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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (41525)	4/30/2004 6:41:33 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 793955

KOFI'S CANARD April 29, 2004 -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is simply beyond shame. Look what slipped from his lips at a Turtle Bay press conference yesterday: "Violent military action by an occupying power against the inhabitants of an occupied country will only make matters worse." His topic was continuing Coalition efforts to pacify Iraq. Annan was speaking of the U.S. Marines in Fallujah, who for two full weeks have been absorbing casualties during a unilateral "ceasefire." And of U.S. Army troops arrayed outside Najaf, sitting on their hands while Muqtada al-Sadr's fundamentalist militia solidifies its grip on the holy city. Let's be clear here. Annan speaks in support of the most violent and irresponsible minorities in Iraq - hard-core Ba'athist holdouts, many of them ex-Republican Guard thugs who put thousands of Iraqis into mass graves. Of course, Annan strenuously opposed Saddam's ouster in the first place. Just why he did is becoming more clear. Yesterday, in Washington, <font size=4>a congressional committee began sorting through the details of Annan's sordid Iraq Oil-for- Food program - a squalid scandal that is arguably the largest embezzlement scheme in human history.<font size=3> Annan's own son is implicated in the multibillion-dollar rip-off - as is the man Annan hand-picked to run the program, and officials of many of the countries and companies who also opposed Saddam's dispossession. The grotesque scam's chief victims were the people of Iraq: They lived in brutal poverty while Saddam, the foreigners he bribed and cynical U.N. officials skimmed off billions meant for food and humanitarian aid. But perhaps the most significant casualty of the scandal is the moral authority of the United Nations - not just Annan, but the institution itself. Indeed, the secretary-general's continuing presence - to say nothing of his shameful slurs on U.S. soldiers - demeans the expectations of freedom-loving people everywhere. <font size=4> They once thought universal peace and justice to be possible through the good offices of the United Nations. No reasonable person can believe that any longer. Kofi Annan should just go away. <font size=3> nypost.com

To: Lane3 who wrote (41525)	4/30/2004 6:41:39 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 793955

From a Baghdad Weekly, a Global Scandal ....The al-Mada story suggests that <font size=4>some of the most vocal critics of U.N. sanctions on Iraq were on the take from Saddam Hussein and benefited from monies intended to buy food and medicine for the Iraqi people<font size=3>. In short, right-wingers love this story and liberals have less appetite for it..... washingtonpost.com How to buy a French veto Anyone who pines for genuine international multilateralism would do well to follow the bribes now being uncovered in the United Nations' Oil-for-Food scandal..... If President Bush has suffered some discredit over his apparently false -- but not disingenuous -- claims of Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction, the lapse is minor compared to the outright personal selfishness and criminality that appears to have motivated many of those who opposed his efforts to rid the world of one of its worst dictators..... dodgeglobe.com PRE-WAR PROFITEERING ...kickbacks and corruption reached as far as Paris where cronies and cabinet officers of French President Jacques Chirac have been implicated. And the trail leads closer to Chirac himself..... newscentral.tv No Peace for Oil Next time there is a television newscast of an anti-Iraq war demonstration, imagine a voice saying: “ this event is sponsored by Saddam Hussein and the United Nations.” ..... The UN administered Oil-for-Food program.... was used as a slush fund by Hussein to bribe UN, French, Russian officials and to fund groups protesting the American intervention in Iraq..... mensnewsdaily.com