Don't Shred on Me (The U.N. must not be allowed to destroy the Volcker investigation's archives.)

The Wall Street Journal ^ | 11/30/2005 | CLAUDIA ROSETT

[ricks_place]

Paul Volcker's findings on Oil for Food have been widely received as the final word on the United Nations relief program for Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Far from it--as Mr. Volcker himself has admitted. In reporting that Saddam, along with his smuggling and oil graft, diverted $1.8 billion in kickbacks from U.N.-approved relief contracts under the program, Mr. Volcker underestimates, quite probably by billions, the amount the U.N. allowed Saddam Hussein and many of his favored business partners to graft out of Oil for Food deals for goods such as oil parts, milk, laundry soap and baby food. In low-balling the total, Mr. Volcker understates the negligence of the U.N., and overlooks some of the most potentially virulent links in Oil for Food.

The most urgent implication of Mr. Volcker's incomplete findings is that his huge and expensively assembled archives must be preserved intact well beyond the Dec 31 deadline by which Mr. Volcker now plans to start disposing of them. Above all, they must not be handed back to the U.N., where too much related to the corrupt Oil for Food program has already vanished--including, to a fascinating extent, Secretary-General Kofi Annan's own powers of recollection. The former head of the program, Benon Sevan, alleged to have taken bribes from Saddam, was allowed to skip town, U.N. pension in hand. Mr. Annan is even now resurrecting, via a new $4 million U.N. program called the Alliance of Civilizations, the career of his former chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, who officially retired earlier this year after it came to light that during Mr. Volcker's investigation Mr. Riza had overseen the shredding of three years' worth of documents that might have better illuminated the oil-for-fraud shenanigans of the U.N.'s executive 38th floor.

[ricks_place]

"Why isn't this material available to the public?" the world wonders.

[saveliberty]

considering Kofi Annan was editing a Word document to cover up his crimes (and doing so without understanding the tracking options feature), I am not persuaded that the UN will fork over the documents.

Except maybe to someone on the take for Oil for Food.

[mcg2000]

typical corrupt manner of the UN and it's cronies.

[R.W.Ratikal]

Unfortunately for America our leaders and other world leaders support the U.N. The reason is that the U.N. is to be the vehicle for world government, a global dictatorship toward which we are being led.

Since its inception -- the first Organizing General Secretary was Soviet spy Alger Hiss -- the U.N. has been supported no matter how corrupt its operation. The U.N. has been the direct cause of genocide on a mass scale, a sponsor or every war since WWII, and has been the chief method used to transfer wealth from the West to other world leaders in "poor" nations.

So it seems that no matter how much money the U.N. steals from America, how corrupt its organizations, or how tyrannical its policies, our government in Washington will keep up its support no matter what.

[ARCADIA]

Forget the papers, just shred the UN.

[listenhillary]

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[listenhillary]

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