[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 97 (Wednesday, July 14, 2004)]
[House]
[Page H5784]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page H5784]]
 UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL RECIPIENT NATIONS OIL-FOR-FOOD PROGRAM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to 
address the House tonight and the opportunity to discuss the issue that 
is in the front of the American consciousness, and that is the issue of 
the United Nations and the involvement of the members of the United 
Nations with the world policy and how things have evolved from the 
United Nations world policy with regard to Iraq and the Iraqi Oil-for-
Food program that has been going on now since about the middle 1990s.
  As the Speaker will remember, and the people in this country will 
remember, the sanctions that were against the United Nations that were 
established after Desert Storm were lifted, to some degree, to allow 
the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein to trade existing oil 
production that they had for humanitarian supplies, which included food 
and medicine, into Iraq, and the structure of the Oil-for-Food program 
that was established there and the bureaucracy of the United Nations 
and the $10.1 billion that we believe has been scooped out of that 
program and gone into the pockets of bureaucrats at the expense of the 
Iraqi people and of course the expense of the credibility of the United 
Nations themselves.
  Now, I would first like to back up a little bit and describe who the 
United Nations really are, and there is a misconception in this country 
that the United Nations, since there is someone seated there from every 
member nation and each nation has a voice and each nation has a vote 
and we have five members of the permanent Security Council and we have 
a total of five members of the Security Council, the other members 
which rotate, we get the perception and we make the mistake that the 
United Nations somehow represents the will of the people of the world, 
that its democratic governments, or I should say in my preference is 
constitutional republican governments, that send their representatives 
there that are the voice of the people that now speak at the United 
Nations. And in fact, that is quite a ways from the truth.
  Some nations do do that. Free nations do that, but there are nations 
there and many of them are represented by dictators, who, if they are 
not speaking for themselves, their representative speaks for them. The 
people in those countries do not have the ability or do not have the 
right to speak up for themselves. They do not have the chance to go to 
the polls and vote nor direct their national destiny or determine who 
their leader will be that directs their national destiny.
  So the United Nations has become, over the years, an organization 
that I term to be a third-world class and debate society, and the 
structure of the United Nations is not democratic. It is not 
representative. It is simply the voices of the nations of the world 
rather than the voices of the people of the world.
  Well, then enter the Oil-for-Food program. Yes, we had humanitarian 
interests in Iraq, and there is no nation on this globe that has more 
commitment towards the people of Iraq than the United States of 
America, but we went along with and supported the concept of an Oil-
for-Food program, and what we got was a program that enriched the 
bureaucrats, enriched the Saddam Hussein regime to the tune of $10.1 
billion.
  And here is a little bit of the structure of how that works on this 
easel to my left. This red represents the greatest recipient nation of 
the scoop of oil for food. Now, that is Russia, and then the rest of 
this colored spectrum here are these other nations along the way, all 
in differing degrees. France, a major player, of course. We would 
expect that. China a major player. This is just a sample of some of the 
money that has gone to these nations.
  I took a look at the resistance to America's interests in going into 
the nation of Iraq prior to our invasion and occupation there, and I 
wondered why was it that the resonance of the resistance to American 
policy was so strong and so great. And I asked at the time, do they 
have financial interests there? What are their interests?
  Well, one of the things, is oil for food. Some of these countries 
stood to profit a great deal from the Oil-for-Food program. This gives 
a little better perspective on where these interests came from. This is 
broken down by continent. The big blue is Europe, and that does include 
Russia, Germany, and France. Eighty-seven percent of the Oil-for-Food 
scoop that we know at this point, or we believe allegedly at this 
point, that came out of that program that should have gone to the 
benefit of the Iraqi people really went to Europe itself; and these are 
the countries, by the way, that stood up and opposed our policy in 
Iraq.
  So I took the Security Council itself, and I broke it down into five 
nations, Russia, France, China, Great Britain and the United States, 
and asked the question, what percentage then of the Oil-for-Food 
profits that were going out of that program off the tables of the Iraqi 
people was going into these countries of the Security Council, the 
permanent members of the Security Council, those five members?
  Three of those nations collected 99.1 percent of that money that 
should have gone to the Iraqi people, at least by the numbers that we 
have in front of us today; 99.1 percent went to Russia, France and 
China together. None of those nations supported our policy in Iraq. All 
of them opposed us in differing degrees of disagreement and 
aggressiveness, but I think that tells us that the decibels of their 
resistance were indexed to the Oil-for-Food program in some part.
  And in another part, and I do not have the chart here tonight, how 
many oil development contracts did they have prepared that would give 
them an opportunity to develop that if Saddam would have stayed in 
power in Iraq? We will index that another time.
  And additionally, I am just going to quickly show this policy here. 
This is the flowchart of some of the Oil-for-Food scam that went on and 
this Congress needs to look into this, and we need to get the answers, 
and we need to do a full investigation within the United Nations. This 
is far too complicated to explain. This is simply a commercial so that 
I can come up another time and explain it to you. Madam Speaker, I will 
bring this back another night.

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