Posted on 12/01/2004 7:51:01 PM PST by Jean S
Whether the United Nations were located in New York or in Geneva, Congress cannot and should not continue to spend our money paying dues to an organization that will not open its records to our elected officials who are seeking to investigate numerous reports of corruption reaching high up in the U.N. organization.
When the son of the secretary-general is accused of receiving payments from a contractor in the oil-for-food program and the very administrator of that effort is, himself, implicated in its corruption, it is time to investigate. While Paul Volcker’s investigative mission to get to the bottom of the scandal must proceed, the U.S. Congress has a separate duty to the American people to see to it that our tax funds are not dissipated in a scandal.
If the United Nations refuses to open its financial records to our congressional investigators, the United States should suspend payment of part of its annual dues as a punishment for the United Nations’ intransigence.
The oil-for-food scandal is, of course, the first major scandal of the global community. Normally each nation sets its own standards for its leaders’ integrity and the other nations of the world are obliged to deal with whoever holds power, however doubtful his or her honesty. But the oil-for-food scandal raises two key questions.
The first, of course, is how to deal with officials appointed by multinational organizations, whether the United Nations or, in the future, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, NATO, the World Trade Organization or the European Union. These officials must be held accountable. If their own organizations have no ability or willingness to investigate their wrongdoing, it is the duty of the major nations involved, the ones whose taxpayers foot the bill, to demand accountability.
The second issue, however, is even more important: How are we going to deal with the use of international funds as payoffs to national leaders of the countries whose votes set up the program?
It is usually France’s business, not ours’, if their president, Jacques Chirac, or their interior minister, Charles Pasqua, profited from the oil for food program. It is usually Russia’s business if Putin or his United Russia Party was enriched from the same table. But when Chirac and Putin were influenced by these payoffs to cast their nations’ votes in the United Nations for or against the Saddam Hussein regime, the matter becomes our business. We must not let the U.N. Security Council become an auction in which the corrupt sell their votes to the guilty or the aggrieved based on who can pay them off more handsomely.
Self-regulating organizations generally police their own honesty ineffectively. When the entities are international, the disdain of their officials is palpable. They consider themselves above the law of any nation and dismiss the claims of the U.S. Congress as political demagoguery, taking refuge in their diplomatic status and the international nature of their organizations to escape scrutiny.
In Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s case, he apparently let the oil-for-food largesse flow to his son for years after he had claimed that it had been terminated. In response to questions from journalists, Annan admits only to having a “perception” problem.
But if the United Nations is dishonestly administered and its credibility is undermined by scandal, the very effort for globalism, essential and laudable as it is, will be besmirched. The humanitarian work of organizations in the United Nations will be impaired, and the world body will no longer be an honest broker.
The stakes for the world body could not be higher. Annan should understand that restoring the body’s reputation for disinterested integrity, created in the first instance by its illustrious former Secretary-General Dag Hammerskold, is vital.
There is no more important mission. If Congress has to cut the U.N. funding to force its leaders to live up to the ideals to which they should be committed, it is vital that it do so.
The United States may have to cut the United Nations in order to save it.
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Morris is the author of Rewriting History, a rebuttal of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) memoir, Living History. |
Dick is sooo goofy...but I just love him! ha.
He cuts right thru the BS.ha.
Let the states decide individually whether to join. Imagine Montana on the Security Council!
In other words, being too forceful in doing the right thing will have the opposite effect.
***We must not let the U.N. Security Council become an auction in which the corrupt sell their votes to the guilty or the aggrieved based on who can pay them off more handsomely.***
Morris has this part right, but Annan has to be booted out as an example to other crooks. Talk about absolute power corruption absolutely!
Eff 'em. Like we really care what they think.
Don't save the U.N. Let it die. The United Nations has an ocean of blood on its hands, and it should not be saved.
Dick Morris, Advisor to The Traitor Clinton, just where does that put Morris?? Dick Morris is just catching up to what a lot of people here on FR and other Blogs have been saying for months!!
Now, I'm sure he will write another book, with O'Rielly as the Huckster and make a few more million, selling and taking credit for what other people have already known and said, What a great guy!!
It would be great if our elected Representatives would see this as clearly and as expedtiously as Dick Morris, one can only pray and hope!
Yes, but I couldn't believe it when I heard Charles Krauthammer say the only solution was to get the US out of the UN and the UN out of the US.
UN = united nothings. It's time America got out of the un because we stand for something good.
Cut the funding and give the money to grateful nations that ask for our assistance. Who cares if other nations are mad at us for pursuing an investigation? They would find someting to complain about anyhow.
I'm no fan of Dick Morris. This scandal was broken by Claudia Rosett more than a year ago in the Wall Street Journal, in an article named "Kofi Annanderson." I posted her article here, and there was a long thread on it.
But that was the end of it for many months. Now, finally, it has broken out again, and the MSM is being forced to deal with it. If Dick Morris can help get the story out so the MSM can no longer spin it or, worse, suppress it, more power to him.
Fox had been banging on this also, it judt gets me how all of this is going on and for the length of thime that it has been going on. Now so many people act like it's breaking news, where have they been?!!
"We must not let the U.N. Security Council become an auction in which the corrupt sell their votes to the guilty or the aggrieved based on who can pay them off more handsomely."
I think that horse is already out of the barn.
The US pays 22% of the dues, Japan pays 12%, UK pays 6%, and I'm sure other decent countries will round it out until we have 50% of their operating budget involved.
I think the US should balance the budget by cutting out funding for the UN and every backwater government that encourages their people to thumb their noses at the US.
Let the French have the UN , we could use the office space.
Krauthammer is usually right. The UN needs us more than we need it. America proved it can mount a war without the UN's blessing, so of what use is the UN besides being a place to debate and soak up American funds?
"Jus' another zample of the white man holdin' da black man down!"
Yes. Morris worked for Clinton. He turned around and is very Conservative. He's sandbagged Clinton' "legacy" more than anyone I know. I'd suggest you get off the sheeple band-wagon of hating the "toe-sucking Dick Morris" bandwagon. Have you ever listened to the man, or just sheep most others around here. Morrid HATES his former boss. Suggest you buy a box of Q-Tips.
They cannot. Under the current UN charter they are not accountable to anyone but the UN, and hold control themselves over what that accountability will be. The gravity of this affair is slowly dawning on a lot of the internationalists, but none have shown any signs of doing anything about it. It's a systemic infection, and there is no real mechanism for fighting it - it was an inherent weakness of the organization from the very beginning. It is only important now because the UN is being promoted as a world legislative body, one step short of formal world government, but it is a government already bought and paid for, and only a fool would obey it.
Thanks Cobra, Q-tips on my list! He still has some explaining to do.
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