Kofi Annan

Sounds pretty busy at the UN, what with all that condemning and sadness going on. The third one is especially entertaining. I'm glad to hear that the UN's task in Iraq is complete. I've been reading avidly about the work the UN has been doing in Iraq since they left kicking and screaming when a single bomb went off (in a war zone no less) somewhere near the UN building in Baghdad. I propose that a possible solution to the Iraq problem would be to make every Iraqi citizen join some branch of the UN in one capacity or another. Soon after, they'd all leave Iraq, as it's much too dangerous there. The only ones left would be the terrorists. End of problem. The Goma incident is a little perplexing. Two South African "peacekeepers" were killed the town of Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (I bet it's neither democratic nor a republic). How did "peacekeepers" get into the war ravaged Congo? What peace were they trying to keep? It's just another day at the UN.

Annan gave the commencement address at Harvard on Thursday, June 10, 2004. In it he called for "Enlightened American leadership". It's just a guess, but I'm assuming he doesn't think "W" is enlightened enough. Here's a quote from an article in "The Crimson" (aptly named), Harvard's newspaper:

"A rule-based system is in the interest of all countries, especially today, because globalization makes deadly weapons relatively easy to attain and terrorists relatively difficult to restrain," Annan said, regarding collective security.

Without explicitly referencing the current U.S. administration, Annan challenged various elements of American foreign policy, including the use of preemptive strikes in the war in Iraq.

"What kind of world would it be, and who would want to live in it, if every country was allowed to use force, without collective agreement, simply because it thought there might be a threat?" Annan said, to applause from the audience.

Well, that clears things up. Al Qaeda must have had the UN's collective agreement to use force on us. If only we'd known. Oh, wait, they're not a country. Those damn loopholes! I guess it's the "preemptive" part that gets the liberals' shorts in a wad. In the case of Iraq it would have been much better to wait until after New Jersey was wiped out before anything was done about it. After sufficient condemning, anger and sadness of course. We'd probably be even more better off getting a few dozen more toothless UN resolutions while we're at it.

WMD. Weapons of Mass Destruction. France knew they were there, Germany knew they were there, Russia knew they were there, the UN knew they were there. They all said so. The UN even issued seventeen resolutions about them, and initiated inspections to find them. The UN inspectors were looking for them because they knew they were there. If the inspectors assumed there weren't any WMD's, what were they even doing looking for them? Of course they knew they were there. Now the question that should be being asked is: Where are they now? Is that the question you hear? No. Of course not. The question you hear (among others) is: If there are no WMD, why did we unilaterally and preemptively attack Iraq. So, what does Annan think? From Triangle Free Press:

Poverty, Not Terror, the Real Threat - U.N. Chief

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 22 - The world is so preoccupied with terrorism and weapons of mass destruction that it continues to ignore the real threats facing mankind, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned Wednesday.

The fears that stalk most people, he said, are those of poverty, starvation, unemployment and deadly diseases - not nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. "In the daily lives of most people, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) are remote and hypothetical threats," Annan added.

Of course, these "hypothetical threats" aren't all that hypothetical once deployed. When confronted with clouds of poison gas, it seems unlikely that many people would opt to complain about the length of the lines at the Unemployment Office. And from the same source:

"And so our first great task for 2004 is to re-focus the world's attention on development." The second task, he [Annan] said, is to start rebuilding collective security.

There's that word collective again. He seems to like that word. So let's see if I have this right. Develop first, defend second. That always seems to be a great idea. Create an undefended asset for some creep to take from you, and then don't do anything about it because you won't be able to.

Oil-for-Food. I keep thinking that this will be the day that I read about the really dirty 10.1 billion dollars stolen from the so-called U.N. sponsored Oil-For-Food program. Created to help Iraqi citizens obtain food and medicine, since these were in such short supply due to frenzied palace building, the U.N. monitored this so poorly (maybe even purposefully) that Saddam and pals (like Chirac) got rich off it. So what's th U.N. done about it? From The Heritage Foundation:

Evidence was recently leaked that the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services conducted a detailed audit of the U.N.'s administration of the Oil-for-Food program in 2003, before the liberation of Iraq. The report was damning in its conclusions and highly critical of the U.N.'s dealings with the Swiss company Cotecna Inspection SA, which had won a $4.8 million contract to oversee the operations of the Oil-for-Food program. Kofi Annan's son Kojo worked for the company in the mid-1990s and was a consultant to the company until shortly before it won the Oil-for-Food contract. Bizarrely, Cotecna was awarded another contract, worth $9.8 million, almost immediately after the report's publication.

The leaked report is reportedly just one of 55 internal U.N. audits of the Oil-for-Food program. Its existence suggests that Secretary General Annan would have known about the rampant structural problems within the program's administration. At the very least, the leaked report indirectly suggests gross negligence on the part of the U.N.'s top official.

That "top official" would be none other than Kofi Annan. What a shock.

And it goes on and on. NewsMax has an article (actually a thinly disguised ad for a book by U.N. employees!) that's almost funny until you realize the amounts of money being spent by the U.N. on bogus "peace" missions. And of course, a disproportionate amount of that money is from us, sadly with no expectation of accountability, responsibility or positive results.

This really has to end. Exactly what is the point of an organization like the U.N. other than to advance leftist agendas? That would be fine if somebody wants to do that. Just remember not to do it on my dime.

Kofi Annan

Secretary-General Condemns Coup Attempt in Kinshasa

Secretary-General Condemns Killing of Chinese in Afghanistan

Annan Says UN Envoy's Task in Iraq Is Complete

Annan Expresses Sadness at Death of UN Soldiers near Goma

Secretary-General Angered by Killings in Afghanistan