Mar. 24, 2004 - 19:59 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Late Accounting ?

Editorial in today's Rocky Mountain News.

"Justice For Iraq's Children"

(Not in sequence) "Records seized in Iraq show Saddam Husseins regime made payments to at least 270 foreign diplomats, government officials and corporations. One of them was Benon Sevan, the U.N. executive in charge of the program."

"The allegation is that these payments were bribes for officials to look the other way while Saddam skimmed off more than $10 billion that was supposed to go toward buying food and medicine for his people."

(The opening of the article) "United Nations Secretary-general Kofi Annan is pushing for an independent commission to investigate bribery and kickbacks in the U.N. administered oil-for-food program for Iraq." "An independant panel -- free of the influence of the Security Council -- is a good idea. Iraq's will certainly not be the last U.N.-imposed embargo with a humanitarian loophole, and if sanctions regimes are to be effective they must be properly run. Clearly the oil-for-food program was not."

"If the allegation is true, we'd like to see the U.N. go further and see that these officials are prosecuted, by their own countries or, if necessary, the international court in the Hague."

"First, it's a matter of simple justice. Crooks should be punished."

"Second, the United Nations has an obligation to clean its own house."

"And third, during the duration of the embargo, its chief supporter, the United States, took all kinds of abuse for supposedly depriving Iraqi children of food and medicine."

"There's little evidence to suggest this was ever the case. That canard can now be shown to the world as the false and baseless charge it was and is."

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My memory might not be down to the nitty-gritty accurate, but it is a bit long. Seems to me that most any time that goods, food or medical things are given to innocent foreigners in need and their young -- they are diverted to those in power, or those who have seized power and very little goes to aid those people truly in need. For instance Somalia . . . . . . How many more will be dead before there is an accurate Late Accounting ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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