Don’t hold your breath waiting for the mainstream media to make a major scandal out of the the rip-off scheme perpetrated by greedy U.N. officials and their corporate pals in the $5 billion Iraqi oil for palaces program.
The ladies and gentlemen of the press have more important things to do, like getting George Bush to apologize for blowing up the Twin Towers.
The only way to get them to trundle out the moral outrage would be to discover that the culprit is Halliburton.
“[O]utrage that drives coverage is selective,” writes William Safire in the New York Times, “and there is little establishment appetite to pursue this complex scandal. Speaking power to truth, Newsweek headlines ‘Anti-U.N. Campaign,’ and reports dark suspicions by U.N. bureaucrats that the scandal was ‘drummed up’ by the doves’ Iraqi villain, Ahmad Chalabi.”
With the media and the State Department failing to register the appropriate outrage, the blogosphere may be the only hope.
The incomparable Lucianne has noted the existence of a new blog, Saddam’s Friends, devoted to keeping tabs on the scandal.
Among the articles posted, you’ll find Claudia Rosset’s terrific Commentary piece entitled “What Did Kofi Annan Know, and When Did He Know It?”
“For those who look yearningly to the UN for answers to the world’s problems, it [the scandal] has provoked, perhaps, some introspection about the pardonable corruption that threatens even the most selfless undertakings. For those who believe the UN can do nothing right, Oil-for-Food, whatever it was about, is a delicious vindication that everyone and everything at the world organization is crooked, the institution a fiasco, and politicians who support it fit for recall at the next electoral opportunity.”
Rosset’s fact-filled article is printed in full on the blog, and Inky urges you to read it.
Not everybody is disillusioned with the East River Debating (and Thievin’) Society.
EU presidential candidate John Kerry maintains a touching faith in the scandal-plagued organization:
“If I’m president, I will not only personally go to the U.N., I will go to other capitals….,” he said on Meet the Press. ‘I will immediately reach out to other nations in a very different way from this administration. Within weeks of being inaugurated, I will return to the U.N. and I will literally, formally rejoin the community of nations and turn over a proud new chapter in America’s relationship with the world.”