The UN Oil 'Scandal'

The same political figures who engineered the current debacle in Iraq are now trying to blame the United Nations for more than $10.1 billion worth of oil revenue they claim Saddam Hussein diverted from the Oil for Food program. The issue prompted a hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 7, where the ghost of Jesse Helms has barely been exorcised, and will be raised in two House committees. One of those calling for a House hearing is Henry Hyde, chair of the International Relations Committee, who has said publicly that he wants the United States to leave the UN. Those raising the Oil for Food issue have also implied that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was somehow involved because his son once worked for a firm that won a contract from the program--even though he'd left by the time it took effect.

But the accusers and their accusations bear more critical scrutiny. Much of the noise comes from the "Pentagon intellectuals," their protégé and informant Ahmad Chalabi and the Wall Street Journal's editorialists, whose collective accusations are about as reliable as previous assurances that there were indeed weapons of mass destruction and that the UN was willfully not finding them. From National Review to the Wall Street Journal, the usual suspects have been banging away at the expedient scandal.

The Oil for Food program began as a way to maintain sanctions in the face of the suffering in Iraq that was eroding support for UN sanctions domestically and internationally. The Iraqis sold oil on the world market--often, ironically, to American companies, especially in the run-up to the invasion, to meet the fuel shortages caused by the threat of war. The proceeds of those sales went into an escrow account run by the Oil for Food program, from which the Iraqi government could draw to pay for bona fide humanitarian imports, after inspectors had verified their arrival in Iraq. By the time of the invasion, the program's food rations were the lifeline in whole or in part for more than 80 percent of Iraq's people.

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