We’ve been allowed to forget the Canal Street Bombing in Baghdad, whose key finding was that the UN almost criminally neglected to protect its employees from attacks in a known war zone.

The United Nations’ “dysfunctional” security system led to unnecessary casualties in the August bombing of its headquarters in Iraq, and the world body inappropriately shunned protection by U.S.-led coalition forces, a U.N.-appointed panel examining U.N. security reported Wednesday. The 40-page assessment by the independent panel was perhaps the most condemnatory report on U.N. actions since those on the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica, Bosnia.

The report raised questions about the world body’s ability to ensure the safety of its employees without appearing to work in concert with an occupying force that is itself the target of guerrilla attacks. The U.N. staff union called the report a “damning indictment” of the organization’s attitude toward the security of its employees.

“But while it points to gross negligence and massive shortcomings … it fails to hold anyone accountable,” the union noted in a statement. “The real problem lies with the failures of management to adhere even to the existing security system.” Former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, who chaired the panel, said the United Nations must address the issue of accountability.

Even the Guardian reprinted the result of this invstigation. But of course nobody in the UN was punished. The simply reverted to type and acted indignant, as if the whole thing were someone else’s fault. The Left lost no time claiming that the Canal Street Bombing was “a product of the US occupation of Iraq”.

Then comes the Algiers bombing of a UN headquarters four years afterward — after the UN had indicted itself for neglecting to secure its personnel. Again the attack comes in a known war zone. And again Lakhdar Brahimi trots out the old excuse that it’s all America’s fault. But the truth is rather more prosaic. The UN officials are simply negligent.