Posted on 11/15/2004 11:53:37 AM PST by Halgr
'The extent of the corruption is staggering,'' Sen. Norm Coleman told me. He is a freshman Republican from Minnesota completing his second year in Washington, and he was talking about the United Nations and its pious secretary-general, Kofi Annan. Coleman's comments are not the mere musings of an insignificant rookie senator, but the considered judgment of a committee chairman whose careful investigation reached the hearing stage today.
After winning his seat against former Vice President Walter F. Mondale in 2002, Coleman was rewarded with the chairmanship of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He is conducting what could be the most explosive congressional investigation in years, probing the U.N.'s fraudulent oil-for-food program in Iraq and Annan's obstruction of the senatorial inquiry.
Coleman said this week's hearings will show that ''the scope of the ripoff'' at the U.N. is substantially more than the widely reported $10 billion to $11 billion in graft. But more than money is involved. These hearings also should expose the arrogance of the secretary-general and his bureaucracy. At the same time that he has refused to honor the Senate committee's request for documents, Annan has inveighed against the Fallujah offensive sanctioned by the new Iraqi government while ignoring the terrorism of insurgents. This is an unprecedented showdown between a branch of the U.S. government and the U.N.
The scandal is not complicated. Money from Iraqi oil sales permitted by the Saddam Hussein regime under U.N. auspices, supposedly to provide food for Iraqis, was siphoned off to middlemen. Billions intended to purchase food wound up in Saddam's hands for the purpose of buying conventional weapons. The complicity of U.N. member states France and Russia is pointed to by the Senate investigation. The web of corruption deepened when it was revealed that Annan's son, Kojo, was on the payroll of a contractor in the oil-for-food program.
As the pressure built on Annan, on April 16 he named former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to conduct an ''independent'' investigation. This has been construed on Capitol Hill as a ploy to stave off any serious congressional inquiry. Nobody questions Volcker's integrity, but his political skills have always been suspect. His Independent Inquiry Committee, off to a slow start because of inadequate funding, in the absence of subpoena powers looks like a sham.
Coleman is not pursuing a right-wing vendetta against the world organization. He was a born and bred liberal Democrat from Brooklyn before the claustrophobic liberalism of Minnesota's Democratic Farmer Labor Party compelled him to become a Republican in 1996 as the elected Democratic mayor of St. Paul. He had no anti-U.N. mind-set when he embarked on his investigation.
Coleman has been joined in rare bipartisan cooperation by the subcommittee's fiercely liberal ranking Democrat, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan. Coleman sent Levin a draft of a tough letter to Annan, and Levin signed it. The bipartisan letter demanded access to U.N. internal audits and key U.N. personnel. It also accused the Volcker committee of ''affirmatively preventing the subcommittee'' from investigating the scandal. A major point of dispute is the U.N.'s flat refusal to permit Lloyd's Register, hired by the U.N. to inspect Iraq's oil-for-food transactions, to provide any documents to the Senate.
The reaction by the U.N. bureaucracy has been an intransigent defense of its stone wall. Edward Mortimer, Annan's director of communications, publicly sneered at the Coleman-Levin letter as ''very awkward and troubling.'' Privately, Annan's aides told reporters that they were not about to hand over confidential documents to the Russian Duma and every other parliamentary body in the world.
But the U.S. Senate is not the Russian Duma. These are not just a few right-wing voices in the wilderness who are confronting Kofi Annan. ''In seeing what is happening at the U.N.,'' Coleman told me, ''I am more troubled today than ever. I see a sinkhole of corruption.'' The United Nations and its secretary-general are in a world of trouble.
Another former liberal waking up to reality.
I'm starting to like Coleman.
I haven't seen this posted anywhere....heads up people
May it die a quick and ugly death.
We need to have this issue get more air time in the MSM.
The UN is the darling of the liberal left press, but we
are going to have to rub their noses in it.
Especially those pushing the One World Agenda - like the
democrats.
Cut any US funding to the UN. De-fund the left.
I like the article's title. Visions of a Monty Python purse fight. If there is anything more wimpish and effeminate than a US senator, it has to be the folks at the UN.
--yeah--wonder if Norm got mugged somewhere in an urban area---?
Carl Levin is certainly a "fiercely liberal" partisan hack, who lies all the time with political hyperbole. But maybe he will be useful for a change. But only if he thinks the Dem party will benefit.
The whole deal was cooked up under Madeline Albright's watch with the help of Sandy "stuffin' my undies" Berger and Richard "RINO" Cohen with one of the key players in moving weapons and oil shares being none other than Hillary Clinton's pal Marc "Sanctions Buster" Rich who was pardoned by Billy Jeff on his way out the door.
The HECK he has.
The UN is a joke. They have their headquarters in our country, built courtesy of the US, and we pay the lions share of its bills. Not to mention we give aid all over the world in quantities that far outstrip other countries, and yet all these bastards do is bash us.
What does the UN Charter say about ethics and removal from office?
The evil side of me wished one of the planes would have hit the UN building instead of the WTC.
We need to dump the UN and start an organization of countries that meet minimum entry requirements, like a market based economy and free elections.
I sure hope so. Go Norman!
Okay. So the U.N. is dragging it's feet. Investigate it from the Iraq side. The U.N. can't do much about that.
nothing in this article stuns me except for the above statement. levin is a complete socialist; i am shocked he would push the un for anything, except maybe for votes at home.
since when are the words "evil" and "pragmatic" synonyms?
Preachin' the choir Bump.
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