Just before Bill Clinton left office in January 2001, he exercised his privilege of granting Presidential pardons... which is somewhat of an understatement. With 176 criminals given pardons and commuted sentences in a single day, one might envision an "exercise" as frenetic as Richard Simmons on crack cocaine and Jolt Cola.

Among the criminals Clinton pardoned was his own brother Roger, who had been convicted of drug trafficking. Susan McDougal, who was linked to the Clintons through the Whitewater scandal, also received a pardon. So did another Whitewater aide, Stephen Smith, though he said he didn't want one. Many of the pardoned criminals had personal connections to Clinton or had donated money to his or Hillary's campaigns. Clinton pardoned Jack Williams, for instance, who had been convicted of making false statements to Federal agents. Williams was a lobbyist for Tyson Foods, the company in which Hillary Clinton invested $1,000 and miraculously made $100,000 in a single year. Another last-minute pardon recipient was Tansukhlal Bhatka, who had been convicted of tax evasion. Bhatka not only gave $5,000 to Hillary's Senate campaign, he hired her brother Hugh to lobby for his pardon. Hugh Rodham worked as a "consultant" to help other criminals gain pardons as well. For instance, Rodham received $245,000 in "consultant fees" from Allen and Vonna Jo Gregory, who had been convicted of bank fraud, but they had trouble describing his duties to Federal prosecutors when asked. The "Pardongate" irregularities were no sudden, short-lived phenomenon, either. Glenn Braswell and Carlos Vignali also hired Rodham to present their applications and were pardoned for bank fraud in March 2000. Rodham gave back most of the money, but the pardons were not reversed. It was always good, it seems, to be a friend of the Clintons... or at least a contributor.

Somewhere in the horde of Clinton pardon recipients was financier Marc Rich. In 1983, Rich was indicted on evading more than $48 million in taxes. He was also charged with 51 counts of tax fraud, tax evasion, wire fraud, racketeering and making illegal oil deals with Iran during the 1979 hostage crisis. Rich suffered terribly for his crimes... if you call living well on one's ill-gotten gains in Switzerland while fighting extradition proceedings "suffering." Denise Rich, now his ex-wife, donated an estimated $1 million to Democrat causes, including $70,000 to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign and $450,000 to the Clinton Presidential Library fund. Denise Rich was called to testify before Congress as to whether her donations and contributions were in fact payment for her husband's pardon. She pleaded the Fifth Amendment, under which "No person... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." Rich's pardon was so obviously undeserved that former President Carter criticised Clinton for it. "I don't think there's any doubt that some of the factors in his pardon was attributable to large gifts, some of which he gave to Israel, other benefactors and the influence of his former wife, so I think that was, in my opinion, disgraceful," Carter said, adding that Clinton had "brought discredit to the White House because of it."

Aside from the need to remember the truth lest we miss history's lessons, why is the improper and irregular pardon of Marc Rich worth recalling right now? Once again, Rich is in the news, involved in a scandal of monumental proportions. His name has come to light in the investigation of the Iraqi Oil for Food scam, the greatest shell game swindle ever perpetrated. Saddam Hussein pocketed some $21.3 billion dollars during the years of OFF, which was meant to relieve the effects the UN sanctions against Iraq's government were having on the Iraqi people. Instead of alleviating hunger, improving living conditions and providing medical care, that money went to buy palaces, weapons stockpiles, influence around the world, and even UN Security Council votes in favor of their oppressor. Saddam gave $300,000 to al-Qaeda in 1998, which may have helped finance the 9/11 attack, and aided the terror group Ansar al-Islam with money and material. Saddam could not have done it without the help of Marc Rich and the disregard of Kofi Annan.

Shipping records show that just a month after receiving Clinton's pardon, Rich was acting as a middleman for some of Saddam Hussein's illegal oil deals. In their zeal to shift the blame for the scandal from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and his son as well as influential figures in France, Germany, Russia and China, the "mainstream" media seems to be insinuating that Americans were somehow really culpable. ABC news, for instance, presented the Marc Rich connection in a story entitled, "Americans' Role Eyed in U.N. Oil Scandal." LA Times columnist James Traub characterises those investigating the OFF fraud as "a right-wing mob" of "vigilantes," while Annan is "the gentle and generally accommodating leader of the United Nations." Traub's real culprit is, of course, the US government, which "had dozens of people monitoring the contracts." The Liberal media performed no such service for Enron chief Ken Lay when the Enron scandal was uncovered, as far as I can recall. If Lay's son had worked for a company hired by Enron to ensure that energy prices weren't being rigged, the media would have treated it as the biggest nail in Lay's coffin. Kofi Annan's son Kojo worked for Cotecna, a Swiss firm hired to monitor the OFF program. Despite claims that he quit before Cotecna was awarded that responsibility, Kojo was still receiving pay from the company until February 2004. Members of the media will go to incredible lengths to exonerate and protect Kofi Annan from the corruption and failures over which he has presided without accountability for too long.

At a recent awards dinner, Annan made a joke about calls for his resignation, saying, "I have resigned myself... to having a good time." Everyone was delighted. What a jolly fellow! What a bon mot! In 1997, UNICEF reported that one in every four Iraq children was malnourished. In 2000, UNICEF and other organisations estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 Iraqi children were dying every month. They blamed the deaths on what they believed were harsh sanctions. In fact, those children died of the corruption and complicity of men like Saddam Hussein, Kofi Annan and Marc Rich. We may never know the true number of Iraqis killed by Saddam's evil regime, but I'm glad someone's able to laugh about it.