'Sex and Corruption' at the U.N....who would have known?

U.S. ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton, said today that the United Nations "is hobbled by bad management, by sex and corruption."

"We find an organization that is deeply troubled by bad management, by sex and corruption and by a growing lack of confidence in its ability to carry out missions that are given to them," Bolton told an audience at a Columbia Law School symposium held by the Federalist Society, a conservative law organization.

Bolton, a longtime critic of the U.N., has been leading U.S. efforts to reform the United Nations after the oil-for-food scandal and sex scandals involving U.N. peacekeepers.

The oil-for-food program, established in 1996 with Iraq's economy crippled by sanctions, allowed Saddam Hussein to sell oil in exchange for humanitarian goods meant for his people.

An inquiry by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker found that Saddam sold oil to foreign countries in hopes of getting their support for lifting U.N. sanctions, and enriched himself by $1.8 billion through a kickback scheme. Companies and politicians essentially paid him for the right to do business, circumventing the U.N. program.

According to the article, U.N. Sec-Gen Kofi Annan is expected to announce his plan for an expansive managerial overhaul this coming Thursday. I wonder if we can expect his resignation.
I'm glad we finally have a no nonsense ambassador in John Bolton, and that he boldly came out today and said what he did, but this is old news. And why we continue to throw good money after bad to the coffers at Turtle Bay never ceases to amaze me.

The most recent issue of Imprimis, the national speech digest of Hillsdale College is featuring one of the most outstanding pieces on the U.N. I've ever read. It's a captivating and witty speech by the inimitable Mark Steyn, entitled, America and the United Nations. Truly a must read! Here's a morsel:

In fact, however, the UN is a shamefully squalid organization whose corruption is almost impossible to exaggerate. If you think--as the media and the left do in this country--that Iraq is a God-awful mess (which it's not), then try being the Balkans or Sudan or even Cyprus or anywhere where the problem's been left to the United Nations. If you don't want to bulk up your pension by skimming the Oil-for-Food program, no need to worry. Whatever your bag, the UN can find somewhere that suits--in West Africa, it's Sex-for-Food, with aid workers demanding sexual services from locals as young as four; in Cambodia, it's drug dealing; in Kenya, it's the refugee extortion racket; in the Balkans, sex slaves. On a UN peace mission, everyone gets his piece.

Didier Bourguet, a UN staffer in Congo and the Central African Republic, enjoyed the pleasures of 12-year-old girls, and as a result is now on trial in France. His lawyer has said he was part of a UN pedophile network operating from Africa to southeast Asia. But has anyone read anything about that? The merest glimpse of a U.S. servicewoman leading an Abu Ghraib inmate around with girlie knickers on his head was enough to prompt calls for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation, and for Ted Kennedy to charge that Saddam's torture chambers were now open 'under new management.' But systemic UN child sex in at least 50 percent of their missions? The transnational morality set can barely stifle their yawns. If you're going to sexually assault prepubescent girls, make sure you're wearing a blue helmet.

And at least the Pentagon put a stop to Abu Ghraib. As a British UN official in the Congo told my newspaper in London: 'The crux of the problem is that if the UN gets bolshie'--that's Britspeak for complaining aggressively--'with these governments then they stop providing the UN with troops and staff.' That's the system in a nutshell: when a British bigwig is with British forces, he'll enforce British standards; when a British official is holed up with an impeccably 'multilateral' force of Uruguayans, Tunisians, etc., he's more circumspect. When in Rome, do as the Visigoths do. In Congo, the UN had to forbid all contact between its predatory forces and the natives. The rest of the world should be so lucky.

The child sex racket is only the most extreme example of what's wrong with the UN approach to the world. Developed peoples value resilience: when disaster strikes, you bounce back. A hurricane flattens Florida, you patch things up and reopen. As the New Colonial Class, the UN doesn't look at it like that: when disaster strikes, it just proves that you and your countrymen are children who need to be taken under the transnational wing. The folks who have been under the UN wing the longest--indeed, the only ones with their own permanent UN agency and semi-centenarian 'refugee camps'--are the most comprehensively wrecked people on the face of the earth: the Palestinians. UN territories like Kosovo are the global equivalent of inner-city housing projects with the blue helmets as local enforcers for the absentee slum landlord. By contrast, a couple of years after imperialist warmonger Bush showed up, Afghanistan and Iraq have elections, presidents and prime ministers.

I implore you to read the whole piece if you like Mark Steyn and hate the U.N.

Hopefully you'll be sufficiently disgusted to write your elected officials to demand we stop funding this colossally abysmal money pit. It's beyond reformation. It needs to cease, desist and go away.