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International-UN-NGOs
Lynch Mob's Real Target Is the U.N., Not Annan (and the problem is?)
2004-12-03
It's not a lynch mob. There's no rope. Tar, feathers, a rail, yes. A rope, no.
Kofi Annan must be wondering whose dog he shot. A right-wing mob is gathering around him, howling for his head. And why? Because the gentle and generally accommodating leader of the United Nations has, as New York Times columnist William Safire recently put it, "brought dishonor on the Secretariat of the United Nations" through mismanagement of the U.N.'s "oil-for-food" scandal. The secretary-general must have been surprised indeed to learn that Safire and the anti-U.N. crowd hold the organization's honor so dearly.

The scandal itself is quite grave. The oil-for-food program was created in the mid-1990s to mitigate the human toll of international sanctions on the Iraqi people, but it was misused from the start. The blithely cynical administration of the program will almost certainly turn out to have been the worst managerial catastrophe in the U.N.'s history. Saddam Hussein manipulated the program to steal billions of dollars, and there is every reason to believe that he bribed political and business leaders to look the other way. He may even have bribed a leading U.N. official, though that official was not named Kofi Annan.

Investigators have not yet determined who, if anyone, committed criminal acts, nor whether Annan's son, Kojo, traded on the family name to help a company he worked with win a major contract administering the program. Of course, the vigilantes at Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page won't be deterred by that hoary principle known as "innocent until proven guilty." But Kofi Annan's critics are not just jumping the gun; they are barking up the wrong tree.
Posted by:tipper

#16  Yeah. Get those NOW types to denounce the President when he makes one of his female subordinates give him blow jobs in the Oral Office...Oh, they didn't.

Well, this time will be different.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis   2004-12-03 8:59:30 PM  

#15  Crazy fool, exactly my point. By the time the apparatik in the UN gets their word processing done, the problem is resolved. Everyone they were trying to save are DEAD.

Someone with access to the grim statistics total up how many people died in Ethiopia, Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia and Chad while the UN twiddled and fiddled with their diplomatic hand wringing and memo writing.

We can seize and maintain the moral high ground if we can get some of the leftist in NOW, the NAACP and their ilk to come out and denounce the crimes in Darfur instead of whining about womens underwear and cold showers in Gitmo.
Posted by: SOG475   2004-12-03 7:45:25 PM  

#14  SOG dont forget the ongoing gang/kiddie rapes and murders in western Sudan while Kofi has his expensive luncheons to 'study' the program for a million or more deaths/rapes......
Posted by: CrazyFool   2004-12-03 6:23:40 PM  

#13  I think most of us who read this site know that the abuses of the oil for food program were no big surprise (where is that surprise meter when I need it?)
Saddam did not build his 12 someodd palaces at 1.5 Billion a pop with food stamps or coupons from Krogers. Everyone knew the program was being abused. The infant mortality rate in Iraq was in the toilet, the hospitals were a shambles and the only people with all their teeth were Ba'athists.
All of this righteous indignation over the oil for food program is odd. We all knew that the Russkies, Frogs and Huns were getting rich off Saddam and their obstruction of US diplomatic efforts in the UN were bought off.
Its time we all admit the UN is broken, it was a great idea and had much promise but the malfeasance of the third world petty bureaucrats that came to populate it, have pretty much doomed the UN to the dustbin of history.
Put this fiasco with the oil for food program together with the Rwanda massacres and the massacres in Bosnia in front of the UN peacekeepers and you have plenty of reason to pull the plug. It is a failed institution with no will to take action. It has become a playground and welfare system for political science PhD's and gutless diplomats from all over the world.
I think the US would be well served to demand a top to bottom house cleaning.
NOW, lets talk about Darfur, there's another shining example of the UN taking strong action to avoid a humanitarian disaster.
Posted by: SOG475   2004-12-03 6:19:55 PM  

#12  He was almost a saintlike character... (Yeah... he was an angel... for the other side...)

He had the moral authority of the Nobel Prize... (Just like that mass murderer Arafat)

Yup Jules. A laugh a miniute...
Posted by: CrazyFool   2004-12-03 2:19:45 PM  

#11  Want a giggle? Look at IHT.com today and their take on the UN via UN staffers. After all this time, it turns out the "charges.. are totally unfounded and verge on the hysterical"... and the stink is just a "politically motivated attempt to discredit the organization".!
Posted by: Jules 187   2004-12-03 2:10:07 PM  

#10  One observation I've made through the years, in Switzerland, Sweden, France, the UK, and the US:

All people, and especially politicians, who strongly support the UN, are socialists who would like to have a world-wide political body with powers above and beyond the legitimate powers of a government by and for the people.

The very notion of a world body politick is statist and detrimental to freedom by nature. Ask yourself what Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry would have thought of such a prospect.
Posted by: Kalle (kafir forever)   2004-12-03 1:50:56 PM  

#9  The UN has been outdated for at least 25 years. Let's get the US out of the UN and the UN out of the US. Yesterday, not soon. I'm tired of these corrupt foriegners living in and enjoying the US and then stabbing us in the back every chance they get. Send them all home to their flea-bitten, scorpion-infested 3rd world paradises, and turn the UN building over to the US military to use for housing of homeless veterans!
Posted by: graduate flyboy   2004-12-03 1:38:12 PM  

#8  Task oriented agreements and be done with it.

Amen.
Posted by: 2b   2004-12-03 12:54:39 PM  

#7  I think that bilateral agreements and cooperative groups of nations, based upon a specific agenda should be promoted. A group of parliamentary democracies work together on a common problem and propose solutions, come up with a plan, implement it, critique it and be done. We do not need a bloated bureaucracy that is always looking for a reason to justify itself. Task oriented agreements and be done with it.

The thousands of UN bureaucrats will have to go to retraining and find real jobs.

And, no, the French govt is NOT included in this plan for now. They have a history of sticking it to us. They are our enemies, and their obstructionism, deception, and aiding and abetting our enemies has cost us US lives.
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2004-12-03 12:41:50 PM  

#6  Dar Don, why do we ned a new organization?

Who decides what is a democracy? Was Venexuela once upon a time? Is it now? Who throws out backsliders?

The idea of an "international organization" that can include or exclude members is a non-starter unless it is an alliance. Do you want another alliance with France?
Posted by: Mrs. Davis   2004-12-03 12:16:18 PM  

#5  I agree--it's time for a United Democracies or some such. No more of this BS with Syria, Libya, et al, leading a Human Rights committee or chairing other such commissions with blatant hypocrisy.
Posted by: Dar   2004-12-03 12:11:46 PM  

#4  No, its time to really start being positive about a new international organization which excludes non-democratic governments, renders voice according to GNP if not a ratio of population to GNP, and focuses on assisting [not running] joint multi-laterial cooperation and operations rather than some world government fantasy. And based out of some democratic small [population/GNP] country.
Posted by: Don   2004-12-03 11:38:07 AM  

#3  Kewl another 'Vast Right Wing Conspiracy'! Where do i sign up? The un started out as a very noble cause and FDR no doubt had a vision of a world goverment with it's seat here in the U.S. After 60 years we have a bloated organization that has basically two main purposes: 1) Spending 4+ Billion dolars and 2) Passing resolutions against Israel. The only small part that does seem to work correctly is the UNICEF organization. That's probably because the politicians are too scared to skim money off a childrens program ( but I think we should check).
Like I pointed out yesterday the un NSC is composed of members that really shouldn't be there. France has no business holding veto power over Canada let alone the U.S. Kicking France off the NSC would be a good second step in fixing the UN. The first step would be to fire Kofi, PRONTO.
Posted by: Cyber Sarge   2004-12-03 10:37:52 AM  

#2  Such typical leftist crap. First deny then lie. When that doesn't work, leak the truth one piece at a time. "Although it's true that the UN is involved in one of the biggest fruads that the civilized world has ever seen, if you are a nuanced person and look at it closely, amputating the parts off from the whole, then you can, if you strain your eyes, see it in a light that won't make it look like what it really is".

Good luck with those circulation numbers LA Times. The "wait until the facts are in" worked for Clinton's blow job. I wonder if it will fly with a mass murdering dictator bribing kleptocratic bureaucrats with money meant to buy medicine and baby food for the oppressed of the world.

But, good luck in your endeavours, LA times. It does you proud.
Posted by: 2b   2004-12-03 10:11:57 AM  

#1  The incident proved to them, as if they needed more proof, that the U.N. was not a place where the U.S. could transact serious business.

Thus the godsend of oil-for-food.

WTF? This is called "connecting the dots" in my mind, but what do I know, I'm just a stupid redneck voter from a red state? We're connecting these dots (bribes to specific countries) in order to see WHY countries on the SC voted the way they did (and still try and oppose our every move in Iraq).

What conservatives cannot accept, at bottom, is the premise that an international body, even one over which the United States exercises enormous sway, should be allowed to pass on the legitimacy or legality of American actions. And if you can’t accept that, you can’t accept the U.N. Sounds good to me!

It’s striking that the Bush administration, for all its notorious unilateralism, has not yet joined the chorus (though neither has it tried to stem it). Don't know when this was posted, but Bush called for a FULL investigation yesterday. He may not SPECIFICALLY call for Annan's scalp, but the investigation should result in that. Annan infuriated administration officials when he called the Iraq war illegal and again when he argued against the recent assault on Fallouja.

And you see how quickly that stopped our troops, don't you? When will these MSM types recognize the UN does NOTHING to stop war, and in many cases causes it? From North Korea and Iran under the IAEA to Libya and Syria being appointed heads of the Human Rights Commission to this graft of BILLIONS to them ignoring Sudan (and that after their pledge of "never again" after Rwanda) to condemnations of Israel's actions against terrorists (but not against the terrorists themselves) and on and on, this "body" is DEFUNCT!
Posted by: BA   2004-12-03 9:54:02 AM  

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