[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 13 (Wednesday, February 9, 2005)]
[House]
[Page H418]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           IRAQ OIL PROCEEDS

  (Mr. KUCINICH asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. KUCINICH. Madam Speaker, prior to invading Iraq, looking for 
weapons of mass destruction, this administration looked the other way 
at illegal shipments of Iraqi oil to Jordan, Syria and Turkey, which 
earned at least $8.5 billion for Saddam Hussein's regime. Now the 
administration cannot account for an additional $9 billion from Iraqi 
oil proceeds which was supposed to go to help the Iraqi people.
  While Congress busies itself about how $2 billion was illegally 
diverted to Saddam from the U.N.'s Oil-For-Food Program, it would also 
be instructive to find out why it was apparently administration policy 
to let Saddam Hussein earn four times that amount through illegal oil 
shipments.
  Before Congress gives another $80 billion for the war in Iraq, the 
American people would find it instructive for Congress to ask what 
happened with the unaccounted-for $9 billion which also came from Iraq 
oil proceeds.
  Madam Speaker, before the war, Iraq was about oil. As the war 
continues, it is about billions in unaccounted-for oil revenues which 
the U.S. had custody of, responsibility for; and now nobody knows 
nothing.

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