Kofi Annan's political myopia (blind to looting, corruption & rape, but at least he's anti-US)
The Scotsman  | 3/30/05
 

THE investigation by the former US Federal Reserve chairman, Paul Volcker, has purported to clear the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, of wrongdoing over an Iraq oil deal involving his son. Mr Volcker decided there was not enough evidence to indicate that Mr Annan was aware of his son’s financial links with a Swiss contractor hired by the UN to oversee part of the organisation’s corrupt food-for-oil programme.
 

But the Volcker report faulted Mr Annan over an "inadequate" inquiry into the case, and thereby hangs a tale. Under Mr Annan, the UN allowed the food-for-oil programme to degenerate into a corrupt empire in which Saddam Hussein bribed numerous UN and other diplomats to turn their backs while he looted his country and starved its people. Under Mr Annan, UN agencies failed to notice that Iran was making atomic bombs. Under Mr Annan, UN "peacekeepers" conducted systematic sexual abuse of local women and children across Africa.
 

If Mr Annan was blind to all this - involving billions of pounds and millions of people - why would we expect him to know what his son was up to?
 

Mr Annan will keep his job because his political myopia suits those UN members who see the organisation as a platform with which to beat the West. But if the UN is ever to be reformed, it will need a more sharp-eyed secretary general.