How far we've come
By Cori Dauber
Now that Oil for Food is being used as an argument against the UN and against Kofi, all of a sudden the scandal is being portrayed as no big deal and just something conservatives are pushing (and exaggerating) to undermine the UN.
But The New Republic's Michael Crowley's description really takes the cake:
But what was the ultimate damage? Negroponte has told the Senate that the program largely met its goal of "creating a system to address the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi civilian population, while maintaining strict sanctions enforcement of items that Saddam Hussein could use to rearm or reconstitute his WMD program." The program did save lives: Average daily calorie intake nearly doubled in Iraq from 1996 to 2002. And Saddam never reconstituted the nuclear weapons program that was the ostensible reason for last year's invasion. The greatest tragedy of the oil-for-food program may be that, for all its Byzantine corruption, we never realized just how effective it was.
We've come a long way from claims, false though they were, of a million starving babies, haven't we?
This argument is perfect. It's all just a conservative effort to undermine the UN, and every problem with the Iraqi infrastructure, electrical plant, sewage system, and public health system, can therefore be laid at the door of the war -- and the reconstruction effort's failings -- and therefore at the US, rather then at the years of neglect that resulted from Saddam's manipulation of Oil for Food.
You sort of have to marvel at the elegance. |
