One Quart Low

Imagine for a moment the following scenario: an investigative news team uncovers proof that the Bush family, on the eve of declaring his candidacy for President in 2000, had divested himself of $250,000 to as much as $500,000 of stock from Saudi-controlled interests that in turn helped finance the 9/11 hi-jackers.

The leftist media would come unhinged!!! And we Americans would rightfully come unhinged with them.

But that imaginary scenario did not happen. However, a similar but real scenario did occur in 2002. Apparently, a candidate for President in 2004, prior to his declaring his intentions to run, sold up to $500,000 worth of stock in a French bank that handled funds for the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq.

What’s the significance of this? That bank made tens of millions of dollars in fees and did not properly monitor transactions involving Saddam Hussein's oil sales, that’s the significance. The Banque Nationale de Paris-Paribas, or BNP Paribas, was the sole bank for administering the $64 billion U.N. program and did not have adequate checks on whether money was being funneled to terrorists, a House International Relations Committee probe found. This is the same money that Saddam used to buy off the UN weapons inspectors, French officials, and potentially, German and Russian officials on the UN Security Council.

The French are severely entangled in the UN oil-for-food scandal. The oil-for-food program has ended up funding families of homicide bombers in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The more we learn about the details, the more sordid it becomes.

Can you imagine how this would be reported if the candidate above were a Republican? Oh yeah. I forgot to mention that, didn’t I? Yes, the real scenario I described involves John Kerry and his family. Not a Republican. Maybe that’s why you haven’t heard about it, hmm?

Did Kerry have any inkling of what was going on at BNP Paribas and the UN oil-for-food program. No. Not based on everything we knew in 2002. But based on everything we knew in 2003, Saddam was hiding his WMD program and refusing to disarm. So we invaded Iraq and now we can’t find the WMD. Ain’t hindsight 20/20?

We continue to get inundated with the media contentions about the intelligence after the fact not supporting our attacking Iraq. We constantly hear that Halliburton got no bid contracts because Dick Cheney still has them in his back pocket. Does that mean that Bill Clinton also had them in his back pocket?

The Clinton Administration gave Halliburton the same “sweetheart” deals for which Administration is being vilified. But on this the media is silent. And on the BNP Paribas stock sale by Kerry, the media is silent.

The day has arrived that we as Americans can tell when the media is making the news instead of reporting it. One need only listen for the raging clamor or the deafening silence. When the media bombards us loud enough to make it difficult for us to think, then they are making news. When the media is silent, then they are failing to report on one of their favorite sons’ sins.