“Everybody down the line kept very meticulous records because Saddam told them, 'You get the surcharge from everybody,' ... So they all wanted to document how they got the surcharge.”
“The cumulative impact of this is pretty impressive, ... Somebody should have stood up and said, 'Enough.' But they didn't, so it ended up being much more controversial than it should have been considering that the main objectives of the program were in a sense achieved.”
“I hope to reinforce the recognition of the need for reform, ... There's a lot of nominal support for administrative reform, but whether they will actually carry out an effective reform is still very much in the balance.”
“The responses range from absolute denial to complete admittance, ... Some said, 'We had no knowledge of it' - that's a pretty standard response - and some said, 'If we paid it, we don't know we paid it.' ”