Oil Men

Not to divert attention away from the mass murder & cover-up in Uzbekistan, but the US Press is once again attempting to hide information in plain sight.

The New York Times says:"The United States did not do enough to curb corruption by American companies involved in the United Nations' oil-for-food program in Iraq, say Democrats on a Senate committee investigating abuses in the program."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/politics/17food.html
It also says that BayOil fought the US governments attempts to block the illegal oil kickbacks (directly paid to Saddam).

Meanwhile...

The Guardian has a lot more detail on the content of the Senate report, which has documented evidence of Navy and State Department approval and assistance of the deal (the oil tanker had promises that they wouldn't be seized for illegal sale to Jordan) and evidence that Bush was notified by the UN several times that Saddam was sitting there, receiving kickbacks and that BayOil was refusing to open their books.http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1485649,00.html

At least the Washington Post mentioned the involvement of the State Department and Navy. Still, the US treasury simply 'missed' the violations. Even though they were repeatedly notified by UN investigators, they did not turn a blind eye... they simply ordered a copy of Bayoil's books, and promptly refused to show them to the UN. They must have thought, "Gee, we can't see anything wrong here, no way are going to let the UN see these completely legitimate expense lists."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/16/AR2005051601369.html