenuity, saying opposing snipers invariably use upper stories of houses or rooftops and aren't armed with particularly accurate weapons. Nonetheless, they're among the main killers of U.S. forces after roadside bombers.
Torres, of Waterbury, Conn., is one of only five fully qualified snipers in the regiment's 2nd Battalion, having gone through the army's rigorous sniper school at Ft. Benning, Ga.
Up to 70 percent of a class fails the five-week course. Successful students become masters of camouflage, stealth and ability to identify hostile faces in a crowd by their expressions and movements.
In Torres' battalion, the snipers operate in two-man teams, one soldier wielding a sniper rifle and the other armed with an automatic fire weapon, says Staff Sgt. Carlo Pokos, a Croatian-American who is the unit's top sniper.
Pokos says snipers often move into a targeted area 24 to 48 hours before an attack to observe and pick targets, avoiding detection at all costs. "You measure your movement in inches, not in feet," the 26-year-old master marksman says.
Before deploying to Iraq, his men had brown-colored sheets sewn into camouflage wear, making them appear like just another small rise in the desert sand.
The standard M-24 sniper rifle is of the same hue, a bolt-action weapon with which a sniper is expected to make "head shots" at up to 600 yards and "body kills" at a maximum range of 1,000 yards.
Sometimes snipers accomplish more by inspiring fear than by pulling triggers.
Called to the Kosovo town of Gnjilane, where ethnic Albanians had been attacking Serbs and gypsies, Pokos and seven other snipers scanned the town around-the-clock from a radio tower. The eerie sensation that a silent, deadly marksman could be viewing them at any time through a rifle scope, stopped the killers.
Pokos, who like some snipers declines to talk about how many people he has killed, says that total concentration and calculation must be brought to bear on the moment when the trigger is pulled, as well as the distance, weather, state of the rifle, the amount of sleep and coffee one has had.
"It's just you and your buddy and you've got to make the call on the ground and the one call is all you get," he says. "The only thing you must think about are those cross-hairs."
Some 500 yards away, lying prone and hidden in the sand, two expert marksmen stalk Iraqis emerging from cars through the cross-hairs of their rifles.
If they detect a sudden, hostile move, the snipers should be able to kill the assailant with a single bullet before the patrol itself can react.
"We can't get enough of them," says Capt. Damien Mason, from Maui, Hawaii, a company commander who ordered the two shooters into position. "Snipers are vital in this kind of warfare."
Mason's commanding officer, Lt. Col. Karl Reed, describes snipers in Iraq as a "political weapon," ideally able to isolate and knock out combatants without harming civilians whom insurgents often use as human shields.
"You run into bad guys in a school with children. A regular infantry squad can't really cope. That's when you need snipers. They prevent civilian casualties, and thus political problems," said Reed, who commands the Stryker's Brigade 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment.
Officers say snipers in Iraq have inflicted the greatest number of casualties during counter-sniper fire or protecting an advancing unit by hanging back and watching for an insurgent to appear at a window or peer around a corner.
Despite thermal targeting devices and other battlefield wizardry, the technological advantage of U.S. forces drops sharply the moment a unit moves into the warrens of alleys, walled compounds and low, flat-roofed buildings that dominate Iraq's urban centers.
At such times, the finely honed skills of the snipers must kick in, and the fighting becomes close-up and dependent on raw instinct.
"It's more personal than regular combat. You see the man's expression before you pull the trigger, then the blood and the fall," says Cpl. Omar Torres, a sniper with the 2nd Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division.
The 23-year-old soldier and others rate their Iraqi counterparts low on training and ingenuity, saying opposing snipers invariably use upper stories of houses or rooftops and aren't armed with particularly accurate weapons. Nonetheless, they're among the main killers of U.S. forces after roadside bombers.
Torres, of Waterbury, Conn., is one of only five fully qualified snipers in the regiment's 2nd Battalion, having gone through the army's rigorous sniper school at Ft. Benning, Ga.
Up to 70 percent of a class fails the five-week course. Successful students become masters of camouflage, stealth and ability to identify hostile faces in a crowd by their expressions and movements.
In Torres' battalion, the snipers operate in two-man teams, one soldier wielding a sniper rifle and the other armed with an automatic fire weapon, says Staff Sgt. Carlo Pokos, a Croatian-American who is the unit's top sniper.
Pokos says snipers often move into a targeted area 24 to 48 hours before an attack to observe and pick targets, avoiding detection at all costs. "You measure your movement in inches, not in feet," the 26-year-old master marksman says.
Before deploying to Iraq, his men had brown-colored sheets sewn into camouflage wear, making them appear like just another small rise in the desert sand.
The standard M-24 sniper rifle is of the same hue, a bolt-action weapon with which a sniper is expected to make "head shots" at up to 600 yards and "body kills" at a maximum range of 1,000 yards.
Sometimes snipers accomplish more by inspiring fear than by pulling triggers.
Called to the Kosovo town of Gnjilane, where ethnic Albanians had been attacking Serbs and gypsies, Pokos and seven other snipers scanned the town around-the-clock from a radio tower. The eerie sensation that a silent, deadly marksman could be viewing them at any time through a rifle scope, stopped the killers.
Pokos, who like some snipers declines to talk about how many people he has killed, says that total concentration and calculation must be brought to bear on the moment when the trigger is pulled, as well as the distance, weather, state of the rifle, the amount of sleep and coffee one has had.
"It's just you and your buddy and you've got to make the call on the ground and the one call is all you get," he says. "The only thing you must think about are those cross-hairs."
-
Simply Joel
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