Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) is doing a fantastic job of uncovering the massive corruption behind the UN’s Oil-For-Food program. Yesterday he had a direct call for Annan to step aside in the Wall Street Journal:
As a former prosecutor, I believe in the presumption of innocence. Such revelations, however, cast a dark cloud over Mr. Annan’s ability to address the U.N.’s quagmire. Mr. Annan has named the esteemed Paul Volcker to investigate Oil-for-Food-related allegations, but the latter’s team is severely hamstrung in its efforts. His panel has no authority to compel the production of documents or testimony from anyone outside the U.N. Nor does it possess the power to punish those who fabricate information, alter evidence or omit material facts. It must rely entirely on the goodwill of the very people and entities it is investigating. We must also recognize that Mr. Volcker’s effort is wholly funded by the U.N., at Mr. Annan’s control. Moreover, Mr. Volcker must issue his final report directly to the secretary general, who will then decide what, if anything, is released to the public.
Therefore, while I have faith in Mr. Volcker’s integrity and abilities, it is clear the U.N. simply cannot root out its own corruption while Mr. Annan is in charge: To get to the bottom of the murk, it’s clear that there needs to be a change at the top. In addition, a scandal of this magnitude requires a truly independent examination to ensure complete transparency, and to restore the credibility of the U.N. To that end, I reiterate our request for access to internal U.N. documents, and for access to U.N. personnel who were involved in the Oil-for-Food program.
All of this adds up to one conclusion: It’s time for Kofi Annan to step down. The massive scope of this debacle demands nothing less. If this widespread corruption had occurred in any legitimate organization around the world, its CEO would have been ousted long ago, in disgrace. Why is the U.N. different?
Sadly, the UN is treated differently and is practically above the law. The UN has long been involved in everything from sexual harrassment to using UN ambulances to smuggle weapons and terrorists into Israel from Gaza and the West Bank. The UN, like any agency that sees itself as above reproach, has been turned into a nest of thieves and tyrants – the Debate Club for Dictators and not anything even resembling a fair and impartial arbiter of international justice.
The United Nations is no longer the sort of agency that can be trusted to uphold the vaues in its own charter. Either they need massive reform at all levels to increase accountability, transparency, and justice, or it should be dismantled. Until these steps are made, the United States should suspend all payments to the UN and should seriously consider a complete withdrawl. The atrocity of the UN’s complicity in Saddam Hussein’s genocide against his own people is only the tip of the iceberg in an agency whose deep-seated arrogance has turned it utterly rotten.
The only way Coleman’s rant can be viewed as anything more than his latest endeavor in shameless political opportunism is if he had called for Donald Rumsfeld’s head over Abu Gharib and George Bush’s head over intelligence manipulations that led to the war in Iraq. Otherwise, Coleman’s selective accountability doctrine merely intensifies the partisan stench that has become his trademark.
Yes, except that Rumsfeld didn’t have anything to do with Abu Ghraib and a bipartisan Senate panel has already stated explictly that there’s no evidence that Bush manipulated the intelligence community in any way.
Of course it’s not as though the moonbat wing of the Democratic Party actually cares about the facts…
Like Coleman, you’re getting tangled up in a web of your own double standards. You and Slick Norm are both pressing for Annan’s departure before an investigation has even begun simply because bad press for the UN takes away bad headlines from Iraq’s impending civil war. Norm questions Voelker’s ability to conduct an effective investigation against Annan and the U.N. and you seem to agree, yet you have the utmost faith in a Republican-controlled Senate committee’s findings that the guy who hoodwinked them about Iraq didn’t sex up the intelligence that led them to their vote. Surely, any Senators that voted in accordance with indisputable evidence of intelligence manipulation would be destroyed by the GOP leadership and accused of “denigrating the troops” by questioning the validity of the war they rubber stamped.
To say Donald Rumsfeld, as Secretary of Defense, had no role in the Abu Gharib scandal is tantamount to saying Richard Nixon had no role in Watergate because he didn’t break into the hotel. It was the rhetoric of Rumsfeld and other administration hacks that led to the mindset of soldiers that Iraqi war prisoners were responsible for the 9-11 attacks. The need for a high-profile head to roll based on the Abu Gharib atrocity was far more integral to the success of our foreign policy than is making sure Kofi Annan’s head rolls even before an investigation is able to confirm on deny the charges against him.
It was an independent and bipartisan commission.
That is quite frankly an idiotic argument, even by your low standards. So Rumsfeld is to blame because he made the soldiers all think that Iraq was responsible for 9/11?
A:) Rumsfeld and the Bush Administration specifically said they have no evidence that tied Iraq to 9/11 and B:) that has nothing to do with the abuses at Abu Ghraib to begin with.
Apparently the “reality-based community” implies an alternate reality from the one the rest of us inhabit.
I am not familiar with the makeup of the Senate commission that exonerated Bush, and correspondingly themselves, of being duped by bad intelligence that led them to support waging war against Iraq. However, correct me if I’m wrong with the following guesses…
• The “bipartisan commission” was created in the Republican-controlled Senate, and being the majority party, there were more Republicans on the commission than Democrats.
• The vast majority of the commission members were war supporters, and thus had a vested interest in keeping themselves from looking bad with their vote and to keep the fangs of the Republican Party operatives off of their necks, publicly assassinating their character in an election year with the usual GOP tactics of muting any sort of dissent with charges of “aiding the enemy” and “denigrating the troops.”
• The commission’s findings were not unanimous in their dismissal of Bush from accountability over intelligence manipulation.
Seems like the confusion could be cleared up with the acknowledgement of who was on the committee, and who found Bush accountable and who didn’t.
As for my other “idiotic statement” that the Bush administration two-year connecting of non-existent dots between Iraq and 9-11, I think you better converse with a few more of the people who supported the same candidate as you did. Nearly half of Bush voters reported to believing that Iraq was connected to the 9-11 attacks. Given that 70% of the military was rumored to have voted for Bush, it’s a pretty safe bet that many of them were among this demographic. Given that Bush and especially Cheney invoked 9-11 and the war in Iraq in the same sentence on a near-weekly basis, you’re not gonna be able to effectively call those who remind you of this inconvenient truth “idiots” without ending up with egg on your face.
In regard to Rumsfeld’s role himself, the only gesture the administration could make to effectively counter the PR nightmare that was the Abu Gharib incident would have been to publicly condemn the act by purging someone. There was a direct chain of command leading right to the top that was requesting US soldiers use whatever means possible to extract the intended information from the Iraqi prisoners. For us to go on with business as usual and not give them someone’s head, particularly Rumsfeld, is the same thing as an endorsement.
There are 9 Republicans and 8 Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Considering that Chuck Hagel and Olympia Snowe, both of whom have been deeply critical of Bush and the war in Iraq, it’s hard if not impossible to argue that the committee was somehow biased.
Does that include former Senator John Edwards, who served in the commission. Diane Feinstein? Carl Levin?
If you honestly believe that line of pure BS, you need your tinfoil hat loosened — it’s cutting off blood to your brain.
The statement that there was no evidence to support that conclusion was a finding of fact and an official conclusion of the Committee, which has the full force of law.
What do Chuck Hagel, Olympia Snowe, John Edwards and Diane Feinstein all have in common? The correct answer is….they all voted in favor of the war in Iraq. If I remember right, Levin did vote against it. Either way, there’s a 77% chance that the Senators on the committee cast a ballot in favor of a war that they would like fools to admit they were tricked by Bush over two years deep into combat. It would be virtually impossible to find 19 Senators in a wartime election year willing to admit that black wasn’t white when looking at the obvious deception that was orchestrated by the Bush administration in the lead-up to war….sort of like expecting Arthur Andersen accountants to find their own company guilty of accounting gimmicks in the Enron scandal.