UN Oil for Food 'Scandal' (Blame America Barf Alert!)

The CIA's Duelfer report may have confirmed the gross falsity of the WMD claims invoked by the Bush Administration to justify its war against Iraq, but it has also triggered a feeding frenzy in the growing attacks against the United Nations. In January the Iraqi newspaper Al Mada published a list of people and organizations, including UN personnel, who supposedly received vouchers from the Iraqi government to purchase oil. In April the General Accounting Office (since renamed the Government Accountability Office) published a report claiming that the Oil for Food (OFF) program had been rife with corruption and that through smuggling and kickbacks, Saddam Hussein had managed to acquire more than $10 billion in illicit funds. A series of Congressional investigations followed, featuring conservative witnesses who pilloried the UN for incompetence, corruption and general unfitness. In the latest hearings chaired by Republican Norm Coleman, the committee staff claimed that Saddam's access to illicit funds totalled over $21 billion--twice the sum claimed by the CIA--and that the money went to terrorists around the world, not to mention (rather astonishingly) the post-Saddam insurgency.

If it is true that Benon Sevan, former head of the OFF program, accepted illicit oil vouchers, then that may well constitute fraud (although the evidence cited against him so far has been tenuous). But it would also have been in direct violation of clear UN policies--hardly an indicator of institutional corruption.

Rarely mentioned, either at the hearings or in the press coverage, was the fundamental distinction between the policies established by the Secretariat and the UN agencies and those that result from decisions of particular member states within the highly politicized Security Council. For example, the CIA report says that the bulk of the illicit transactions were "government to government agreements" between Iraq and a few other countries, for trade outside the OFF program. According to the report, they resulted in income to Iraq of $7.5 billion.

The largest of these arrangements was with Jordan--revenue from which totaled about $4.5 billion. This trade arrangement was the single largest source of Iraqi income outside the OFF program. From 1990 until the OFF program began in late 1996, "Jordan was the key to Iraq's financial survival," according to the report. Why didn't "the UN" do something about it? Because the Security Council--where the United States was by far the single most influential member--decided in May 1991 that no action would be taken to interfere in Iraq's trade with Jordan, America's closest ally in the Arab world.

Likewise, the maritime smuggling that took place under the nose of "the UN" in fact took place under the nose of something called the Multinational Interception Force, a group of member nations that responded to the general invitation of the Security Council for nations to interdict Iraqi smuggling. The "UN" Multinational Interception Force turns out to have consisted almost entirely of the US Navy. The commander of the MIF was at every point, from 1991 to 2003, a rear admiral or vice admiral from the US Fifth Fleet. The United States contributed the overwhelming majority of ships--hundreds in fact. Britain provided the deputy commander and some naval forces and other countries contributed a few ships. The UN itself provided no forces or commanders. "The UN" failure to interdict Saddam's tankers of illicit oil turns out, in nearly every regard, to have been a US naval operation.

The much-vaunted kickbacks on import contracts also turn out to be not quite as advertised. Saddam, the claim goes, inflated the price of import contracts by 5 to 10 percent, then received the difference in cash from the contractors. Thousands of contracts, stretching over years, were involved; how could the UN have been so incompetent as not to notice? In fact, prices inflated by only 5 or 10 percent were difficult to detect precisely because the amounts were so small and often within the normal range of market prices. But when pricing irregularities were large enough that they might have indicated kickbacks, the UN staff did notice. On more than seventy occasions, the staff brought these to the attention of the 661 Committee, the Security Council body charged with implementing the sanctions. On no occasion did the United States block or delay the contracts to prevent the kickbacks from occurring. Although the United States, citing security concerns, blocked billions of dollars of humanitarian contracts--$5 billion were on hold as of July 2002--it never took action to stop kickbacks, even when they were obvious and well documented.

Far from giving Saddam a free hand, the OFF program involved extensive monitoring and oversight. The government of Iraq first had to submit a list of every single item it hoped to purchase in the coming six months, and the UN staff had to approve the list. Once Iraq had signed a contract with a vendor, the contract was circulated to UNSCOM (later UNMOVIC), to see if there was anything that could be used for military purposes. Every member of the Security Council had the opportunity to review every contract, and each member could block or delay any contract for imports. Every member of the Security Council also had to approve every contract for the sale of oil. If there was cash paid under the table, it did not happen for lack of oversight. It happened despite the most elaborate monitoring system imaginable. And if the members of the Security Council--including the United States--failed to do their job, that is not the fault of Kofi Annan.

The Duelfer report, along with eight sets of Congressional hearings, vitriolic press coverage and considerable ranting by the right, suggest an antipathy toward the UN that goes well beyond election-season maneuvering. The consequences of this scandal will be considerable. We witnessed the ill-fated decision to invade Iraq without Security Council authorization; we might recall that the Security Council would not grant the American demand to authorize an invasion, precisely because the United States was unable to provide any compelling evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. If the world's most respected institution of international governance is rendered impotent by accusations as distorted and exaggerated as these, we should all fear the consequences.

What's the terrestrial equivalent of icebreakers? Land brakers? Our navy has these and patrolled the Iraqi borders with Iran, Turkey, Syria and Jordan? I'm impressed!

I think this writer is about as phobic as John Kerry about saying the word "France." Haven't seen many "liberal" responses to Food for Oil yet, maybe this dissembling rant will be the prototype.

precisely because the United States was unable to provide any compelling evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction

This moronic idiot even bypasses the assertion by the un saying that hussein still had WMDs. It's not a question of whether hussein had WMDs, but where he has them hidden. Of course, idiots like this one and the rest of the MSM and european idiots continue to ignore the facts and spout their lies.

-I gave up reading ---me too --- almost!
Then I would not know what OFF means. Oil For Food - OFF!!! that takes the importance away just as Abortion became Women's Rights!!!

Look at what else Joy Gordon, who teaches philosophy at Fairfield U, wrote in March 4, 1999

Sanctions as Siege Warfare

Thus the UN has found itself in the awkward position of authorizing a sanctions regime that is causing massive human suffering among those least responsible for Iraqi policy, while at the same time trying to meet humanitarian needs and protect those populations most harmed by sanctions--women, children, the poor, the elderly and the sick.

Although there is controversy over the precise extent of human damage, all sources agree that it is severe. Voices in the Wilderness, an antisanctions activist group based in Chicago, has used the figure of 1 million children dead from the sanctions; the Iraqi government claims 4,000-5,000 deaths per month of children under 5. Even US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright does not contest how great the human damage has been, but has said, "It's worth the price." Richard Garfield, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who analyzes the health consequences of economic embargoes, calculates that 225,000 Iraqi children under 5 have died since 1990 because of these policies--a figure based on the best data available from UN agencies and other international sources. The Red Cross World Disasters Report says underweight births have gone from 4 percent in 1990 to 25 percent in 1998. While it is harder to calculate the impact of the economic devastation on adults, it is quite acute, particularly for women. In 1997 the Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that chronic malnutrition in the general Iraqi population was as high as 27 percent, with 16 percent of adult women under 26 undernourished and 70 percent of women anemic.

My 2¢'s about the UN?

Neal Boortz has the right idea- kick them off US soil, plop them down in Haiti, and tell them, "when you get this straightened out, give us a call..."

Moreover:

--Sex abuse charges rock UN in Congo-
-- Interesting this is being posted today. Talk show host Dennis Prager had the Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Doree Gold, on his show today. Mr. Gold has just written a book about the UN called the Tower of Babble(i think this was the title). Some of the things he was saying about the UN were unbelievable.

--TV campaign urging: Kick U.N. out of U.S.-
"I say we just give the entire country of Haiti to the UN."--or move them to Zimbabwe or another country in Africa. Let them see what the really do for the world.

--UN knew of Saddam's oil-for-food thefts: BBC-
The sooner we resign from this corrupt organization and kick them off our soil, the better.

Click this picture & goto "last" for the latest UN scandals:

American Policy Center on-line Declaration of Independence from the U.N.

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