Claudia Rosett on the oil-for-food travesty:

In a world beset right now by terrorist threats — which depend on terrorist financing — it's time to acknowledge that the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food program was worse than simply a case of grand larceny. Given Saddam's proclivities for deceit and violence, Oil-for-Food was also a menace to security. By letting Saddam pick his own business partners and draw up his own shopping lists, by keeping the details of his contracts and accounts secret, and by then failing abjectly to supervise the process, the U.N. — through a program meant to aid the people of Iraq — enabled Saddam to line his pockets while bankrolling his pals world-wide.

And just who were those pals? Emphasis is my own:

In Oil-for-Food, "Every contract tells a story," says John Fawcett, a financial investigator with the New York law firm of Kreindler & Kreindler LLP, which has sued the financial sponsors of Sept. 11 on behalf of the victims and their families. In an interview, Mr. Fawcett and his colleague, Christine Negroni, run down the lists of Oil-for-Food authorized oil buyers and relief suppliers, pointing out likely terrorist connections. One authorized oil buyer, they note, was a remnant of the defunct global criminal bank, BCCI. Another was close to the Taliban while Osama bin Laden was on the rise in Afghanistan; a third was linked to a bank in the Bahamas involved in al Qaeda's financial network; a fourth had a close connection to one of Saddam's would-be nuclear-bomb makers.

Opponents and detractors of Iraq's liberation may change stories and distort arguments but they can't alter logic: sending money to terrorist contacts and fissile merchants constitutes involvement. And we know Saddam's cooperation with terrorism went far beyond friendly donations. Read the article for yourself. There's more. Much more. It pains me that a consummate repudiation of the left's dissembling and history revision is happening only now, after months of confidence having ebbed from level-headed Americans about a war they were right to support in the first place; but if that support can be returned and the country again steadies itself to face terror and tyranny, one year's confusion will be sacrifice enough.