The U.N. Sucks (cont.)

According to the L.A. Times, the recently-released report by the UN-established Independent Inquiry Committee, led by former US Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker,

"...meticulously detailed how the $64 billion program became a cash cow for Saddam and more than half the companies participating in oil-for-food -- at the expense of Iraqis suffering under U.N. sanctions. It blamed shoddy U.N. management and the world's most powerful nations for allowing the corruption to go on for years.

The report named politicians in Russia, France, Britain, Italy and other nations who were given favours by Saddam in his quest to get 1990 UN sanctions lifted.

Wretchard at the Belmont Club makes an an important observation relative to the profound ineptitude and corruption at the UN:

The fundamental argument against international military action is the supposition that effective alternatives exist to contain rogue states and tyrants. But what if it does not? The Volcker Report essentially describes the history of the decade-long diplomatic battle to proscribe the movements of Saddam Hussein following the Gulf War. It is an account of the unmitigated defeat of the "international community" at the hands of Saddam; not only a defeat but a rout and a surrender. And although the surrender had already taken place, the world was told categorically by the capitulators themselves that they were fighting and winning the good fight against the forces of lawlessness. The problem with September 11 was not that it happened, but that it happened where it could not be ignored; this fact was the virtual third aircraft that crashed into Manhattan that day, striking somewhere in the vicinity of Turtle Bay.