New Revelation in Oil For Food: U.S. Worse than French, Russians

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Here's the link.

In fact, the Senate report found that US oil purchases accounted for 52% of the kickbacks paid to the regime in return for sales of cheap oil - more than the rest of the world put together.

"The United States was not only aware of Iraqi oil sales which violated UN sanctions and provided the bulk of the illicit money Saddam Hussein obtained from circumventing UN sanctions," the report said. "On occasion, the United States actually facilitated the illicit oil sales.

Doesn't change my view that people need to go down for this. Kofi Annan needs to go. Treasury Department officials who didn't help UN investigators and the State Department look into Bayoil's transactions need to go. Military and State Department officials who greenlighted the shipments need to go.

What a mess! Probably the biggest misappropriation scandal in history.

I Have a New Marketing Strategy for Dockers

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It's easy...Make jean jackets cool again. Once jean jackets are cool again, everyone will have one. You can't wear a jean jacket with nice slacks because you'll look like a dork. You can't wear a jean jacket with jeans because you'll look like an 80s-era denim warrior throwback. But you can wear a jean jacket with casual khakis and look reasonably normal.

See how easy it is?

Damn You, AOL Welcome Screen!

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Is there ever a link from the AOL Welcome Screen that delivers the payoff? I've kept an AOL account for many years (my whole family uses it) and from time to time, I log onto it to use Instant Messenger. Yes, I know I could download IM separately, but I'd rather not have that piece of nagware on my system, thankyouverymuch.

Every once in a while, when I log in, I find something on the Welcome Screen that might interest me. Usually it's a content feature, like today's "Is Sith Not The End? Lucas Reveals The Future." But AOL never deep-links to the content. Clicking on that story, I might expect to be delivered to an interview with Lucas in which he hints at more movies after Episode III. Instead, I end up in some generic Star Wars content area on Moviefone and have to search around for what attracted me there in the first place.

This happens almost every time I click on a Welcome Screen link, and now I have the expectation that I'm going to have to do a significant amount of digging to find what was originally touted.

Makes me wonder how much of AOL's traffic consists of pageviews from people stumbling around their content trying to find stuff that was touted on the Welcome Screen...