The real scandal

New York Post - April 12, 2004 -- Even as the elite media and other Bush- bashers fruitlessly scour musty memos for hints of White House culpability in the 9/11 attacks, more incriminating details are coming to light on the multibillion-dollar corruption of the United Nation's Iraq Oil-for-Food program - the biggest scandal in the world body's history.

And hardly anybody's paying any attention - a shame, because the U.N. and its backers are pushing for a major role in the administration of post-war Iraq.

In Washington, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee - following in the footsteps of the Iraqi Governing Council - last week began its own hearings on the giant scam.

The IGC had earlier hired top international accountants and lawyers to investigate powerful evidence found in Baghdad that Saddam Hussein used the program to reward sympathetic foreign politicians and companies - and that top U.N. officials, some of them on Saddam's take, turned a blind eye to kickbacks and sanctions-busting on a gargantuan scale.

And the U.S. General Accounting Office has estimated that Saddam skimmed as much as $10 billion from the $47 billion program.

It is not yet clear how much U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan knew about the shameful goings-on, including the extent to which program administrators collaborated with the Saddam regime and conspired in the defrauding of Iraqi Kurds.

But there is no doubt that Annan played a key role in setting the program up and appointed its chief administrator Benon Savan - whose name is reported to be on a list of untoward Oil-for-Food beneficiaries.



Last Wednesday, the Senate committee heard that Saddam had skimmed millions from Oil-for-Food by purchasing and reselling for profit some 37,000 automobiles - including luxury cars and SUVs.

Oil-for-Food's official purpose, of course, was to let Iraq sell oil and use the funds to buy food and humanitarian goods like medicine.

Instead, and with the knowledge of U.N. officials, the money went for all kinds of non-humanitarian purchases, including building palaces, buying arms and bribing foreign politicians and opinion-makers.

And when food and genuine humanitarian goods were bought through the program, it was often at vastly inflated prices, with much of the excess being kicked back to high-ranking officials of the now-defunct Saddam regime.

Note that France and Russia were the biggest recipients of Oil-for-Food largesse. As Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) pointed out last week, "The corruption . . . almost certainly contributed to the international division over containing and ultimately ousting Saddam Hussein."

Before anyone even considers giving the United Nations real power in Iraq (or anywhere else, for that matter), the world must find out the full extent of the Oil-for-Food scandal.

Plus, what Kofi Annan knew - and when he knew it.

It all should make much more interesting reading than barely relevant presidential briefing memos.