WSJ: Corruption in Plain View

Wall Street Journal ^ | April 15, 2005 | Editorial

[OESY]

...The indictments announced by U.S. Attorney David Kelley support what the critics have long been saying: Oil for Food was designed from the beginning, and virtually in plain sight, in a way that allowed skimming and kickback operations to help Saddam Hussein circumvent U.N. sanctions....

The same story described "total anarchy" and "flagrant disregard of U.N. Security Council resolutions" in Oil for Food. A myriad of shady middlemen had moved in after the world's major oil companies shunned Iraq in response to Saddam's widely publicized demand the previous year for illegal kickbacks on oil contracts.

This open and flagrant corruption... is the best evidence of Kofi Annan's unfitness to continue to lead the U.N. It's not merely that it all happened on his watch, but that it was allowed to happen in plain view....

Highlights included the introduction of the Saddam surcharge in late 2000. In March 2001, the U.S. and Britain asked the U.N. sanctions committee to cut down the list of more than 600 operators approved to purchase Iraqi oil in order to eliminate companies paying the kickbacks. France and Russia objected. In November 2001, the U.S. and Britain made another attempt to stop the kickbacks -- this time by forcing the sanctions committee to retroactively price Iraqi oil, thus making it harder for Iraq and its buyers to calculate the margin for the surcharge. In February 2002, Mr. Annan's Oil for Food director, Benon Sevan, criticized the retroactive pricing policy, blaming it for a "financial crisis." And so it went.

Had Messrs. Annan and Sevan spent even a tenth of the political capital on getting Saddam to run an honest relief program that they spent criticizing U.S.-British sanctions policy, much of the trouble might have been avoided....

[Alia]

The author is correct, IME. And Character really does matter. Saddam Hussein is not of good character; and instead of dealing with him as he needed to be dealt with; instead there propped an "oil for food program" to feed Iraq's hungry -- those disenfranchized by the evil regime of Hussein. What cowardice.! How COULD the Oil for Food program have been a matter of an honorable program -- not when the overseer was corrupt to begin with. Another sad story in the legacy of how NOT to deal with evil "ways and means".

[Rummyfan]

Oil-for-Food was the biggest scam in history. Over sixty billion - BILLION! - dollars disappeared into various pockets around the world. If there were any justice, Kofi Annan would have already been run out of New York on a rail. Volcker's report released last week concentrated only on the son Kojo, who was a bit player in the scheme, and made only a half million dollars or so. Where is the MSM outrage over this thievery?

[longtermmemmory]

and the UN named Bill Clinton special ambasador for UN Tsunami Relief.

Intersting how UN criticism for US Tsunami efforts SHUT UP once the UN was handed a few MILLION out of the billion.

I bet those were cushy desk jobs.

BTW did we mention that the Tsunami region is INFAMOUS for their sex vacation trade? Somalia part duex.