Posted on 11/30/2004 9:22:03 PM PST by quidnunc
"He is a grown man, and I don't get involved with his activities and he doesn't get involved with mine."
Thus did the U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan distance himself at speed Monday from news that his own son, Kojo Annan, had received money right up until early this year from one of the U.N.'s prime contractors under the Oil for Food program. The elder Mr. Annan pronounced himself "disappointed," "surprised" and — lest he look completely clueless — able to understand "the perception problem for the U.N."
But at no point did the secretary-general suggest that he himself bore any responsibility for this glaring conflict of interest. That evasion deserves a closer look. It is a terrific cameo for the U.N. mindset that brought us the Oil for Food swindle in the first place — a culture in which secrecy is the norm, the buck stops nowhere, and some of the resulting surprises have most recently have included at least $17 billion grafted out of a U.N. relief program for Iraq, charges of rape and pedophilia among U.N. peacekeepers in Africa — and now this tale of the secretary-general's family ties.
If we go by U.N. chain of command, Kofi Annan is, however, correct that he cannot be held responsible for the activities of his grown son. One might hope, of course, that a U.N. secretary-general out of deference to the dignity of his own office would make a more diligent attempt to keep an eye on the business activities of his close kin. Instead, the discovery of Kojo Annan's ties to U.N. contractor Cotecna Inspection Services SA has required four separate bouts in which the press uncovered further financial links between Cotecna and the younger Mr. Annan.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Does that mean that Coffee didn't get his cut?
I believe there is far more damning evidence to Kofi to be uncovered. Just wait.
Interesting.
Idiots do isolated stupid crap at Abu Ghraib and people like Annan claim that Dubya must 'ultimately be held responsible'.
Yet the UN has people raping, murdering, prostituting, setting up bribes, kickbacks, and extorting money, corruption into the highest levels, and Annan says that he isn't responsible.
Obviously, Dubya isn't responsible for the idiots used in the top example, and they are being punished.
But with the top level corruption in the UN, it is impossible for Kofi to NOT have been aware of it and NOT have his hand in the till.
(Incidentally, if he claims he "doesn't know" what's going on inside the UN, how the heck can he claim with a straight face that there never were WMD's or terrorists in Iraq?)
This omits the fact that, were it not for his father, Kofi the Lesser would most likely be in charge of some lower-level bureaucratic function in Ghana as we write.
Great points. Too bad NYT et al keep missing the corollaries.
Kofi had better take care of things on the homefront before lecturing us about resolutions and international law.
Coffee Cup Anal and Kujo...sounds like a bad 70's detective series.....
Thanks.
I was half awake when I typed that up too.
*chuckle*
It just struck me as odd* that Kofi says with a straight face that he knows what's going on in Iraq, and then turns around and claims he doesn't know what goes on at the UN.
*Read as "completely insane"
Sorry--that was sarcasm. As I mentioned somewhere on FR, my father used to predict their editorials paragraph by paragraph.
Completely insane or irremediably and irremeably corrupt.
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