Last month, the discovery of documents from Saddam Hussein's oil ministry showed that Saddam Hussein was making payoffs to some 270 companies, organizations and individuals in fifty different countries.

Because the U.N. allowed Saddam Hussein to decide who received contracts under the "Oil for Food" program, he was able to use it as a personal slush fund to pay off his defenders.

France and Russia were two of the most stubborn supporters of the Hussein regime, and their friendship was rewarded well: Russian interests got the biggest cut of the loot, while the French came in second.

Since 1996, Russia has ranked first among nations doing business with Iraq under the oil-for-food program with sales exceeding $4 billion, and Russia still hopes to collect the $12 billion in cold-war-era debt owed by Iraq.

In 2002, under the oil-for-food program, France sold $1.5 billion worth of goods to Iraq, the most of any nation. Major French companies like communications giant Alcatel and automakers Peugeot and Renault all had business ties to Saddam.

France's Total Fina Elf had exclusive rights to develop the Majnoon and Bin Umar oil fields which are believed to be the largest in the world and estimated to hold 35 billion barrels of oil; more than three times Total Fina Elf's current reserves.

On December 8, 2002, Saddam sent both Russia and France a message when it cancelled the $4 billion contract with Russia's Lukoil to develop the West Qurna oil field.

French oil firms, fearing they were next, began pressuring the French government to force the UN to resolve the Iraq crisis 'peacefully' and Total Fina Elf demanded assurances its oil contacts in Iraq will be protected.

Documents found in the Iraqi foreign ministry building proved the French gave regular briefings to Saddam Hussein on details of US intentions. The documents, which have been authenticated, showed the French kept Saddam abreast of every development in US planning and may have helped him to prepare for war.

Another, dated September 25, 2001, from Naji Sabri, the Iraqi foreign minister, to Saddam's palace, was based on a briefing from the French ambassador in Baghdad and covered talks between presidents Jacques Chirac and President Bush.

And last October, when 40 rockets were fired at an American government office in Baghdad, at least half of them were determined to have been made by France AFTER the U.N. weapons embargo went into effect in the wake of the first Gulf War.

Assessment:

Nary a day goes by without some news story about poor US intelligence, or complaints from the UN, or France, or Germany -- or Democrats -- that the US unseated Saddam based on flawed intelligence or deliberate manipulation of known facts.

Or stories about US failures in Iraq, or US troops being 'bogged down' by terrorist activity or a lack of cooperation from local Iraqis, etc., etc.

When the news isn't running stories about the president being a crook, or innuendo pieces about Haliburton contracts (Dick Cheney's former company. Did you know?), there are stories about how homeland security is too restrictive, too lax, too intrusive, or too weak.

But NOBODY is talking about when our alleged allies sold us out to Saddam Hussein. Nobody is talking about the improprieties surrounding the UN's administration of Iraq's Oil-For-Food program that bought Saddam computers, new Mercedes', weapons components, but very little food.

Nobody is investigating the secret slush-funds Saddam used to pay off politicians like British MP George Galloway. (Galloway personally pulled in nearly $10 million while defending Saddam.)

Why is the fact Saddam's allies profited by pocketing the difference between the price of oil under the U.N.'s "Oil for Food" program and the price of oil on the open market not news?

Especially since some of these allies included "a close political associate and financial backer of French President Jacques Chirac", "Russian political figures" including "the Russian ambassador to Baghdad" and "officials in the office of President Vladimir Putin", according to the documents?

In the April 11, 2003 issue of the Omega Letter Daily Intelligence Digest, we outlined most of this information, although at that time, the documents confirming them had not yet been discovered inside Iraq.

This is what we reported. . ."with the U.N. skimming enormous administrative fees off the top and then diverting another chunk to 'war reparations' despite the fact the UN now says the cost of the war should be borne by the coalition.

Perhaps this accounts, in some small measure, for these entities’ lenient stance toward Saddam's Iraq. It also explains Kofi Annan's bizarre claim the other day that allowing the UN to head the rebuilding Iraq would give the war 'international legitimacy.'

If allowing the UN to profit from a war it opposed would make it 'legitimate' then the reasons for conducting the war in the first place are also legitimate. The only thing that is different is how big a cut the UN gets of the pie, no?

The UN's stake in Iraq is exceeded only by that of France or Russia. Iraqi trade continued growing, even through last year. France has become Iraq’s top European trading partner, displacing Russia.

Nearly 60 percent of French companies have business ties with Iraq, pulling in $1.5 billion annually. France ranks as Iraq’s third largest trading partner under the UN’s Oil-for-Food program, raking in $3.1 billion since 1996.

(Russia is number one, incidentally, with a cool $4.3 billion.)"

So, if we knew this last year, why hasn't any of this ever made the nightly news? Why isn't the 'watchdog American media' screaming for an investigation of how the United Nations and our European allies sold America down the river for money?

Shouldn't somebody among the liberal media be at least curious about Jacques Chirac giving Saddam Hussein briefings on secret discussions with American officials, including the President of the United States, on the eve of war?

All of the available evidence points toward a massive bribery scandal on a global scale, and makes clear that our alleged allies helped to prop up Saddam's regime for a decade -- in exchange for MONEY!

The reason the mainstream won't touch what is potentially the biggest global scandal in history, dwarfing Watergate, is because they are complicit in it.

Desperate to discredit what they believe is an illegitimate Bush administration, the mainstream press joined the conspiracy, which is why it is now reluctant to discuss it.

We referred to them at the time as the 'useful idiots' of Saddam Hussein and his puppetmasters in Europe and the UN -- the only news they saw fit to report was news that made George Bush (and, by extension, America) look bad.

Thanks to the useful idiots, the United States' global reputation has never been worse, while the UN, Russia, France and Germany are looked up to as the heroes who dared challenge an arrogant US administration.

The truth is that the media sold America out, too. They wanted to believe the French, Germans and UN about Iraq because they wanted to believe they were right about George Bush.

And any investigation that looked at what was really taking place in the lead-up to the war with Saddam's Iraq would expose them for the treasonous, but useful, idiots that they are.

"trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. . ." (2 Timothy 3:3-5)