Posted on 11/23/2004 6:03:05 PM PST by quidnunc
"The extent of the corruption is staggering," Sen. Norm Coleman told me. He is a freshman Republican from Minnesota completing his second year in Washington, and he was talking about the United Nations and its pious secretary general, Kofi Annan. Coleman's comments are not the mere musings of an insignificant rookie senator, but the considered judgment of a committee chairman whose careful investigation reached the hearing stage Monday.
After winning his Senate seat against former Vice President Walter F. Mondale in 2002, Coleman was rewarded with the chairmanship of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (made infamous a half-century ago during Joe McCarthy's tenure). He now is conducting what could be the most explosive congressional investigation in years, probing the UN's fraudulent oil-for-food program in Iraq and Annan's obstruction of the senatorial inquiry.
Coleman said this week's hearings will show that "the scope of the rip-off" at the UN is "substantially more" than the widely reported $10 billion to $11 billion in graft. But more than money is involved. These hearings also should expose the arrogance of the secretary general and his bureaucracy. At the same time that he has refused to honor the Senate committee's request for documents, Annan has inveighed against the Fallujah offensive sanctioned by the new Iraqi government while ignoring the terrorism of insurgents. This is an unprecedented showdown between a branch of the U.S. government and the United Nations.
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(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
Ah, yes, the United Nations.
As school kids we all heard the UN described as "the last best hope of mankind" and "if it hadn't been invented it would need to be." Even now as adults we hear calls for "sending" in the UN; getting UN approval; the need to "work with the UN"; and praise for its "technical and relief agencies." On its official website, the UN modestly states, "United Nations. It's Your World."
We at The Diplomad are here to ask you to forget all that misty-eyed blather. Our Diplomads have served at the UN, in New York, Vienna and Geneva, and worked with the UN in a variety of other posts, and can tell you from experience that the UN is a massive, expensive hoax that needs to be ended once and for all.
Those who don't rely on the "elite" MSM for all their information, know about the UN's "oil-for-food" scam that is slowly being uncovered, and could prove the most massive financial scandal in human history (even bigger than Massachusetts' "Big Dig.") The "oil-for-food" scam, huge as it is, flows logically from the ruling ethos at the UN. The UN system is built on corruption, on the principle of the shake-down; whatever lofty objectives might have existed at its creation, for the UN corruption now provides the means and reason to exist.
Let us explain.
The UN as an institution is the purest of pure bureaucracy: it is the thirty-year single malt of bureaucracies. We refer you to the UN website for details on careers there, but suffice it to say that if you want a job that is VERY well-paying, has lots of perks (first class travel; a generous pension; right to retire almost anywhere you want; tax free), and involves little actual work, the UN bureaucracy is for you — unfortunately, if you're an American (or Israeli) you'll have a hard time getting it given the solid anti-Americanism (and anti-Semitism) of the UN Secretariat. The UN bureaucracy must have served as inspiration for a sci-fi story we vaguely recall about an ancient civilization that builds an elobrate machine that continues to operate even after the civilization itself has died. Subsequent generations — in this case, in Europe and the boardroom of the NY Times — have no idea what the machine does, but don't tamper with it, and, in fact, begin to worship it.
Well, we know the secret of the UN bureaucracy machine. It exists to exist. To do that it has going one of the best scams imaginable. While most media and ordinary folks focus on the occasionally contentious UNSC resolutions and debates on Iraq or Iran, in fact, 99% of UN "work" has nothing to do with such high-visibility issues. No, it deals with scores, hundreds, in fact, of resolutions passed every year in the UN General Assembly, its main Committees, and in bodies such as the Human Rights Commission. It lives off those resolutions.
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(Unattributed in The Diplomad, , November 23, 2004)
http://diplomadic.blogspot.com/2004_11_01_diplomadic_archive.html
UN Perks include paying all the tuition and housing for your kids at the private University of your choice.
I had a neighbor who had 6 kids..all going to Ivy League type schools paid for by the UN.
The UN is a criminal enterprise run by a bunch of third world punks.
If the UE is so mighty and powerful let them take care of the UN.
"Infamous" or "famous" depending on yourpoint of view. Otherwise a good article.
I'd like to think that this latest scandal takes us one step further toward removing the US from the UN, but I doubt it. There's too many bureaucratic jobs on the line for that to happen.
Except maybe in Europe. Hope I'm wrong, but I think I've heard the story isn't being covered at all there. (And damn minimally by the MSM here.)
Explosive, substantial, staggering, historic -- pick your adjective for this scam and it will still amount to exactly Zero actually being done about it. As in: kicking their sorry asses out of our country and our wallets. Let's face it, if this doesn't do it, there's nothing that will.
Get us out of the UN and the UN out of the US
I believe it is much more diabolical than just existing to exist. Yes, I'm a tinfoil hat wearing member of the OneWorld Order conspiracies.
UN / Iraq - good Novak article - bump.
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