Quotes & amp;amp; Notes

by Inlander Staff


Saddam U. -- Apparently, such a school exists, and there are at least three grads. According to the German public television network ZDF, at least three fake Saddams are out greeting official visitors and shooting off shotguns at military parades. In fact, the forensic scientist hired to compare 450 images of Saddam believes the real McCoy hasn't been on TV since 1998 -- until last week, when the real Saddam showed his mustachioed mug. While the dopplegangers, as the Germans call them, have Hussein's mannerisms down, different cheekbones and other features are impossible to mimic. Now if we could just hire these ZDF guys to check out Dick Cheney.





112 billion -- That's Iraq's known crude oil reserve in barrels -- known being the key word, since much of the country remains unexplored. That reserve puts Iraq second in the world to Saudi Arabia and proves that if you think this isn't about oil -- at least in part -- you'd be wrong. Some of the trickiest members of the U.N. Security Council to convince of the need for an invasion -- Russia, China and France -- have pending oil development deals with Saddam.





A Blind Eye -- One of the reasons people are so darn mad at Saddam is because of his disregard for U.N. sanctions. According to a new report by the nonprofit Coalition for International Justice, the Iraqi leader could skim off more than $2 billion of the United Nations' oil-for-food program this year. The idea was to allow oil sales to fund food for everyday Iraqi citizens. But Saddam had other ideas, so he has constructed an elaborate smuggling operation than launders oil sales through Syria and Turkey. Hey, wait a minute -- aren't Syria and Turkey our allies? Well, yes they are, and the CIJ report goes on to lambaste the U.N. and its members for not turning off this cash spigot. Why? The authors of the report conclude that the U.S. won't pressure these countries to get tough on Saddam because they need their help in the War on Terror. With friends like these...





Spreading Germs -- Anthrax, botilinum, gangrene, West Nile virus. These are some of the chemical and biological agents military planners fear could be used on our fighting men and women if the United States invades Iraq. And, according to government documents revealed by Newsweek, we gave Iraq each and every one of them. Back in the mid-1980s, Iraqi officials requested the samples for medical research, and the Commerce Department approved it. After the Gulf War, Iraq admitted that it turned them into weapons. One missed red flag: The return address on one order in 1986 was al-Munthanna, a known chemical and biological weapons plant.