Yup. The Oil-for-food scandal *was* awful....

... but mostly because it was Americans perpetrating it...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Virginia oil trading company pleaded guilty on Thursday to charges of scheming to pay more than $400,000 in kickbacks to Iraq for oil purchases made as part of the defunct U.N. oil-for-food program for Iraq.

It's a good thing republicans cried out so hard for the prosecution of the American companies that committed these crimes, just like they called for Kofi Anan's head...

At this point, it's good for us to recall outfits like fox news, norm coleman, and the rest of the gang:

NEW YORK — It began as a U.N. humanitarian aid program called "Oil-for-Food," but it ended up with Saddam Hussein (search) pocketing billions to become the biggest graft-generating machine ever and enriching some of America's most forceful opponents at the United Nations (search).

Plus, some evidence suggests that some of the money ended up in the hands of potential terrorists who are opposed to the United States.

And, from the same article:

"There is a lot of smoke," Volcker told FOX News on June 23, when asked if he thinks the Oil-for-Food program was corrupt. "There are obviously big problems, and we want to see how big they were and why did they happen. Why did all this happen, in some sense, under everybody's noses?"

Shays and Sen. Norm Coleman (search) -- leaders of two of at least five federal Oil-for-Food investigations -- have started firing off subpoenas.

Pssst - hey norm: This happened under your noses because you let companies that support you and your party do it. You yourself are complicit in this. Fucker.

Note: Google wasn't able to help me out much regarding the guilty company, Midway Trading - they're privately held. All I was able to find out was that one of their executives contributed $180 to the RNC in 2004. Cheapskate.