Posted on 12/13/2006 10:15:48 AM PST by IrishMike
Outgoing U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan traveled to the Harry Truman Library yesterday to deliver his valedictory. It was yet another sanctimonious broadside against the Bush administration.
Ho hum.
As Truman himself once said, in a different context: "That's plain hokum. If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em: It's an old political trick."
What Truman would say today about Annan himself, and the organization he has headed for the past 10 years, can only be imagined.
But it would be, in a word, colorful.
Annan, who leaves office in 19 days, said he chose the Truman Library in order to pay tribute to his "far-sighted American leadership in a great global endeavor"
He noted that Truman "insisted, when faced with aggression by North Korea against the South in 1950, on bringing the issue to the United Nations" - in contrast to the Bush administration on Iraq.
This turns history on its head a bit: Truman could do so only because the Soviet Union was then boycotting the Security Council - and thus couldn't veto the authorization of military force against North Korea.
Nowadays, the United Nations can't, or won't, move swiftly no matter what the emergency - witness the continued genocide in Darfur.
............
Wise and courageous words - uttered in the same spirit that animated President Bush to act in Iraq, when Kofi Annan's United Nations refused to do so.
Just as Annan & Co. refuse to act on the nuclear ambitions of such rogue regimes as Iran and North Korea.
Frankly, it's no secret why Annan prefers to bash President Bush rather than focus on his own sorry tenure in office.
As secretary-general, Annan presided over Oil-for-Food, perhaps the biggest financial scandal in history - and in which his own son was involved.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
"Descends?"
Do you know what the difference is between the Mafia and the UN?
One is for profit.
Descends? It's there already.
This POS is ready for the Dust Heap of History.
Good-bye, Kofi Annan, you simpy little skunk. Good riddance. You need a cream pie in your face.
Or....at UN Headquarters,they serve better canolis.
Also, from Wash Times today:
Sanctimonious nonsense from Annan
Whatever one thinks of outgoing U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, it's clear that he suffers no shortage of chutzpah -- as evidenced by his willingness to lecture the United States about ethics and our supposed failure to live up to the values that made America great in the current struggle against international Islamofascism. Of course it would be absurd to pretend that the United States hasn't made mistakes in its conduct of this war -- just as we made them in World II, World War I and every other conflict the nation has been involved in. But Americans need no lectures from United Nations apparatchiks about what we can and cannot do to defend ourselves -- especially from Mr. Annan, whose U.N. career has been marred by ethical lapses and serial incompetence, which include the looting of the oil-for-food program, the erosion and collapse of international sanctions against Saddam Hussein's Iraqi government, Rwandan genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.
Regarding Iraq, Mr. Annan, who became secretary-general 10 years ago, was in the forefront of international appeasement of Saddam prior to September 11....
President Jacques Chirac and received a hero's welcome from U.N. staff after returning to New York.
In March 2000, when Saddam was in the process of diverting billions of dollars worth of oil-for-food program money intended for the Iraqi people to his international cronies, Mr. Annan was bragging to the Security Council about his success in making the program more transparent. Only after coalition troops ousted Saddam three years later did the world learn that Benon Sevan, the man Mr. Annan hired to run the program, had received vouchers for millions of barrels of oil from Saddam. Only when he came under pressure from Congress did Mr. Annan end his obstruction of congressional investigations of the scandal by releasing internal U.N. audits of the program. S. Iqbal Riza, Mr. Annan's chief of staff, suddenly "retired" after it came to light that he authorized his secretary to shred several years worth of documents relevant to the investigation.
Perhaps the most shameful episode of Mr. Annan's U.N. career was his failure, as director of peacekeeping operations during the 1990s, to take action to prevent Rwandan genocide. In 1994, Mr. Annan failed to act after being warned by Lt.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire, commander of U.N. peacekeeping forces there, that Hutu radicals were planning to massacre members of the rival Tutsi tribe...
Given his own record of malfeasance, Mr. Annan is in no position to lecture the United States about its shortcomings.
Aren't they both dirty dogs out for a buck?
Enjoyed the read.
What, the Mafia is for profit.
They should limit the scope of the UN to the meeting place for diplomacy aspect and not make the pretention it represents more.
Does the verb "LEADS" make more sense?
How can a cesspool descend into itself? It is a logical impossibility.
"Officially" for profit?
Is that better?
Here's another one:
"So much river, so few cement overshoes."
I take this to mean he admires Truman, and wants us to nuke Iran.
Wonder if he is going 'home' are staying in this terrible country.
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