Down, Periscope
I'm reading the latest "Newsweek" over dinner. Down inside, next to the story about a CIA executive caught shoplifting, is a USAToday-sized story titled "Oil-for-Food Fiasco?"
If you've got your MSM decoder ring on, it should be flashing red now, because the question mark headline usually means "we want to say something but we can't just come out and say it, so we're only going to suggest it."
And that piques my curiosity, because it seems pretty clear to me that the Duelfer report was just the latest confirmation that the Oil for Food scandal was a major fiasco, and certainly criminal on some level.
So why the question mark? Well, here's the lede:
Holy Hell, talk about turning a story totally on its head! Here's George Dubya Bush, Mister Unilateral, who dissed France and marginalized the U.N. (according to his detractors), now up against a potential President Kerry who talks about global tests and weeps for our abandoned allies, and yet the fact that the French and the U.N. are up to their necks in shit over Oil-for-Food is a problem for ... Bush?
Kerry isn't even mentioned in the article. Instead, the writers go on to hint that "Washington" is pushing for an indictment of Kofi Annan's son sometime between now and Election Day. Whether that's a smeary rumor or not, it doesn't seem like the Bush Administration regards this scandal as a "complication" of its re-election mission.
So what else could it be? The last leg of the story is a graph that begins: "Law enforcement sources say Americans who participated in alleged oil-for-food scams also may face further investigation." And it goes on to tell us that the CIA blacked out the names of those Americans from the Duelfer report! But that enterprising "Newsweek" reporters obtained an uncensored copy!
Here comes the trouble for Bush, right?
Sure enough, "Newsweek" reveals, in this order, that:
1. "Houston oil mogul Oscar Wyatt got oil allocations from Saddam which could have earned him and Coastal Corp. -- a company he founded and ran until 2000 -- profits of more than $22 million."
2. "Wyatt and his wife Lynn are major donors to political causes: since 1989 they have given nearly $700,000 in contributions ...."
And then, with a cough and a mumble and a dangling subordinate clause, "of which more than $500,000 went to Democrats."
A sentence of Wyatt self-justification, then it's "30," end of story, over and out.
What are the chances? One big Texas oilman gets tripped up in the Oil-for-Food scandal -- and he's a backer of Democrats. How many Texas oilmen in the Bush era are Democrat-supporters? Is it a coincidence that the only one that's come to my attention is alleged to have dangled in Saddam's spiderweb? Who knows? Who cares? Not "Newsweek."
You gotta figure the "15 percenters" were angling for something better than this. I imagine they wouldn't have had that voting booth story on the cover this week if they could have said "Texas oilman and major GOP donor took bribes from Saddam!" As it is, they had to settle for a shady story in the "Periscope" section, under a question-mark head -- and illustrated, incongruously, by a picture of a burning oil pipeline in Iraq. What's with that, anyhow?
The "periscope" only works if the submarine captain knows which way is up.
If you've got your MSM decoder ring on, it should be flashing red now, because the question mark headline usually means "we want to say something but we can't just come out and say it, so we're only going to suggest it."
And that piques my curiosity, because it seems pretty clear to me that the Duelfer report was just the latest confirmation that the Oil for Food scandal was a major fiasco, and certainly criminal on some level.
So why the question mark? Well, here's the lede:
"Revelations by U.S. WMD sleuth Charles Duelfer about corruption in the U.N.-run Oil-for-Food Program in Iraq could further complicate Bush-administration foreign policy." [emphasis added]
Holy Hell, talk about turning a story totally on its head! Here's George Dubya Bush, Mister Unilateral, who dissed France and marginalized the U.N. (according to his detractors), now up against a potential President Kerry who talks about global tests and weeps for our abandoned allies, and yet the fact that the French and the U.N. are up to their necks in shit over Oil-for-Food is a problem for ... Bush?
Kerry isn't even mentioned in the article. Instead, the writers go on to hint that "Washington" is pushing for an indictment of Kofi Annan's son sometime between now and Election Day. Whether that's a smeary rumor or not, it doesn't seem like the Bush Administration regards this scandal as a "complication" of its re-election mission.
So what else could it be? The last leg of the story is a graph that begins: "Law enforcement sources say Americans who participated in alleged oil-for-food scams also may face further investigation." And it goes on to tell us that the CIA blacked out the names of those Americans from the Duelfer report! But that enterprising "Newsweek" reporters obtained an uncensored copy!
Here comes the trouble for Bush, right?
Sure enough, "Newsweek" reveals, in this order, that:
1. "Houston oil mogul Oscar Wyatt got oil allocations from Saddam which could have earned him and Coastal Corp. -- a company he founded and ran until 2000 -- profits of more than $22 million."
2. "Wyatt and his wife Lynn are major donors to political causes: since 1989 they have given nearly $700,000 in contributions ...."
And then, with a cough and a mumble and a dangling subordinate clause, "of which more than $500,000 went to Democrats."
A sentence of Wyatt self-justification, then it's "30," end of story, over and out.
What are the chances? One big Texas oilman gets tripped up in the Oil-for-Food scandal -- and he's a backer of Democrats. How many Texas oilmen in the Bush era are Democrat-supporters? Is it a coincidence that the only one that's come to my attention is alleged to have dangled in Saddam's spiderweb? Who knows? Who cares? Not "Newsweek."
You gotta figure the "15 percenters" were angling for something better than this. I imagine they wouldn't have had that voting booth story on the cover this week if they could have said "Texas oilman and major GOP donor took bribes from Saddam!" As it is, they had to settle for a shady story in the "Periscope" section, under a question-mark head -- and illustrated, incongruously, by a picture of a burning oil pipeline in Iraq. What's with that, anyhow?
The "periscope" only works if the submarine captain knows which way is up.
