Slothrop's Dream

Sunday, February 13, 2005

The Greatest Scandal in the History of the World

In last Thursday's Wall Street Journal you'll find an editorial by Paul A. Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve and chairman of the independent Inquiry Committee into the United Nation's Oil for Food Program. He writes about the Committee's release of its first Interim Report. He writes that the report's conclusions "do not make for pleasant reading." It may be only the initial report, but he is clearly pessimistic about what has been found so far. While he goes into little detail, citing pending investigations into Kofi Annan, his son, Kojo, and the Executive Director of Oil for Food Benon Sevan, he does hint at the corruption being uncovered. Volcker laments that, "The evidence is conclusive that Mr. Sevan ...placed himself in an irreconcilable conflict of interest, in violation of both specific united nations rules and of the broad responsibility of an international civil servant to adhere to the highest standards of trust and integrity." Ominous words from a a man not prone to hyperbole.

The report was released Thusrsday to Kofi at 11am EST, and then publicly four hours thereafter. Earlier this year the Committee released internal audits showing how millions of dollars meant to go for food and medicine for the Iraqi people were instead wasted on mismanagement and corrupt over payments. During the late 90's when the Oil for Food Program was being implemented, many on the left had cried for an end to it stating that its implementation was killing thousands of children in Iraq through starvation and inadequate healthcare. In truth, even with the corruption Saddam was able to siphon off most of the money for his own uses, with the assistance of corrupt oil businessmen and bureaucrats.

In January Samir A. Vincent, a naturalized American citizen, was convicted of four counts relating to the Oil for Food scandal for taking money from Iraq in order to lobby the U.S. to drop the sanctions, fraud, conspiring with another government without registering, and tax evasion. He earned between 3$ and 5$ million dollars doing the work that liberals, socialists, commies, and greens were doing on Saddam's behalf for free. Saddam was building gaudy palaces with the money, leaving his people to suffer horribly, and a few criminals, like Samir and those soon to be revealed by Volcker's committee, went along for the blood-money ride.

The sanctions on Iraq, and the Oil for Food program amending them, were designed to constrain a diabolic, vicious, and unpredictable dictator. Had the U.N. lived up to its obligations and properly enforced and audited the transactions perhaps they would have worked. Instead, we will likely soon have evidence that the organization that appoints Sudan to the Commission on Human Rights, was apart to the greatest fraud in the history of the world. Billions of dollars, and untold thousands of lives were wasted on greed, incompetence, and sloth.

6:10:38 PM

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