WAR IN BRIEF : WASHINGTON, D.C. : U.S. Reports Success in Embargo on Iraq

The United States has shut down companies secretly controlled by Iraq and seized nearly $10 million in goods destined for Baghdad since U.N. economic sanctions were imposed, U.S. Customs officials told a House subcommittee. “You may ask, ‘Is the embargo working?’ I believe it is,” said John C. Kelley Jr., director of the Customs Service’s strategic investigations division. But Stephen Bryen, a former Defense Department official and now a private consultant, testified: “The export-control system we have is today in a shambles. It is run by insensitive bureaucrats who would not be able to tell the difference between a chemical-weapons aerosol and an underarm deodorant.”