Australian Company’s Role in Oil-for-Food Must Be Looked Into

The Australian Wheat Board’s kickbacks lined the pockets of Saddam Hussein and continued after the fall of his government. That money should have gone to feed hungry Iraqis through the U.N. Oil for Food Program. We need to find out who benefited from these kickbacks and whether there’s a way to recover the funds and return them to the Iraqi people.America’s wheat farmers deserve to know why their questions about AWB were not investigated by the Bush Administration. Our wheat farmers lost out to AWB on opportunities to compete for Iraqi wheat sales because their concerns were ignored. It’s the administration’s responsibility to ensure U.S. farmers can compete internationally. In this instance, the administration appears to have sided with AWB rather than American farmers.