ican711nm wrote:Is the UN doing an acceptable job of securing and protecting human rights?
Is the UN effective in reducing genocide in Africa?
Is the UN effective in reducing the spread of AIDS in Africa?
Is the UN effective in reducing worldwide terrorist murder and maiming of innocent people?
Is the UN effective in enforcing its resolutions?
Was the UN effective in managing the UN's Oil-for-food program in Iraq?
You don't know much about the UN, the UN charta, the different organisations, structure etc, right?
timberlandko wrote:CdK, the chain of evidence exists in that documents siezed by military authorities from the Iraqi Oil Ministry and other regime document repositories, immediately following the fall of Baghdad.....
Just like the ones that turned out to be forgeries allegedly were seized.
Walter Hinteler wrote:ican711nm wrote:Is the UN doing an acceptable job of securing and protecting human rights?
Is the UN effective in reducing genocide in Africa?
Is the UN effective in reducing the spread of AIDS in Africa?
Is the UN effective in reducing worldwide terrorist murder and maiming of innocent people?
Is the UN effective in enforcing its resolutions?
Was the UN effective in managing the UN's Oil-for-food program in Iraq?
You don't know much about the UN, the UN charta, the different organisations, structure etc, right?
Would you be so kind as to make at least one attempt to disabuse me of what you allege to be my ignorance of the UN, the UN Charter, UN organizations, and UN structure, etc.?
UN's 'shameful silence' over the evils of Saddam
By David Rennie in Washington
(Filed: 12/06/2004)
During his years at the United Nations, monitoring sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf war, critics called Michael Soussan a baby killer. One said the oil-for-food programme administered by the UN amounted to "overseeing genocide".
Michael Soussan: UN's 'moral compass was skewed in Iraq'
To Mr Soussan's dismay, the most vocal critics worked alongside him at the UN. The genocide charge was levelled by an assistant secretary general in charge of humanitarian work in Iraq.
His colleagues blamed the Security Council - especially the United States and Britain - for the suffering of Iraqis, ignoring evidence that Saddam was stealing food from his own people's mouths.
They could hardly ignore the wickedness of Saddam's regime. Foreign UN staff could sense the terror in Iraqis they met, and saw for themselves the gilded excesses of the Ba'athist elite.
(...)
"We have a notion of sovereignty at the UN that doesn't distinguish between governments that deserve sovereignty and those that do not. And that really skews our moral compass," Mr Soussan told The Telegraph.
"[My colleagues] devoted most of their moral outrage towards the United States and the UK," he said.
The oil-for-food programme was the largest humanitarian project in UN history. Following the fall of Saddam, evidence has emerged indicating fraud and corruption on an equally historic scale.
Mr Soussan, a programme co-ordinator for the programme from 1997 until 2000, when he resigned, recently testified before a US congressional panel investigating the scandal, one of several probes under way in Washington, New York and Baghdad.
Mr Soussan, a Dane, found many senior UN staff did not believe in their own mission.
"To them, the containment of Saddam Hussein was not a priority. They saw things through a humanitarian lens: that some countries are dictatorships, well, so be it, and the Iraqi people deserve better than being treated this way."
Divisions within the international community were visible, even in the UN canteen in Baghdad. The weapons inspectors of Unscom sat at one end, mocking humanitarian officials as "bunny-huggers". Oil-for-food workers sat at the other, denouncing Unscom staff as "cowboys". Mr Soussan recalled humanitarian colleagues wearing T-shirts, bearing the accusing slogan "Unscum". "It would have been funny if it wasn't so tragic," he said.
children died, by conservative estimates.
(...)
But during those five years, it was Saddam who refused offers to sell his oil and import humanitarian goods under UN supervision. "[He was] banking that images of dying babies would eventually force the international community to lift the sanctions altogether," Mr Soussan told Congress.
By 2000, there was no limit on the amount of oil Saddam was allowed to sell, and few limits on the civilian goods he was allowed to buy.
(...)
UN staff did not speak out when Saddam refused to buy high protein foods recommended by UN experts, or spent oil-for-food millions on sports stadiums, or broadcasting equipment for his propaganda machine.
The UN turned a blind eye to signs that Saddam was bribing cronies at home and abroad with black market oil vouchers, and was skimming billions from funds meant for food and medicine, demanding secret, 10 per cent "kickbacks" on humanitarian contracts.
The UN recently claimed it "learned of the 10 per cent kickback scheme only after the end of major combat operations" in 2003.
A lie, said Mr Soussan, recalling the hapless Swedish company that called in 2000, seeking UN help after being asked to pay kickbacks. The Swedes' plea was quickly lost in red tape and inter-office turf wars. After a "Kafka-esque" flurry of internal memos, the Swedes were told to complain to their own government.
It did not help that, inside the Security Council, France, Russia and China openly opposed sanctions, threatening doom for any UN official tempted to blow the whistle on Saddam's cheating.
"Most high level UN employees need to be on good terms with key countries in the Security Council if they want to have a career."
Now top UN officials are under investigation. Mr Soussan hopes the shock will force a major debate on how to deal with rogue regimes.
"The oil-for-food programme was a deal with the devil. The problem is, that we didn't act as if this was the devil, we acted as if this was a legitimate regime," he said.
If such major questions have to wait, a little more transparency would help, for starters.
"If the UN had just stood up once, held a high-level press conference, and said, 'We think the Iraqi government is cheating its people', then the UN would not be in the mess it is now," he said. "It would then be an accuser, rather than the accused."
-----------
One insider's insights.
See This and
]And This for reference to other documentation and evidence.
And there are 3 pages of linked articles
Beginning Here, continuing
Here and
Here.
Moneyfiles holds no special fondness for The Current Administration, which entity itself receives considerable critical scrutiny by Moneyfile, both in the current context and a number of other examinations posited by the organization.
Admittedly more partisan,
Freinds of Saddam, apart from its editorializing, offers enough links relevant to the current flap to keep even a speedreader with a T-1 connection busy for quite a while.
Again, while there may or may not be any "There" there, a veritable growing, expanding forrest of roadsigns is pointing "There".
ican711nm wrote:
Is the UN doing an acceptable job of securing and protecting human rights?
Is the UN effective in reducing genocide in Africa?
Is the UN effective in reducing the spread of AIDS in Africa?
Is the UN effective in reducing worldwide terrorist murder and maiming of innocent people?
Is the UN effective in enforcing its resolutions?
Was the UN effective in managing the UN's Oil-for-food program in Iraq?
Sofia,
I for one would appreciate as much information as you care to provide on all the above questions.
Craven de Kere wrote:timberlandko wrote:CdK, the chain of evidence exists in that documents siezed by military authorities from the Iraqi Oil Ministry and other regime document repositories, immediately following the fall of Baghdad.....
Just like the ones that turned out to be forgeries allegedly were seized.
I believe the forgeries were "discovered" conveniently, "handed over", if I recall, not "siezed". There's a pretty big difference.
ican711nm wrote:Walter Hinteler wrote:ican711nm wrote:Is the UN doing an acceptable job of securing and protecting human rights?
Is the UN effective in reducing genocide in Africa?
Is the UN effective in reducing the spread of AIDS in Africa?
Is the UN effective in reducing worldwide terrorist murder and maiming of innocent people?
Is the UN effective in enforcing its resolutions?
Was the UN effective in managing the UN's Oil-for-food program in Iraq?
You don't know much about the UN, the UN charta, the different organisations, structure etc, right?
Would you be so kind as to make at least one attempt to disabuse me of what you allege to be my ignorance of the UN, the UN Charter, UN organizations, and UN structure, etc.?
Is the UN effective in enforcing its resolutions?
No - because especially the USA were against such when founded and when the Charta was created.
Ican,
I'm rather weak (slow) in the search department, but I'll do what I can.
But, for now, I'll tell you nimh will arrive and say the UN is only as strong as the member nations' responses. We've gone over this and fallen out significantly over our opinions.
It is a foregone conclusion that the UN was a complete failure in administrating the UN OFF program. The article I brought on this page detailed the UN looking the other way in the face of Sweden blowing the whistle on corruption. They also dropped interest in Ibex' dirty dealings, when France dropped the UN requested investigation of eye-witness corruption. Article on a few pages back.
The irst article is an old one from April that simply states the same allegations we are discussing and says:
Quote:...those denials might not withstand the onslaught of the documents about to be released, investigators say.
So it's just yet another claim that there are documents, and not any "evidence" for your claim of their accuracy.
The second one is more of the same, reporting claims of the corruptions and promising that in the future evidence will come out:
Quote:His report on oil-for-food, written for the international accounting company KPMG, was due to be released in three weeks but its publication has been delayed for at least three months, he said.
"This report would have been even more damning than anticipated. This would not sit comfortably with the political agenda in Washington or London.
"I believe that what Washington wants is to keep the lid on things until after the presidential election. The White House believes that the report will be detrimental to President Bush's re-election campaign."
So, as evidence for the "accuracy" of these claims you are simply posting articles where the claims are made and promises of future evidence to be given.
You have shown great skill in posting links.
Thus far not a single one of them has done anything at all to support yout claims of evidence of accuracy.
I am reluctant to wade through more so I'll ask:
Do these links provide evidence of the accuracy of the claims or not?
Look, I fully expect there to be evidence of real corruption. Your claim was that there was already evidence of the accuracy of these claims. Since many of the claims you tout from Iraq have been found to be less than accurate in the past authentication of the claims would be nice.
You implied that this currently exists.
Again, where is it? You keep simply linking to articles that say exactly what we all already know: that claims of corruption have been made, documents are said to exist and the veracity of the claims and authenticity of the documents will eventually come out.
That's not evidence of accuracy like you claimed.
I think evidence of accuracy is forthcoming, I do not think it is here yet.
If you are claiming it is, then bring it. And merely posting more links that simply report the claims without any verification of their veracity do not count as evidence for the accuracy of the claims.
You are getting ahead of yourself.
Walter Hinteler wrote: Is the UN effective in enforcing its resolutions?
No - because especially the USA were against such when founded and when the Charta was created.
What would be required now to make the UN effective in enforcing its resolutions?
What would be required now to make the UN effective in enforcing its resolutions?
---------------------
Balls and integrity.
They should stand up and LOUDLY proclaim when something is wrong. They should have told the world what was up with the OFF program in 2000, or as corruption became evident. They should have followed up on the reports of graft as they occurred.
I don't think I claimed the allegations were "accurate" at all, I believe I've been trying to make the case that at the very least the questions, rather than succumb to debunking, grow more intriguing and spawn even more questions. I've not intended or attempted to convict anyone or anything, I took great issue with the notion the current flap was old and discounted business. Perhaps, as it seems to some it appears I'm "getting ahead of myself", I've done that ineptly.
I'll say again that while nothing so far is proven, the body of evidence appears to be growing. It is my suspicion that broadspread malfeasance will be proven. I do not expect either The Coalition Provisional Authority or The Current Administration, or at least significant individuals therein, will escape inculpation. I figure there's gonna be plenty of embarrassment to go around.
timberlandko wrote:I don't think I claimed the allegations were "accurate" at all.
Do you remember these words:
timberlandko wrote:...an accurate representation of information gleaned from files of unambiguous provenance...
I wasn't putting quotation marks around
accurate for nothing.
But that was then and this is now and in your latest posts post-evidence challenge I agree with much of what you said.
Sofia wrote:What would be required now to make the UN effective in enforcing its resolutions?
---------------------
Balls and integrity.
They should stand up and LOUDLY proclaim when something is wrong. They should have told the world what was up with the OFF program in 2000, or as corruption became evident. They should have followed up on the reports of graft as they occurred.
Can one make gonads out of an anus?
Short of repopulating the UN what can be done to the UN's structure to make it effective?
I expected some released documentation before the election.
We'll see what they have.
But the fact that they returned to Libi with info that cast doubt on his story, shows they are searching for the truth.
And, that is what we all want to know, isn't it?
