Ignore the Man Behind the Curtain
Oy:
American outrage over the diversion of U.N.-supervised Iraqi oil-for-food money seems to miss three salient points. First, no American funds were stolen. Second, no U.N. funds were stolen. Third, the oil-for-food program achieved its two objectives: providing food to the Iraqi people and preventing Saddam Hussein from rebuilding his military threat to the region — and in particular from reconstituting his programs for weapons of mass destruction.
Enron employees got their paychecks, too. Does that mean the shareholders should have kept investing money in the company?
I’d tell you to read the whole thing (a sad little WaPo op-ed piece by James Dobbins), but what would be the point?
UPDATE: Elsewhere on WaPo’s op-ed page, Krauthammer says that
“Afghanistan grows poppies” is the sun rising in the east. “Afghanistan inaugurates democratically elected president” is the sun rising in the west. Afghanistan has always grown poppies. What is President Bush supposed to do? Send 100,000 GIs to eradicate the crop and incite a popular rebellion?
Or maybe Bush should ask the UN to run an Oil-for-Poppies program. Then maybe we’d be able to get the UN enough kickbacks to support us in the Terror War.
Whoa, that’d be a smack down.
quit needling us with those puns.
The Iraqi people were getting the food?
Did someone tell them this?
Of course they grow poppies, cool, fine by me, everyone needs a little coke once in a while. The problem is, Bush- along with saying we were going after Bin Laden, that we were also able to rid the area of drug lords and their poppie fields. Who Believed this??? It’s like saying we captured the biggest drug lord in Columbia and now there is no more dope comming across our borders. When will the right admit they have lost the war on drugs and quit tring to convince the rest of us that they are doing the right thing by pumping billions into an unwinnable propaganda party.
Even Usama bin Liden said that America was causing deaths in Iraq through it’s requirement of the UN OFF program. Now we are told it’s a bloody success. Who’s going to tell Usama ?
Huh? Am I missing something somewhere? How about all the endless protests against the sanctions, saying that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children were starving as a result? Somebody was lying someplace. And where did ol’ Saddam get the money to build the palances. And yes, it was American money that was stolen, UK money and anybody else who participated in the oil for food program.
Oil-for-food failed because it contributed to the US getting ensnared in the indefinite containment of Saddam Hussein while other nations profited. The end result was the deaths of three thousand Americans over the course of a decade. American funds were lost, indirectly through the cost of terror attacks and the direct financial burdens of containment. And let’s not forget that while Saddam was busy profiteering and buying influence, he was busy creating propaganda that UBL cited as a reason to wage war on the US.
Show Trial #34
Lenin taught us that “there has never been a single deep and mighty popular movement in history without filthy scum,” [this includes the blogosphere] without the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois element flighting against the Peoples Government, and … ut…
It was this UN program, Oil for Food, the Osama bin Liden put in one of his early videos as one of the reasons for the attacks on the WTC, Pentagon, etc.; more plainly, the US.
All the while politicos et al around the world are lining their pockets, and the US gets blamed for their complicity in a UN screwup and 3000 folks die.
Now we’re supposed to say what a great job Kofi had done ?
Enron and Iraq are the same. You are teh smart. Now me too!
Nonetheless, these critiques and other like them raised at Media Matters will need to be answered with Facts if the current anti-UN fervor is to gain momentum. And gain momentum it should