Why Is Kofi Annan Still Leading the U.N.?
Peter Brown asks all the right questions about Kofi Annan and oil-for-food in his Orlando Sentinel column. (here, or here if you're not yet registered) Some excerpts follow, concluding with the same question that's on my mind: Why are MSM largely giving the UN a free pass on this one? His conclusion and mine are the same: The kumbayah concept of the UN is just to groovey for blue state elite media to attack.
If the United Nations were a democratic country under the rule of law, Secretary General Kofi Annan would have resigned in disgrace, and might well be under criminal investigation for, at the least, tolerating massive corruption.
If that idea surprises readers it is only because the mainstream U.S. news media have done an abysmal job reporting on what is undoubtedly the largest bribery and embezzlement scandal in world history. ...
Whether Annan himself is culpable is unclear, but he is acting like the politician whose friends' hands have been caught in the cookie jar and is worried he will be implicated, too. And there are allegations his son was on the take also.
Annan has done everything possible to impede serious efforts to get to the bottom of the scandal, which has implicated Benon Sevan, who was in charge of the U.N. Oil for Food program, the humanitarian effort at the scandal's center. ...
There are many reasons why Americans should be outraged, not the least of which is that U.S. taxpayers fund more than 20 percent of the U.N. budget. Remember, U.N. officials whose job was overseeing the Food for Oil program allegedly took payoffs from Saddam to look the other way. And, according to investigators, some of the money Saddam skimmed went to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
Think of the $21.3 billion as more than two-thirds of the budget for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, or three times the annual spending by the Environmental Protection Agency -- serious folding money, even in Washington, D.C.
Common sense requires one to question whether U.N. efforts to stop the U.S. intervention in Iraq were tied to its under-the-table relationship with Saddam. Also, among those who allegedly got payoffs from Saddam in the scandal were prominent officials and businessmen from France and Russia, nations that also sought to stop the American effort to oust Saddam. ...
Why the American news media have given this story short shrift -- it hardly makes the network evening-news shows and is buried inside most newspapers, including this one, when mentioned at all -- is a worthwhile question.
The United Nations has long enjoyed a magical image in much of the United States. The idea of all nations getting together to solve problems is a warm and fuzzy one that makes many Americans tingle.
Giving the United Nations a free ride in the news media may well be a function of the red America/blue America divide. The elites along the coasts and in the major news media may see this as a minor issue. My guess, however, is that the resulting public outrage when this story gets its day in the sunshine will be as much a revelation to many of those same folks as Bush's re-election.
If the United Nations were a democratic country under the rule of law, Secretary General Kofi Annan would have resigned in disgrace, and might well be under criminal investigation for, at the least, tolerating massive corruption.
If that idea surprises readers it is only because the mainstream U.S. news media have done an abysmal job reporting on what is undoubtedly the largest bribery and embezzlement scandal in world history. ...
Whether Annan himself is culpable is unclear, but he is acting like the politician whose friends' hands have been caught in the cookie jar and is worried he will be implicated, too. And there are allegations his son was on the take also.
Annan has done everything possible to impede serious efforts to get to the bottom of the scandal, which has implicated Benon Sevan, who was in charge of the U.N. Oil for Food program, the humanitarian effort at the scandal's center. ...
There are many reasons why Americans should be outraged, not the least of which is that U.S. taxpayers fund more than 20 percent of the U.N. budget. Remember, U.N. officials whose job was overseeing the Food for Oil program allegedly took payoffs from Saddam to look the other way. And, according to investigators, some of the money Saddam skimmed went to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
Think of the $21.3 billion as more than two-thirds of the budget for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, or three times the annual spending by the Environmental Protection Agency -- serious folding money, even in Washington, D.C.
Common sense requires one to question whether U.N. efforts to stop the U.S. intervention in Iraq were tied to its under-the-table relationship with Saddam. Also, among those who allegedly got payoffs from Saddam in the scandal were prominent officials and businessmen from France and Russia, nations that also sought to stop the American effort to oust Saddam. ...
Why the American news media have given this story short shrift -- it hardly makes the network evening-news shows and is buried inside most newspapers, including this one, when mentioned at all -- is a worthwhile question.
The United Nations has long enjoyed a magical image in much of the United States. The idea of all nations getting together to solve problems is a warm and fuzzy one that makes many Americans tingle.
Giving the United Nations a free ride in the news media may well be a function of the red America/blue America divide. The elites along the coasts and in the major news media may see this as a minor issue. My guess, however, is that the resulting public outrage when this story gets its day in the sunshine will be as much a revelation to many of those same folks as Bush's re-election.
posted by Laer at 1:11 PM
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