Oil-for-Palaces

Some Iraqis are going to audit the abysmal performance of the U.N. "Oil for Food" program. The WSJ Ed Page reports in Oil for Saddam that KPMG and the London-based international law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer are going to document just how bad this program was:

It's bad enough that, in the name of respecting Iraqi "sovereignty," oil-for-food used Iraqi resources to throw Saddam a lifeline, sustaining his command economy and palace lifestyle. But it's a global scandal if Saddam Hussein also had carte blanche to use the U.N. program to distribute billions of dollars in contracts to reward his supporters and apologists abroad.

The U.N. office administering oil-for-food -- led by longtime U.N. bureaucrat Benon V. Sevan -- appears to have been happy to look the other way while all of this took place and now refuses to take any responsibility for the way the program was abused.

Sorry friends -- this was the alternative to Iraqi liberation: the continuation of "containment" which included financial and logistical support for terrorists, children's prisons, environmental destruction to persecute the Marsh Arabs, and a continuation of those wacky Hussiens' high-rent lifestyle.
I'll vote with The Dissident Frogman: no WMD, WDM:

Posted by jk at February 20, 2004 08:43 AM