JAMES JENNINGS
On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that “Chevron, the second-largest American oil company, is preparing to acknowledge that it should have known kickbacks were being paid to Saddam Hussein on oil it bought from Iraq as part of a defunct United Nations program, according to investigators. … At the time, Condoleezza Rice, now secretary of state, was a member of Chevron’s board and led its public policy committee, which oversaw areas of potential political concerns for the company.” [full text]

Jennings led humanitarian aid projects in Iraq during the period of US-UK sanctions on that country. He said today: “Rice’s former corporation, Chevron, is being fined by the U.S. government for paying illegal kickbacks to Saddam Hussein at a time when Condoleezza Rice was sitting on their board. From August 2000, until January 2001, Rice was on Chevron’s board… Both the Clinton and Bush administrations ignored the ongoing sanctions violations by five U.S. oil companies, even though they were piling up huge profits. American consumers were unknowingly pumping Iraqi oil while Iraq’s children were dying by the tens of thousands under oppressive sanctions. Through it all Saddam got his kickbacks and Rice her profits. After leaving Chevron, she joined Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld in planning their ill-fated attack on Iraq. Coastal Corporation has already paid a fine. Now the Bush administration wants to punish Chevron, but apparently not those persons like Condoleezza Rice under whose nose the scam was performed.”
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RAED JARRAR
JOSHUA HOLLAND
Jarrar and Holland wrote the recent piece “Majority of Iraqi Lawmakers Now Reject Occupation,” which states: “On Tuesday, without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members of Iraq’s parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country; 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal, according to Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Al Sadr movement, the nationalist Shia group that sponsored the petition.

“It’s a hugely significant development. Lawmakers demanding an end to the occupation now have the upper hand in the Iraqi legislature for the first time; previous attempts at a similar resolution fell just short of the 138 votes needed to pass (there are 275 members of the Iraqi parliament, but many have fled the country’s civil conflict, and at times it’s been difficult to arrive at a quorum).” Jarrar is Iraq consultant for the American Friends Service Committee.
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020