$21 Billon of Corruption and they still call it "Oil for Food"

Captain's Quarters reports the Senate Committee discovery that Saddam diverted over $21 billion dollars from the misnamed UN Oil for Food program.

$21 Billion! You know, you could buy a lot of "friends" for that kind of money. And he tried.
All right, Kofi, the ball is in your court to explain how this happened. Try to keep a straight face.

Here's some irony:

Senator Joe Lieberman concurred in Coleman's analysis, saying that Saddam corrupted UNSCAM in order to fund his military ambitions...But the committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, said "for the most part the U.N. sanctions achieved their intended objective of preventing Saddam from rearming and developing weapons of mass destruction."

Levin must have missed the news about the 600,000 tons of ordnance and other explosives scattered around Iraq.
I have videos from post-Desert Storm taken by Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal teams blowing up tons of stuff in 1991. My guess is that Saddam did a whole lotta shopping to replenish those stocks. Levin must also be clueless about how easy it is to restart a biological WMD program is you've got the kind of shekels that Saddam had.

Update: More and a link to the testimony at Power Line.

"How was the world so blind to this massive amount of influence-peddling?" asked Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, head of the investigations subcommittee.

Sometimes, Senator, you only see what you choose to see.