SHOCK and AWB

Kickback revelation left AWB board thunderstruck

"JUST five days before taking the stand at the Cole inquiry, the AWB managing director, Andrew Lindberg, told fellow board members "there was nothing to worry about", a non-executive director, Christopher Moffet, said in evidence yesterday.

Yet at that January 12 board meeting, Mr Lindberg also told directors that AWB had paid after-sales service fees which ended up in the hands of Saddam Hussein's regime.

When asked by counsel assisting the inquiry if the admission seemed "potent" at the time, Mr Moffet replied: "'Explosive' would be a word I would have chosen"."

I have to say, what with all the hubbub trying to connect the dots in this scandal, particularly the dots that trail off into the cloud of Canberra, that there is one major thing that is, to me, glaringly wrong (apart from the bribes and sanction busting in the first place) and no one has mentioned it. Even the unable Opposition, so busy trying to lay a political glove on the Howard team, which "stings like a bee and floats like a butterfly" better than Ali ever could, misses the point.

It is this: the Iraqi wheat deal stinks. Whether it is illegal, whether anyone gets pinned for the blame, whether there is a smoking gun deep inside the board or the government, the whole thing is morally wrong. An nobody is saying so. Nobody is condemning what is so obviously apparent, that the AWB traded with the Iraqi regimes in devious, deceitful and unethical ways that included the payment of hundreds of millions of dollars to Saddam's terrorist organisation, an organisation that was so greatly more evil than bin Laden that the coalition actually went out and captured the guy.

Where is Howard standing up and saying, if AWB people did this it is reprehensible. If the AWB board was thunderstruck, why didn't they roll some heads, apologise to the public, make recompense to the innocent Iraqi people who were the intended beneficiaries of the humanitarian aid? How can Downer be so "relaxed" in the face of this scandal?

Why isn't Labor asking Howard, would you condone breaches of the Oil-for-Food sanctions regime? Why aren't they asking him, would you condemn anyone dealing in bribes with the Saddam regime to rort the food program? Labor is just so busy painting it's factional self as "venal" when not even "naughty" has been applied to AWB.

Why isn't anyone condemning these people? Is it just a case of "boys will be boys"? I'm afraid it is, and that is a very depressing thought.

So which master was Trevor Flugge serving while in Iraq?

He got AusAID but needed a Hearing AID