Free Republic

I have seen a report that Claudia Rosett has passed away. She was one of the good ones. She did some incredible work on the corruption of the UN.

Out of extremely thin air, the Obama administration is now conjuring the narrative that Congress actually did approve a Libyan no-fly zone before President Barack Obama signed onto the project with the United Nations. Speaking last Sunday on ABC TV’s This Week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton mentioned (though she wasn’t quite sure of the date): “The United States Senate called for a no-fly zone in the resolution that it passed, um, I think on March the first.” ABC News, under the headline “Fact Check: Senate Did Favor No-Fly Zone,” is now reporting: Some lawmakers are grousing loudly that President...

Foreign policy was a side issue in Tuesday’s election. But with crises in the making, from Venezuela to Iran, and points between and beyond, the wider world will be muscling its way into the spotlight soon enough. Let’s hope the new Congress, whatever its configuration, will take a serious interest in at least trying to resume some oversight of how American tax dollars get spent at that international colosseum known as the United Nations. The issue is not solely the billions of dollars Washington pours annually into the UN — providing roughly one-quarter of a system-wide UN budget that now...

It gets ever more intriguing to watch the unfolding priorities of the imam behind the Ground Zero mosque project, Feisal Abdul Rauf. Having returned to New York this month after a summer spent largely incommunicado in Malaysia and the Middle East, Rauf over the past fortnight has found time to appear on CNN and ABC TV, speak at the Council on Foreign Relations and write an op-ed for the New York Times, all in service of touting his vision of a $100 million-plus high-rise Islamic complex near Ground Zero (including, as we have all heard by now, a swimming pool, basketball court, auditorium, cooking school, and mosque). But Rauf...

Uh-oh.From the Homeland Security system that “worked,” we now have word that Secretary Janet Napolitano is mobilizing a broad response to the underwear bomber. As part of this security “review,” Napolitano is dispatching her deputy, Jane Holl Lute, “on a broad international outreach effort [1]” to review security procedures with “leaders from major international airports in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and South America.”Who is Jane Holl Lute? Or, more precisely, what kind of hands-on experience is presumed to qualify Lute for the serious responsibility of serving as the #2 official at Homeland Security?Why, the United Nations, of course. Before joining the...

President Obama's broad scheme for foreign policy has been something of a puzzle, short on specifics and long on talk about forging alliances, extending hands and "engaging." In his first address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday evening, Obama offered a further hint--repeating the gist of the argument with which, as one of his first acts in office, he ordered the closing of Guantanamo Bay: "Living our values doesn't make us weaker. It makes us safer, and it makes us stronger." So far, there's not much reason to feel safer. If anything, the world seems to be getting...

It's not just American election pundits who have been pondering the meaning of "change." In case you missed it on the Fox News web site, Libyan tyrant Moammar Gadhafi has also glommed onto this buzzword of the Democratic campaigns, and in this video clip from MEMRI, with English subtitles, you can watch him airing his views (excerpts, transcribed by MEMRI, here) that Americans, with their interest in change, regard their system, their government, and their elections, as a failure. Says Gadhafi, "The whole world will return to the Libyan model."That, and some of Gadhafi's other nonsense in this speech,...

… then why is he shilling for the United Nations?As Hollywood buffs and UN money-raisers already know, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has just named actor George Clooney as the UN’s newest Messenger of Peace, with a “special focus on UN peacekeeping.” Clooney, currently visiting Sudan, is expected to “receive his designation” Jan. 31st at UN headquarters in New York.This would all be great if UN peacekeeping actually produced peace. But the illusion that the UN is a grand force for good in this world deserves to be catalogued somewhere between World’s Most Amazing Scams and Believe It-Or-Not Best-in-Special-Effects. The reality...

ON SEPTEMBER 7, PAUL Volcker's inquiry into the Oil-for-Food program issued its "definitive report" on the biggest relief program--also the biggest scandal--in the history of the United Nations. The investigation alone cost $34 million, took over 16 months, and employed some 75 staff from 28 countries. Running to four volumes and totaling 847 pages, the report is hefty. But definitive it is not.Volcker's report is at best a beginning, and a skewed and incomplete one at that. To be fair, credit is due to some of the investigators on Volcker's staff, who have conducted many interviews and toiled down many...

Congratulations to NRO Contributor Claudia Rosett, winner of the 2005 Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Journalism! She should have a Pulitzer and maybe even a Nobel on her desk, but today Claudia Rosett has a true truth-teller's prize in her possession — the Eric Annual Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Journalism. The $10,000 prize, given by Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp in honor of former New York Post columnist and editor Eric Breindel, is awarded to "the columnist, editorialist or reporter whose work best reflects the spirit of the writings by Eric Breindel: Love of country and its democratic institutions...

LUGANO, Switzerland — Did Saddam Hussein use any of his ill-gotten billions filched from the United Nations Oil-for-Food program to help fund Al Qaeda? Investigations have shown that the former Iraqi dictator grafted and smuggled more than $10 billion from the program that for seven years prior to Saddam's overthrow was meant to bring humanitarian aid to ordinary Iraqis. And the Sept. 11 Commission has shown a tracery of contacts between Saddam and Al Qaeda (search) that continued after billions of Oil-for-Food dollars began pouring into Saddam's coffers and Usama bin Laden (search) declared his infamous war on the U.S....

In the scandal over the U.N. Oil-for-Food program in Iraq, Kofi Annan's main line of defense has been that he didn't know. Perhaps he should take a closer look at internal U.N. Oil-for-Food audit reports, more than 50 in all, produced by his own Office of Internal Oversight Services--the same reports he's declined to share with the Security Council, or release to Congress. One of these reports has now leaked. It concerns the U.N. Secretariat's mishandling of the hiring of inspectors to authenticate the contents of relief shipments into sanctions-bound Iraq. (Obtained by a journalist specializing in the mining industry,...

It's looking more and more as if one of the best reasons to get rid of Saddam Hussein was that it was probably the only way to get rid of Oil-for-Food. The problem wasn't simply that this huge United Nations relief program for Iraq became a gala of graft, theft, fraud, palace-building and global influence-peddling -- though all that was quite bad enough. The picture now emerging is that under U.N. management the Oil-for-Food program, which ran from 1996-2003, served as a cover not only for Saddam's regime to cheat the Iraqi people, but to set up a vast and...

Statement for the Record of Claudia Rosett     Journalist Senior Fellow, The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies And Adjunct Fellow, The Hudson Institute    Before the House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations   April 21, 2004      Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the Committtee, I thank you for the opportunity to testify here today. Speaking as a journalist, I would like to tell you that when I first began asking questions about Oil-for-Food, in 2002, it was not with the aim of uncovering a scam. I wished simply to understand what appeared to be a complicated relief effort -- complications which, as we have since learned, served to...

With Saddam Hussein finally in custody and the future of Iraq looking a little more secure, we're hearing calls for President Bush to rip up the list of countries that the United States has deemed eligible to bid on prime contracts for rebuilding Iraq. Mr. Bush should stick to his guns; that list of 63 countries, all of whom helped the American-led coalition, was good policy. But it's important to be clear about why it is a good idea — because in the piñata grab for the $18.6 billion in reconstruction contracts, some basic points have gotten lost. First, it...