My Morning Reading

Today I am starting my day off with Alan Philips' article "UN is a ship of fools" in the Telegraph.

A colder eye would see the oil-for-food programme as a fine example of the law of unintended consequences. The oil-for-food programme, as implemented by the UN, made war inevitable, since it provided Saddam with a steady revenue to pay his security forces and build his palaces, while he penned sub-Mills & Boon novelettes.

Bolstered by the illegal revenues of the oil-for-food programme, and relieved of the duty of feeding his people, Saddam was able to drift comfortably off into a fantasy world. This made his downfall at the hands of the Americans inevitable. Had he been under real financial pressure, he might have provided the proof that he had no weapons of mass destruction - as now appears to be the case - which would have led inevitably to the lifting of sanctions.

Though this section is about the UN failure in Iraq, the rest of the article is about general UN shortcomings and reasons for failure throughout the rest of the world. Damning stuff and well worth the time to read.

Read the story.

Posted by zombyboy at April 23, 2004 07:38 AM | TrackBack