snapshots

I.

[Andrew] Thomson, who spent two years pulling bodies out of mass graves in Rwanda and the Bosnian town of Srebrenica — corpses of people who had sought safety with the U.N. — concludes: “If blue-helmeted U.N. peacekeepers show up in your town or village and offer to protect you, run. Or else get weapons. Your lives are worth so much less than theirs.” [link]

II.

The United Nations will use money left over from its oil-for-food program in Iraq to pay for an investigation of that program. Secretary General Kofi Annan told the U.N. Security Council this week that thirty million dollars will be used. The money was meant to pay costs of the program, which ended last year. [link]

III.

Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations, finds it “inconceivable” that Russia, France or China might have been influenced in Security Council debates by Saddam Hussein's Oil for Food business and bribes. “These are very serious and important governments,” Mr. Annan told Britain's ITV News Sunday. “You are not dealing with banana republics.”

This has been Mr. Annan's chief response so far to the extensive documentation cited in the recent Iraq Survey Group report, from the CIA's Charles Duelfer, that under cover of the U.N.'s Oil for Food relief program Saddam was trying to buy up pals on the U.N. Security Council. Mr. Duelfer tells us that under the leaky U.N. sanctions and corrupt Oil for Food program, Saddam had already built the networks and was amassing the resources to rearm himself with weapons of mass destruction as soon as U.N. sanctions were entirely gone. [link]

IV.

For anyone who wants to quibble with the notion that the media favor Kerry, consider this: Since January 1, 2004, here are the number of morning and evening news stories and interview segments the networks have devoted to uncovering the growing United Nations Oil for Food program bribery scandal: four. NBC aired three: a January 15 report by Myers, a July 20 report from Andrea Mitchell, and a Myers story on October 6, when the Duelfer report came out detailing the scam. ABC aired only one this year: from investigative reporter Brian Ross on April 21, the day the UN announced its own internal probe into the scandal. But we found CBS has not aired a single story on the scandal, even when using a list of different search terms in the Nexis search engine trying to find one. Maybe they were hip-deep in phony documents. Why isn't this a major scandal for the major networks? Despite the nine ongoing probes, the networks would rather chase anti-Bush angles. ABC, CBS, and NBC have combined for more than 75 stories on George W. Bush's National Guard Service, more than 50 stories on “skyrocketing” gasoline prices, and hundreds on prison abuse at Abu Ghraib. All year, Kerry has touted a greater UN and European role in Iraq. Now, those players look like what liberals called “the coalition of the bribed.” And the anchormen are keeping quiet. [link]

V.

A spokesman for President Chirac last Tuesday said Mr. Chirac had told Mr. Mubarak that France was hoping to invite groups representing insurgents to the international conference and was seeking to revisit a possible timetable for when American troops would leave Iraq. Earlier this month Crown Prince Abdullah suggested Saudi Arabia would be willing to contribute soldiers to stabilizing Iraq, but only if the soldiers were directly commanded by the United Nations and not the multinational force in Iraq, which is under American command. [link]

VI.

Kerry's belief in working with allies runs so deep that he has maintained that the loss of American life can be better justified if it occurs in the course of a mission with international support. In 1994, discussing the possibility of U.S. troops being killed in Bosnia, he said, “If you mean dying in the course of the United Nations effort, yes, it is worth that. If you mean dying American troops unilaterally going in with some false presumption that we can affect the outcome, the answer is unequivocally no.” [link]

Then there's this.

AND latebreaking news of more depravity, UN and otherwise (via The Belmont Club).

This month, the United Nations Security Council voted to condemn terrorism. The resolution was introduced by Russia, still grieving over the terrorist attack on a school in Beslan, and perhaps the unanimous vote will give it a measure of solace. But the convoluted text and the dealings behind the scenes that were necessary to secure agreement on it offer cold comfort to anyone who cares about winning the war against terrorism. For what they reveal is that even after Beslan and after Madrid and after 9/11, the UN still cannot bring itself to oppose terrorism unequivocally.

The reason for this failure is that the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which comprises fifty-six of the UN's 191 members, defends terrorism as a right.

Religion of peace, etc.

Clinton as UN Secratary General? Quick, relect Bush before I start having bad nightmares.