It takes some serious crust for Kofi Annan to call the U.S. led liberation of Iraq "illegal", having himself presided over the monumentally corrupt enterprise that was Oil-For-Food. Annan's statement seems meant as a political boost for Kerry, made I suppose on the assumption that some likely U.S. voters still think Kofi Annan has some moral authority or international legal standing. I'm afraid they may be right.
Annan's unaccountable U.N. bureaucracy ran an organization that processed roughly $60 billion in Iraqi oil revenues over six or seven years, legally skimming 2.2% for the U.N. all along the way, and building-in an institutional interest in keeping Saddam in power. Worse, he allowed the dictator that the system was designed to punish and contain to take billions for himself through illegal kickback business deals that were winked at by the U.N. "oversight" of the program.
All the while Saddam had free rein to do his thing, with the boys, the cutting out of tongues and such. Everybody was getting rich. It was by far the biggest U.N. cash cow ever. This blatantly self-interested organization, with its corrupted General Secretary, was the international authority whose support George Bush was supposed to enlist in the matter of granting him permission to kill their Golden Goose. That Kofi Annan had a deeply corrupt business enterprise, in bed with the murderous dictator he was chartered with sanctioning still has not caused him to be disgraced, much less ousted as he should be. And pardon me if I don't have a lot of faith in the U.N.'s investigation of itself doing much in the way of holding their officials accountable. They always seem to be just about to "retire", with the retirement fund no doubt brimming.
The other elephant in the living room is the obvious self-interest of France and Russia in the maintenance of the status quo under Saddam, the transparent reason for their opposition to regime change in Iraq. Both countries had multi-billion dollar deals done with Saddam, pending the lifting of U.N. sanctions. The brutal nature of their business partner mattered not a whit at the time to the countries that now strike a pose of principled opposition to our action. France alone stood to lose $100 billion in oil lease deals over the next 20 years if George Bush spoiled the party by enforcing the terms of U.N. Resolutions 687 and 1441, and removing Saddam from power. Those are some pretty large principals principles. Russian and French officials, diplomats, and politicians were prominent on the list of people who received oil lease deals from the Saddam government; bribes, nothing less. These were effectively cash payments, in the millions each, for many of Saddam's special friends...under Kofi's watchful eye.
Making the U.N.-facilitated theft of billions in relief funds even more despicable is that the money was earmarked to buy food and medicine for Iraqis that Saddam would have otherwise gladly starved (or gassed) to death, left to his own devices. Under the program, Iraqis stayed hungry and malnourished while Saddam and the bloated U.N. prospered quite nicely. The program from which Saddam was permitted to skim $10 billion was established because he could not be trusted to use his own oil revenues to feed his own people. Nice work, if you can get it.
And yet somehow the media, and world leaders including George W.Bush refuse to just come out and say that the emperor has no clothes. That Kofi Annan's U.N. and the governments of France and Russia among others, are hopelessly self-interested, conflicted and compromised as regards their opposition to the U.S. action in Iraq and to the will of seventeen U.N. Resolutions on the matter.
With the consistent exception of Claudia Rosett , that is. I think Ms. Rosett is more than a little galled that this arrogant kleptocrat Annan is still on his perch, preening and pronouncing on "legality". Dude, you're naked. Here's an excerpt from Rosett's WSJ piece today:
In late 2002, while Mr. Annan was lobbying against U.S.-led removal of Saddam, he was running a U.N. program in which money meant for baby formula, among other goods, was very likely flowing into the pockets of Saddam and his sons and cronies......what we know already is that Mr. Annan, whose Secretariat turned a blind eye to Saddam's food pricing scams, has never apologized for presiding over the biggest fraud in the history of relief. He has not used the word "illegal." The closest he's come has been to admit this past March, after much stonewalling, that there may have been quite a lot of "wrong-doing"--before turning over the whole mess over to a U.N. investigation that has since smothered all details with its own blanket of secrecy.
Mr. Annan is due to step down next year. If he wants to leave a legacy more auspicious than having presided over Oil-for-Fraud, he might want to devote his twilight time at the U.N. to mending a system in which a U.N. Secretary-General feels free to describe the overthrow of a murderous tyrant as "illegal," but no one at the top seems particularly bothered to have presided over that tyrant's theft of food from hungry children.
More from Rosett on the topic.
As to the legality of the U.S. action, I'm obviously no expert, but I think the case articulated briefly by Mark Goldblatt makes sense; that under U.N. Resolution 687, Saddam's violations of the terms of the 1991 ceasefire, which had resulted only in a in "cessation of hostilities" pending his compliance, make the ensuing enforcement of the resolutions legal. Others will of course disagree. But let's at least check their pockets for wads of illicit cash before we give them an audience.
Posted by dan at September 22, 2004 10:25 AM