{"id":327,"date":"2004-02-01T08:13:20","date_gmt":"2004-02-01T08:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:08:29","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:08:29","slug":"shifting_sands_indeed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=327","title":{"rendered":"Shifting Sands, Indeed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was listening to the radio as I drove from DC down to Charlottesville (where I am right now, having enjoyed a great evening with former blogger and frequent commenter Rob Lyman who is another in the string of smart fascinating people I&#8217;ve met through blogging), and Scott Ritter was on, pointing out that of all the analysts, his take on Iraqi WMD was the closest to what we&#8217;ve found.<\/p>\n<p>He gets some points for that, in my view.<\/p>\n<p>But&#8230;He was asked what the accusation that he&#8217;d been &#8220;bought by the Iraqis&#8221; was based on, and he explained that it was baseless, because an Iraqi-American had used his own money to finance Ritter&#8217;s $400,000 documentary &#8220;On Shifting Sands&#8221;. I remember wondering as I drove &#8220;Hmmm. Wonder where the Iraqi guy got his money.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Today I got my answer.<\/p>\n<p>ABC news <a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/sections\/WNT\/Investigation\/saddam_oil_vouchers_040129-4.html\" target=\"browser\">published a list<\/a> of the people who got money from Saddam&#8217;s Bribes for Oil program, and among them&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>&#8220;Shakir Alkhalaji: 10.5 million barrels of oil, sold at below-market prices&#8221;<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>. That would be the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/articles\/2003\/03\/26\/1048653744773.html\" target=\"browser\">same guy<\/a> who financed Ritter&#8217;s movie.<\/p>\n<p>So now I&#8217;m left with a second question; how did the budget for the film break out? What did Ritter get as a producer&#8217;s fee?<\/p>\n<p>And, if he was bought and paid for, even indirectly, how does that effect my views on what he said?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was listening to the radio as I drove from DC down to Charlottesville (where I am right now, having enjoyed a great evening with former blogger and frequent commenter Rob Lyman who is another in the string of smart fascinating people I&#8217;ve met through blogging), and Scott Ritter was on, pointing out that of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}