Naming Names in Oil-for-Food

The Daily Telegraph (via the Washington Times) reports that among the 270 individuals named in a Congressional investigation of corruption in the Iraqi Oil-for-Food Program are: Former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua; President Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia; Russian nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovksy; and of course Benon Sevan, the U.N. official in charge of the program.

Others on the list include the former French ambassador to the U.N., two other Frenchmen (a priest and a man involved with the Franco-Iraqi Friendship Association), and VIPs from all over Europe and the Middle East.

It begs credulity to be asked to trust U.N. officials to "oversee" the transfer of power to Iraqis and to ensure that things run smoothly thereafter. As Midge Decter pointed out earlier this morning on C-SPAN, the force for good on the world stage today is America, not the U.N. While American troops were dying to liberate Iraq, corrupt U.N. officials were selling millions of barrels of oil and pocketing the proceeds. Anyone who still believes that the U.N. confers true political legitimacy (as, disappointingly, does Tony Blair) needs lessons in political philosophy and the dangers of cynicism (or naiveté).