Posted on 12/06/2004 12:58:36 PM PST by WrightOnTarget
The United Nations' "Oil-for-Food" program, which began in 1996, permitted Saddam Hussein to sell oil, provided that the revenue went for food, medicine and other necessities. It was a deal between the world's largest bureaucracy and one of the planet's most crooked and ruthless dictators. What could possibly go wrong?
So now we find out, with a shock value equal to the one that hit us this morning when the sun rose in the east, that Hussein was skimming money off the top, and bottom for that matter. Skimming? More like building a dam. The General Accounting Office estimates that Hussein's regime netted over $10 billion. The psychotic-yet-most-entrepreneurial mustachioed one who had a destiny with a spider hole was, with a lot of help, inflating prices on humanitarian imports, which allowed him to sell that much more oil and keep the extra for himself and whoever else was involved. High markups, high profits and skimming – Iraq had become a 172,000 square mile jewelry store run by Jimmy Hoffa.
Oh yes, Kofi Annan's son, until recently, was receiving money from a company monitoring this winner of a program.
This "Oil for Food" scam has to be one of the main reasons the United Nations and their fellow European brown-nosers didn't want the United States to go into Iraq. Now we know why, shortly before Iraq War II, the United Nations said, in essence, that it was OK for the United States to invade Iraq, providing we got Iraq's permission first. That's a move that must have been taken straight from the "Berkeley Guide To Politically Correct Dating." "May I invade?" is the chapter in the book just after "May I put my arm around you?" and "May I unbutton your blouse?"
Some people are donning rubber gloves to perform a comprehensive exam on the United Nations, but we know what they'll find: a massive U.N. hernia from lugging around money, volumes of idiotic ideas and pot-bellied dictators.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune blasted their home state senator, Norm Coleman, for demanding the resignation of Annan. In the Tribune's editorial, they wrote, "Note that no one has the slightest whiff of proof that Annan knew about, condoned or profited from this scandal." If a multi billion dollar scam occurred as the direct result of another brilliant U.N. program, right under their noses, and Annan didn't know about it nor condone it, he should still resign. As DeNiro's character "Ace" told a gaming employee who had been hoodwinked by a gambler in the movie "Casino": "You were either in on it, or too stupid to know you were being scammed."
The Tribune assigns an air of untouchable altruism to the United Nations, which, to them, is a noble body working toward the betterment of mankind, so they've earned the right to the occasional colossal blunder or not-so-accidental dereliction. In other words, they're a lot like the newspaper business.
The Tribune poo-poos U.N. wrongdoing, which is perhaps the largest scam in world history, but are no doubt laboring feverishly over a drafting table with a slide rule, linear algebra calculator, and U.N. and Iraq accounting ledgers, desperately seeking that "eureka" discovery that links all this to an American corporation. The only way this can be a crime is if Halliburton was involved.
The United Nations is a big joke, and if we don't get out someday soon, we're the punchline. They'll still survive, probably packing up and moving to Paris, but the United Nations without the United States will be like Jimmy Carter without a hammer – still negotiating, mediating, settling, pondering and pandering, but completely absent the means to do anything truly constructive.
This is the same organization that whines because they say the United States is behind in their U.N. dues. Not only does the United Nations claim we owe them money, but then they have the audacity to be headquartered in this country? If I'm just a few days late on my gym membership dues, they don't let me in their door, let alone pack up and move their entire operation into my house. Something doesn't add up, but the United Nations isn't planning to move anywhere else.
There are even plans to renovate and expand U.N. headquarters in New York City. This could be a billion-dollar project ($3-4 billion if they try to cut costs by engaging in a "concrete for food" program with a crooked construction company), complete with bigger offices, increased ventilation, fire sprinklers, and hot-and-cold-running appeasers.
U.N. representatives from around the globe have up to now been working in buildings fraught with asbestos, lead paint and, occasionally, falling concrete – and so far nothing has worked. Resilient little bureaucrats, aren't they?
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