Posted on 10/10/2004 7:16:43 PM PDT by LibWhacker
Hardly days after our latest bid to re-enter the United Nations was crushed under diplomatic pressure from Beijing, the U.N. is once again in local newspaper headlines, although for an entirely different reason.
According to a comprehensive report prepared by the U.S. government's Iraq Survey Group, which pored through voluminous documents left behind by Saddam Hussein's deposed regime and interviewed several former top Iraqi officials, the Iraqi government bought influence over the U.N. and foreign governments through the U.N.-sponsored "oil for food" program.
While we are not the slightest bit surprised to hear accusations about the Iraqi regime furthering its interests in any way that it could before finally being overthrown by an invading army, we are especially alarmed about the alleged corrupt practices aimed at influencing the United Nations.
If the allegations prove true and a purported "rogue state" like Iraq was so easily able to make bribery pay off in the form of important United Nations Security Council votes, we can logically assume that Beijing can even more easily resort to the same immoral tactics to keep us out of the U.N.
While Iraq was only dealing with rather limited resources in the form of oil sales under the U.N.-sponsored program, the government of mainland China can tap a virtually unlimited number of lucrative deals it can offer to foreign government officials, opinion makers and business leaders with political clout.
Even if we don't stop to think about how corrupt practices are probably forming invisible barriers to our legitimate participation in the U.N. and its affiliated bodies, the corruption allegations also do a great deal to discredit the U.N. by dislodging the world body from its high and mighty place in the world community.
According to the U.S. report, distributed in full on the Central Intelligence Agency's Web site, the Iraqi government used various methods to channel oil vouchers, which could be privately sold off for large amounts of cash, to foreign government officials in exchange for help in the U.N.
The list of officials allegedly bribed by Saddam's henchman was impressive, ranging from former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua to Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri and ultra-nationalist Russian legislator Vladimir Zhirinovsky, as well as former U.N. oil-for-food program director Benon Sevan.
The report cited former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz as confirming that bribes funneled through intermediaries to top French officials, reputedly including President Jacques Chirac, were specifically intended as quid pro quo for votes against U.S. and British-sponsored U.N. resolutions.
The report also revealed that corporations in a number of European and Middle Eastern countries, as well as from mainland China and North Korea, were involved in lucrative yet illegal business transactions with the Iraqi regime. Many of these transactions supplied Iraq with arms and sensitive military technology in spite of the sanctions supposedly being imposed on Iraq by the United Nations.
According to U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, investigations by U.S. personnel combing through evidence left behind in Iraq showed that Saddam Hussein's regime was "using every tool possible, through its deception, front companies or sweetheart deals on oil and other things, to try to suborn the sanctions regime and try to acquire things it was not supposed to be buying under the sanctions regime."
Many people in Taiwan already have a hard time ingesting the U.N.'s high-handed assertions about how it is ensuring world peace and humanitarian progress at a time when the U.N. and its affiliated organizations are so eager to bar any meaningful participation by the Republic of China on Taiwan.
Here in Taiwan, cable TV customers are often subjected to watching self-serving U.N. commercials during breaks on CNN — something made only less sickening by the grandiose PR spots run by the International Olympic Committee which, like the U.N., also severely discriminates against the ROC in deference to Beijing.
Judging by the U.N.'s aggressive ban against us, it seems as if our country was the worst rogue state on the planet, worse even than countries like the former Iraqi regime, Yugoslavia under Slobodan Milosevic, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and North Korea's current dictatorship — all of which have been afforded full U.N. participation. Now that the U.N. has been exposed as a thoroughly corrupt organization, the U.N.'s obnoxious attitude against us, fueled by deference to another dictatorship in Beijing, is less surprising and perhaps even predictable.
We believe someday soon we will wake up to learn that just like its former friends in Iraq, Beijing has also been bribing foreign governments to keep us out of the international community, and with great success.
A breathlessly stupid headline....
Is the U.N. hopelessly corrupt?
Fa-Shizzle homey!
Rhetorical question.......
I think it is time to disband the UN and get it out of the US. I am sure when it was established it had grand ideas of how it could help in the world but now it is ineffective and useless. Put it out of its misery.
The answer to that question is "Absolutely." And the United States shouldn't have to fund most of it.
Even if it wasn't corrupt, it would still be impotent.
Corrupt, useless, incompetent, impotent, inconsequential, etc. etc.
Does a bear . . . ?
YES ..... WE SHOULD GET OUT OF IT AND IGNORE THE MEMBERS....
If the question has to be asked you already know the answer.
(Where's that pic with the guy holding the "UN go to Hell" sign pic that I thought I saved?}
> Hardly days after our [Taiwan's] latest bid to re-enter
> the United Nations was crushed ...
Why are they bothering?
It will cost them money and bring them nothing but grief.
It might be more effective for them to join the
League of Nations.
Yes.
Didn't even have to read the rest of the article.
YES! And that's the way Kofi Annan, Jacques Chirac, the Democratic party and all their ilk want it!
Question .. I read recently that the names of the companies and countries are published EXCEPT for the USA companies and they cannot be published because of the "privacy act" or something? Is this true? I think the names of ANY USA company involved in this should be put in the open.
Does the Pope Sh-t in the woods? ;-)
A no brainer question .... yes.
The UN is the greatest threat to world security in the post-9/11 era.
What 9/11 taught us (and what the brain-dead dems can't realize) is that there is only one truth in this world: POWER.
The UN's founding ideals of multiculturalism and world peace are hopelessly naive and unsuited to our times. There is simply too much at stake for the West/non-muslim world to try to cooperate with the 3rd/muslim world. The next 50-100 years will be bloody ones. There will almost certainly be a nuclear attack on America, and we will almost certainly use nukes against our enemies. But beyond this lies the Valley of Peace Bush spoke of in his concluding remarks in Miami. We must step up and fight this fight; at the end, the flag will still be there, and out of the ashes will emerge a better world. Bush knows this. The UN is in denial, like the dems.
But what cn you expect from an organization whose charter was drawn up by a Canadian?
No clue but somehome a democrate was identified to the OFF program in Texas as having recieved 22 million dollars and that he contributed over 500,000 to Kerry..
so i think the information is there if you want to dig for it....
smile......
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