The U.N. has always looked to the U.S. for leadership, and for the 8 years of the Clinton Administration the U.N. had no one to lead them, and the ambitions of the corrupt went unchallenged. No one can tell me that the Clinton Admin. didn't know about the corruption in the Iraq, Oil for Food Program. They simply ignored it as per usual.
When President Bush addressed the UN in 2002, he shamed them into voting for Resolution 1441, but when it was clear that GWB meant what he said, The French, Germans and Russians had no choice but to not support us, they knew we would find the evidence of the corruption and payoffs from Saddam.
The U'N. or a world body like them is a necessary evil, but we must lead the way, those sorry bastards are incapable of doing so.
You owe it to yourself to reread this and other articles about the Food For Oil program. You may find that the success of the US pacification program for Germany was the overriding factor in Schroeder's antiwar stance rather than deals with Saddam, unlike the situation with France and Russia.
Why? Human beings got along for many thousands of years without a world body — in fact right up until the League of Nations formally began on January 10, 1920. The United Nations is nothing but a revamp of the League, which turned its assets over to the UN on April 18, 1946.
So, in the 84 years since 1920, what has the world body accomplished? Did it prevent WWII? Or Stalin's and Mao's mass starvation of their own people? Or, for that matter, prevent the spread of Communism into China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Africa and elsewhere? Has it stamped out slavery in those areas where it still exists? For every dollar spent on programs to help fight poverty and famine in the third world, how many dollars went to line the pockets of UN bureaucrats and the big shots in their home countries? Has it helped resolve the Israeli-Arab conflict? Or prevented any war, anywhere? Or any genocide?
Other than being a sometimes useful tool to contain the Soviets during the Cold War, what useful purpose has the UN ever served? How much corruption has gone uncovered until this oil-for-food scam?