When it comes to people who lack the moral standing to lecture America on the war in Iraq — or anything — U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan surely heads the list. But does that stop him from offering his self-serving observations? Of course not. In a direct slap to President Bush, Annan last week declared that "I cannot say the world is safer today . . . when you see what is going on in Iraq." In an interview on British TV, he also cited "the violence around us" and "the terrorist attacks around the world."
OK. We think he's wrong, but maybe it's a judgment call. So how sound is Annan's judgment? Well, he also pronounced it "inconceivable" that Saddam Hussein's multimillion-dollar payoffs under the U.N.'s hopelessly corrupt Oil-for-Food program could have eased international sanctions against Iraq. "I don't think the Russian or the French or the Chinese government[s] would allow [themselves] to be bought," he said. After all, "these are very serious and important governments. You are not dealing with banana republics."
| "I dun' think that word means what you think it means!" |
Before he vouches too publicly for the honesty of his member states, Annan should give a close read to the recently released Duelfer report — and the devastating picture it presents of the hopelessly shady operation under which Saddam was moving heaven and earth to get those sanctions lifted. Indeed, says the report, the Butcher of Baghdad was on the verge of success: Sanctions were "in a shambles" and on the verge of being lifted entirely, whereupon Saddam planned to resume his previously abandoned WMD-development programs. That scheme — with the connivance of such "serious and important governments" — would have been realized, had not President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair taken action. Today, Saddam sits in a prison cell and not on a Baghdad throne. And the world is — yes — a safer place. No thanks to Kofi Annan.