Back in the run-up to the Iraq war, and in the period following it, one of the minor rallying cries on Fox (and elsewhere, especially the White House, which drew up a briefer on a “Decade of Deception and Defiance” (or a “Decade of Denial and Deception,” depending on which logo you look at) was that Saddam Hussein was abusing the Oil-for-Food program, and that alone would have justified invading Iraq. Favorite boogeymen included Kofi Annan and his son, and less-well-known figures such as Benon Sevan, Vladimir Kuznetsov, and Alexander Yakovlev. But then Oscar Wyatt, head of Coastal, found himself indicted, and the cheerleading largely went quiet.
He pled guilty last year, and the Houston Chronicle is reporting that he just got home from a half-way house to finish his sentence. It’s a largely uninteresting story, really, except for one salient point: his sentence was for 12 months and 1 day. (Note that the Chronicle article stated he was sentenced to a year, but that isn’t technically accurate; as the AP reports, the sentence was for 12 months and 1 day.) This is because, were he to have been sentenced to only 12 months, he would not have been eligible to receive credit for good time. That’s just one of the many quirks of the federal sentencing system.
