Teflon Kofi

All the stories I read last week on Paul Volcker's interim report on the Oil-for-food scandal described it as 'vindicating' Kofi Annan. Claudia Rosett disagrees:

It was Annan who personally signed off on Saddam's shopping lists, and repeatedly urged the Security Council not only to continue the program, but to expand it in size and scope, which allowed Saddam to rake in yet more illicit billions from oil smuggling.

If Annan has indeed lost sight of his own oversight role, it would hardly be the only such lapse turned up in this inquiry. What emerges from the jumbled narrative of the Volcker interim report is a U.N. universe of forgetful officials, botched record-keeping, cronyism, and conflicts of interest so abundant they start to sound simply routine--which they apparently were. Most noteworthy is the volume of damning information whitewashed by bland wording, culminating in Volcker's judgment that in some respects Annan's performance was "inadequate." By such standards, the Titanic was "non-buoyant."

As with the earlier interim report, issued in February, Volcker informs us that his team has found no smoking gun. But there's enough smoke here to leave you wondering if Volcker's team should have been looking not for a gun but, instead, for a roomful of U.N. shredders, flaming out from overuse.

There's lots more in her story, including information on enough shredded documents to hold a dozen ticker-tape parades and more about Kofi's son's shenanigans.

This is the biggest financial fraud in the history of the world. And what was stolen was money meant to help the impoverished people of Iraq. Billions and billions and billions of dollars of humanitarian aid, siphoned off by well-connected middlemen or landing in the bank accounts of a brutal dictator. But for the most part, the press continues to look the other way and refuse to point the finger at the man in charge. Doing so might bolster the status of George Bush and give his distain of the UN more legitimacy. And no one wants that, do they?

Posted by Bruce Gottfred at April 2, 2005 11:56 AM | TrackBack