The Present in Light of the UN Oil-for-Food Scandal

The tale of scandal surrounding the United Nations "Oil-for-Food" program makes an interesting backdrop for the current situation in Iraq. It also tells us why several nations did not support the United States in getting rid of Saddam Hussein--hatred mixed with a dash of greed.

The United States is regularly pilloried in the United Nations. Unfortunately, what was once sport only in the UN's unhallowed halls has spilled over into a vitriolic form of American debate. How much of the untruths behind UN hatred of America have many Americans bought? A great deal.

One of the greatest of the untruths, stage managed in great measure by Saddam Hussein himself, was the Oil-for-Food (OFF) scandal.

The total value of contracts under Oil for Food was more than $100 billion -- or $64.2 billion in oil sales and $38.7 billion in humanitarian purchases. Subtract a few billion dollars the U.N. spent in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, and you have some $100 billion worth of business that Saddam was able to steer wherever he wanted.

OFF became the seedbed for Saddam's prodigious appetite for palace building--78 in fact--while his people starved. Saddam's cronies were placed at the head of a series of "front" companies whose primary purpose was to enrich the Baath elite and to further WMD programs. He purchased armaments from 13 countries, including North Korea, China, Russia, and France.

Interestingly enough, the Clinton and Bush administrations looked the other way while a lot of oil was traded for a lot of money outside the confines of the OFF program.

Paul Volcker headed a commission to study OFF and determined that Saddam was as much as $11 billion richer as a result of the UN's ill-conceived program.

One could not work for the OFF program without Saddam's approval. Saddam's friends and family became the bulk of the 3,000 workers who were paid out of OFF proceeds to administer the program. They were also the public relations people. Usually, the United Nations accepted and gave an official stamp of approval for Iraqi lies. Dr. Rehan Mullick, originally assigned by the UN to monitor OFF in Iraq, was demoted and ultimately fired, when he brought such unseemly facts to light.

The worst of the lies was with regard to medical and food supplies for the children. Allegedly, 5,000 children per months were dying due to lack of food and medicine, according to "official reports" fed to the UN by the Hussein PR Agency. Much like the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq currently, the Hussein PR Agency was very adept at painting a picture of US and UN malfeasance, when in reality Iraq shared the bulk of the blame with the wily snakes at the UN.

As part of the OFF steal, UN allotted itself 2.2% of the proceeds, which amounted to $1.4 billion. So that's why they never 'noticed' that anything was going wrong in the program, including a faaaaaaat paycheck for Secretary General Kofi Annan--ahem--I mean, his son.

It's easy to blame America's insatiable appetite for oil. But why not blame France, Russia, and China, who benefited enormously from cheap oil during the scandal years?

The United Nations is a broken organization. It is little more than a band of criminals. Can it be saved and rebuilt? Maybe. But while George W. Bush has made a plethora of mistakes with regard to the Iraq War, going ahead without the United Nations was NOT one of them. They still haven't gotten their act together. Unseemly hatred of America spurs on several of its constituent nations in their Gadarene rush to destruction. Unslaked greed propels many of the rest of them.

Bush didn't do himself and the United States any favors by his flimsy excuse for attacking Iraq and his even more silly planning for said windmill tilt. But what dismays me even worse than that is the attitude of some Americans--they've been listening to the crooks and liars in the United Nations too much lately, and their utter hatred of Bush has become irrational.

Why are we surprised that Oil-for-Food was a scandal? It was conceived by one.

Interesting Developments in Iraq

Several interesting things have happened in the last couple of days in Iraq. The military has regained some of its honor, Baathists are being invited back into the Iraqi government, and al Maliki seems to be cracking down on Muqtada's army. What's next--"dogs and cats living together?"

Nouri Cracks Down

Pressure from Sunni members of the Iraqi government and from the Bush administration appear to have Nouri al Maliki doing what he wouldn't do before--cracking down on Muqtada al Sadr. This is a far cry from a few months ago when al Maliki required US troops to pack up their Sadr City checkpoints and go home. We'll see how long it lasts...

Meanwhile, Muqtada's henchmen are a bit perplexed by the whole deal:

Mahdi Army fighters said Thursday they were under siege in their Sadr City stronghold as U.S. and Iraqi troops killed or seized key commanders in pinpoint nighttime raids. Two commanders of the Shiite militia said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has stopped protecting the group under pressure from Washington and threats from Sunni Muslim Arab governments.

Ahmad Enlarges the Tent

Ahmad Chalabi chairs a commission to remove former Baath party members from public office, but wait! He's decided to invite over 2,000 of them back in. Actually it's a little bit late to try to make up for one of the worst (and first) decisions of Henry Kissinger's little buddy, L. Paul Bremer III. But hopefully it will have a positive effect.

Chalabi, who heads a commission charged with removing former ranking Baath Party members from public office, told reporters at a Baghdad news conference that the Iraqi government had changed course and was now trying to bring more Baathists back into government.

The draconian de-Baathification laws established by American administrator L. Paul Bremer III after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion rankled Iraq's Sunni Arab minority, which served in Hussein's political party in greater proportion than other Iraqi groups. Reforming those laws has been a key demand of the Bush administration as well as the Sunnis, whose alienation from the political process has fueled violence.

Chalabi said more than 2,300 former high-ranking Baath Party members had been or were being reinstated to their government jobs or were being given pensions.

However, Chalabi gave assurances that the ongoing reinstatements would not allow those who committed crimes against Iraqis under the former regime to go scot-free. "These exclusions are not to be considered an amnesty,"...

US Military Removes a Bit of Tarnish from its Honor

In perhaps the second most despicable (see below) act the US Military has committed on Iraqi soil, one Marine has plead guilty to murder for framing an Iraqi villager as an insurgent and then killing him for it. Others have already plead guilty to lesser charges in exchange for their testimony.

Prosecutors say the squad kidnapped 52-year-old Hashim Ibrahim Awad in Hamdania, took him to a roadside hole and shot him to death. They placed an AK-47 and shovel by his body to try to make it look like Awad was an insurgent caught in the act of planting a bomb, prosecutors said.

Following the most despicable act committed in Iraq by the US Military, a US soldier has plead guilty to rape of an Iraqi girl and the murder of her and her family. The only unfortunate result of his pleading is that he will no longer face the death penalty, which apparently he richly deserves.

Prosecutors said the five soldiers spotted Abeer Kassem Hamza al-Janabi on the street and plotted to break into her home to rape her.

Once there, they killed her parents, Kassem Hamza Rachid al-Janabi and Fakhriya Taha Mohsine al-Janabi and six year old sister, Hadeel Kassem Hamza al-Janabi.

Then they raped the girl, shot her and set fire to her body.

It's the Economy, Stupid!
more to come...