Reuters - CIA: Saddam Bought Off Countries, People with Oil

The Central Intelligence Agency has published hundreds of names of people, firms, political parties and government officials Saddam Hussein purportedly tried to buy off to get U.N. sanctions lifted.

At the same time, Saddam and his government managed to amass some $11 billion through shadowy deals to circumvent the sanctions, first imposed in 1990 and lifted after the U.S.-led invasion a year ago, said the report, released on Wednesday.

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The lists, parts of which had been published previously, were compiled from 13 secret files maintained by former Iraqi vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan and the former oil minister, Amir Rashid.

Washington Times - Saddam paid off French leaders

Saddam Hussein used a U.N. humanitarian program to pay $1.78 billion to French government officials, businessmen and journalists in a bid to have sanctions removed and U.S. policies opposed, according to a CIA report made public yesterday.

The cash was part of $10.9 billion secretly skimmed from the U.N. oil-for-food program, which was used by Iraq to buy military goods, according to a 1,000-page report by the CIA-led Iraqi Survey Group.

... One Iraqi intelligence report stated that a French politician assured Saddam in a letter that France would use its veto in the U.N. Security Council against any U.S. effort to attack Iraq.

...Former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz told the Survey Group that he personally awarded several Frenchmen "substantial" oil allotments.

AP - Cheney: Weapons Report Justifies Iraq War

Vice President Dick Cheney asserted on Thursday that a report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, who found no evidence that Iraq produced weapons of mass destruction after 1991, justifies rather than undermines President Bush's decision to go to war.

..."The suggestion is clearly there by Mr. Duelfer that Saddam had used the program in such a way that he had bought off foreign governments and was building support among them to take the sanctions down," Cheney said.

That being the case, there was no reason to wait to invade Iraq to give inspectors more time to do their work, Cheney said.