The larger questions are why Annan and his top aides and advisers felt they could with impunity deflect blame from their own failings and from the UN itself . . .

I can't read anyone's mind, let alone the polluted fog that passes for Mr. Annan's.

But I'd guess he knew full well how corrupt an organization the UN is and has been for many decades. I'm betting he figured he could count on the UN's Cloak of Corruption to shield him, and that nobody would come a'callin'. ("As it was, so will it always be.")

That was his mistake: he didn't factor Claudia into his equation.

Plus, what else would a deer caught in the bright, focussed beam of the Rosett headlights do other than to attempt to deflect, using all the tools at his disposal (obstructing, dissembling, stalling, lashing out, failing to prevent the destruction of evidence, etc.)?

. . . and why, apart from perhaps Sevan, they have gotten away with it.

Again, I suspect that the UN elite have gotten away with it because any honest UN person, a soul unwilling to turn a blind eye towards the the UN's corruption if not willing to take advantage of it themselves, would long ago have had their careers seriously limited to insensitive areas, if not terminated outright.

That's one of the great advantages of an opaque organization which has successfully sold the myth of its own moral purity; which has tons of money; which is staffed by lots of people who enjoy back-scratching and trading favors -- and all this with no effective oversight!

So -- how you did it, Claudia, I'll never know.

Brian

Jan 16, 2007 02:44 PM

Claudia! Am I the only one who thinks that the war that we are fighting was CAUSED by the UN?

More than a decade of bungled 'peace'; ineffectual weapons inspection; a sanction system that killed hundreds-of-thousands of innocents while the very target of the sanctions was intentionally supported via a devious kick-back set-up. Could Sadaam have been as dangerous if not for the power granted by the body that so many regard (even today) as responsible?

Can it be said now?

So often I hear that we were lied into this war, that there were no WMD. This goes unchallenged.

There were WMD, they were not accounted for by the UN. It should never have been considered to be the responsibilty of the invaders to produce the weapons, that responsibility was incumbent upon the UN and their failure to do so made the invasion necessary.

If a lunatic felon is seen entering a school with a gun, and if that felon is shot by the police, and if the gun is not found, the police are not to be punished for their inability to find the gun.

Jan 16, 2007 02:53 PM

About time! I'm glad to see something happening on the long trail towards accountability. The question remains whether the Sevan indictment can be used to identify whether and where there was more widespread corruption in the Programme. Unfortunately the short answer, as Claudia has pointed out before, is 'Yes'...

However this wouldn't be a Pajamas thread without a token loose cannon, and luckily L Scott Davidson has volunteered. I particularly liked:

"If a lunatic felon is seen entering a school with a gun, and if that felon is shot by the police, and if the gun is not found, the police are not to be punished for their inability to find the gun."

Very clearly the police would be punished if they shot somebody who was unarmed. The defence that they are a "lunatic felon" probably wouldn't hold much water, especially if a gun is never found. It makes me really glad that you're not a police officer.

"It should never have been considered to be the responsibilty of the invaders to produce the weapons, that responsibility was incumbent upon the UN and their failure to do so made the invasion necessary."

Um, yes, it was the responsibility of the invaders to produce WMDs, since that was a critical reason for going to war. If WMDs don't exist, the reasons for war are undermined (although not removed, since there were other reasons). If there weren't WMDs, then the UN would hardly be able to produce them, would they? Also worth pointing out: no WMD have been found in Iraq since the fall of Saddam.

Jan 16, 2007 05:13 PM

UN did not cause this war. UN did nothing constructive to stop it - but did not cause it. To think this war was caused by anyone other than Hussein and his government is to deny reality. History shows there is no shortage of people willing to deny reality.

Was it the responsibility of "the invaders" to produce WMDs?

No. Not at all. That is equivalent to saying that police have a responsibility to find evidence every time they have a search warrant. That's just not true.

Much more to the point, it was Iraq's responsibility to cooperate with the UN inspectors - which Iraq had every opportunity to do over a lengthy period of time. Iraq's responsibility was either to produce their WMD or produce compelling evidence that their WMD had been destroyed. Iraq did neither.

Some people assert that Iraq never had WMD. But that is false. Hans Blix - the UN chief responsible for WMD inspections - reported to the General Assembly in 2003 that Iraq had failed to account for thousands of litres of chemicals used in manufacture of poison gas and biological weapons, which Iraq was known to have possessed prior to 2003. Iraq of course actually used poison gas on the Kurds, so it's clear that Iraq also possessed the means to weaponize the constituent chemicals. Iraq never accounted even for those chemicals. Instead Hussein chose to play a high-stakes cat-and-mouse game with UN inspectors.

Keep in mind that Iraq ignored 17 UN resolutions in all. Complying with the UN resolutions, especially as regards WMD, might have avoided this war. We'll never know, because of Hussein's decision to flout the UN resolutions, for which the blame lies with Hussein, no one else.

Hussein assumed correctly that UN had not the backbone to enforce its own resolutions. Unfortunately for him, he assumed incorrectly that US would be deterred by UN cowardice. Of course, Hussein's defiance of the UN and his miscalculations were his own responsibility, not that of "the invaders".

Jan 16, 2007 07:07 PM

Yes merkur, after listening to years of commentary like yours, my cannon is loosening.

In commenting on my example as well as the real situation in question you refer to the existence of the weapons as something to be questioned.

In the first instance I can assure you that the gun existed because it was a supposition that I created. There is no possibility that the lunatic felon was not lunatic, nor that he was not a felon. The police did not, as you say "shoot somebody who was unarmed" It's my story. He was armed. You don't have to stand in his defense. He would have killed kids.

I am also pretty sure that WMD existed in Iraq since they were used there to kill people.

Jan 16, 2007 08:10 PM

Sorry Cousin,
The MSM will never publicise the disgrace that is the UN enough to even approach acountability. They have embraced the concept that enough talk and understanding is all we need to bring about world peace.
While completely ignoring dhafur, Rwanda, and a multitude of islamic sponsered atrocities.
As for WMD, I suggest you google "Georges Sada", the iraqi general charged with moving them to Syria.
There is also an American Colonel quite upset with our government for not opening vaults buried under the tigris river.
Further is the report form the NY Pravda...Sorry, Times about documents the US gov. published/complained about, showing that iraq was 1 year away from producing nuclear weapons when we invaded,
[www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/...]
(the NYT article now requires a subscription)
...they have still not explained the disparity between complaining the weapons did not exist and how our government publishing iraqi documents would help other governments create them.
I'm afraid your analogy of the disapearing gun doesn't work for me either.
Here in Denver the police shoot unarmed people in the back 1-2 times a year and claim self defense without repercussions, dating from my first year in denver when an off-duty cop shot an off-duty postman for flipping him off(postman survived) to the killing of an old man with a diet-coke can(silver object in his hand) by a cop crawling thru a second story window in search of a relatives abusive ex-spouse.
Until Katrina and the stupidity displayed by the keystone cops in that city, I would have said they had nothing on our murder and corruption.
But the Dhimmicrats thinking they can bring about peace in the world thru bigger/world government are on serious, strong drugs.

Jan 17, 2007 12:42 AM

[www.pajamasmedia.com/2006/12/blo...]

For a delightful interview with Ms Rossett see the above link.

She meets with M. Sevan in Cyprus

She also talks about the oil for food scandal, the UN, and the war on terror.

She survived the elevator shaft that recently took the life of M. Sevan's spinster aunt, The elevator shaft that adjoins the apartment the M. Sevan currently occupies.

Cue spooky music.

Jan 17, 2007 07:53 AM

Yes,the oil for food was not the UN's proudest moment; and Sevon hopefully will go to trial.

But lets put this in perspective as it also answers wht]y the rest of the world is not demanding that the UN be shut down because of this.

The US controled CPA in Iraq lost billions of USD to corruption; far more money than the UN associated corruption here (160,000USD to Sevan!). And the US gov incompetence in dealing (or not)with Katrina has never been matched by the UN.

All insitutions suffer from some level of corruption whether its the US government, the UN or an NGO. The question is, do we place all the blame and froth at the mouth over just the UN or do we try to reform all corruption where ever it may lay?

Jan 17, 2007 09:37 PM

L Scott:

In the first instance I can assure you that the gun existed because it was a supposition that I created. There is no possibility that the lunatic felon was not lunatic, nor that he was not a felon. The police did not, as you say "shoot somebody who was unarmed" It's my story. He was armed. You don't have to stand in his defense. He would have killed kids.

In that case, I apologise - I thought I was supposed to be taking your argument seriously. As I now understand, what you're saying is that this is a hypothesis that you've made up in order to prove your point.

Back in the real world, meanwhile, policemen are required to have a good reason for shooting people. The primary requirement in your convenient hypothesis would be that the suspect was armed, and if you can't find a gun post-incident, that reasoning looks pretty weak. The point I was making about labelling somebody a "lunatic felon" is that this would be hard for a police officer to do, since those terms require the judgement of a court. Which is why we have courts in this country, in case you were wondering.

Obviously you don't think so, which is why I'm glad you're not a police officer.

I am also pretty sure that WMD existed in Iraq since they were used there to kill people.

I'm sure that chemical weapons existed in Iraq, since while I was there I met some of the victims of Halabja. The problem is, that was in the 1990s; no significant WMDs have been found post-invasion, as far as I'm aware - but feel free to prove me wrong.

Jan 18, 2007 09:27 AM

joan:

And the US gov incompetence in dealing (or not)with Katrina has never been matched by the UN.

Jan 18, 2007 11:41 AM

spynverzyon: Your comparison fails slightly since the UN was not the government of Rwanda.

The UN Secretariat (and Annan in particular) were clearly negligent in their duty - but the members of the Security Council (including the US) were largely responsible for failing to provide the political pressure or material support that would have led to a response.

Jan 18, 2007 12:48 PM

Yes, the weapons existed. The point I am trying to make is that the world community needed for those weapons to be accounted for. It now appears that the UN, who were trusted to do this, did not do so in good faith. They took advantage of the system that was designed to pressure Hussein's government such that it put billions in his accounts, money in their own pockets and caused the very people that the UN claims to protect, to suffer. (I believe that the Unicef report that came out in '97 indicated that near 500,000 children 5 years old and under had died as a direct result of the sanctions.)

The Bush administration's decision to go to war was a brash move that put a lot of real people in peril, but the so-called diplomatic efforts were also very deadly (with comparitively little in the way of public outrage) and did not seem to be yielding much. The sanctions were grinding the weak and poor and the oil-for-food kickbacks were funding Sadaam.

With the view we now have into Iraq and the UN-management of sanctions and weapons inspections, it becomes increasingly apparent that there was (and is) a real problem at the top. The UN does not seem ready to acknowledge problems or reform.

Accounting for the weapons in order to prevent military action would have been good. That's my point.

Jan 18, 2007 01:11 PM

Murkur wrote:

I'm sure that chemical weapons existed in Iraq, since while I was there I met some of the victims of Halabja. The problem is, that was in the 1990s; no significant WMDs have been found post-invasion, as far as I'm aware - but feel free to prove me wrong.

The issue of WMDs in Iraq is pretty far off topic, and I'd promised myself I wouldn't contribute to it.

But, I think it is worth noting that WMDs were found in Iraq, post-Saddam.

True, most of these were old and probably degraded.

But that makes the point they were some of the very ones that Mr. Hussein was known to have had on hand prior to inspections, had failed to account for, and, indeed, had prompted and sustained the UN inspections themselves, not to mention having factored heavily into the rationale for invasion.

It's also worth noting that the debates before the war, both domestic and international, centered on what to do about the WMD Mr. Hussein was known to have, not on whether or not he had them.

Was military action warranted? Should sanctions be prolonged, and if so, for how long and under what conditions should they be lifted? Those were the topics of pre-war debate.

Brian

Jan 18, 2007 01:47 PM

spynverzyon

Your point about Rwanda raises the biggest weakness of the UN. In the case of Rwanda, the US, UK, Russia et al on the security council did not want to intervene to stop the genocide, they therefore blocked the UN from doing anything.

THe UN can only act when the US and others on the security council want it to act.

Jan 18, 2007 10:33 PM

Brian: good point, it is indeed way off-topic. I should have been clearer in my first point: by "significant" I did not mean in numbers, but in capability. The weapons referenced in the report were pre-1991, and were in relatively small amounts. Compare this to what the UN was actually told by Colin Powell in 2003:

... as with biological weapons, Saddam Hussein has never accounted for vast amounts of chemical weaponry: 550 artillery shells with mustard, 30,000 empty munitions and enough precursors to increase his stockpile to as much as 500 tons of chemical agents... If we consider just one category of missing weaponry, 6500 bombs from the Iran-Iraq War, UNMOVIC says the amount of chemical agent in them would be on the order of a thousand tons... There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more... Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent... In 1995, as a result of another defector, we find out that, after his invasion of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein had initiated a crash program to build a crude nuclear weapon, in violation of Iraq's UN obligations.

As you say, way off-topic. The point is relevant to L Scott's position however: "Accounting for the weapons in order to prevent military action would have been good." I agree, it would have been good. The problem is that, if those weapons identified by Powell did not in fact exist, then there is simply no way that anybody could possibly account for them.

Jan 19, 2007 04:10 AM

Merkur,

I agree with your point that if WMD did not exist, it would be impossible to account for them: one cannot prove a negative.

So by itself, the logic of the inspections didn't "work," a logical faux-pas I found troubling even as the inspections were being undertaken.

And if all we had to go on was Colin Powell's UN testimomy, I'd almost certainly agree with you in retrospect, especially given the logically-impossible requirement underlying the inspections that the Iraqi government "prove a negative."

But the determination that Saddam Hussein had WMD was made long before Mr. Powell's testimony, dating well back to the mid 90's: it was the strongly-held consensus of virtually every intelligence agency who investigated the matter, and was the official position of the UN (which is why that august body approved sanctions).

In this connection, we know that France, China and Russia each had strong historic ties with and economic interests in Saddam's Iraq, and saw it in their best interests to avert an invasion, preferring to see sanctions simply fizzle away over time.

If they had had any second thoughts about the existence of WMDs in Iraq, why would they not play that card in order to avert the invasion that threatened to cost them billions?

So -- Colin Powell's comments merely supplemented (albeit most dramatically and persuasively) what was already known. In my opinion, it was so plausible, and so consistent with what their own intelligence services were telling them, that those 3 countries in particular saw no basis to claim otherwise.

I'm afraid I don't find either the vintage of the weapons or the "small amounts" of them to be insignificant: they were significant precisely because Mr. Hussein had admitted to having them, but had not accounted for their destruction.

Having failed to account for such "small amounts", one had to wonder why they were not accounted for; whether or not they had been maintained; and whether or not other WMD had been newly constructed or acquired and hidden along with the pre-91 weapons. The obstructionist behavior of the Iraqis towards the inspectors was also troubling.

So IMO the "failure to account" was highly significant, far more so than either the vintage of the weapons found, their condition or their numbers or amounts.

I notice I misspelled "Merkur" in my last post. Sorry -- it was unintentional.

Brian

Jan 19, 2007 01:10 PM