Failing the Laugh Test

Last week, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan opined that Saddam Hussein collected most of his ill-gotten oil booty “on the American and British watch,” not as a result of the massive corruption in the U.N.-run Oil for Food program.

Unsurprisingly, Annan’s assertion doesn’t even pass the laugh test.

(To read a full account of how Saddam’s smuggling couldn’t have happened without help from the Oil for Food program and U.N. employees, click here.)

Since news of the scandal first broke more than a year ago, Annan has done everything he could to change the subject, smother investigations and bury evidence. His ham-handed attempt to blame the U.S. and U.K. was yet another inept episode in his campaign to prevent the truth from coming out.

Indeed, on the day Annan made his guilt -shifting pronouncement, two of the top investigators for the supposedly independent U.N. Commission investigating the scandal resigned to protest the panel’s decision to go easy on Annan in its latest report. And this week, Paul Volcker, who is chairing the panel, appeared on Fox News to respond to new conflict-of-interest allegations. At the same time, the U.N. continues its refusal to cooperate with congressional probes into the Oil for Food program and the two criminal investigations now under way.

Meanwhile, in another effort to “move on” from the scandals and corruption plaguing the world body, Kofi Annan is pressing his case for U.N. reform. It must be nice to live in the blissful U.N. bubble where fantasy is reality and misconduct has no consequences. Among the key components of his reform package is a call for greater accountability and transparency.

Again, Annan fails the laugh test.

In fact, Annan’s leadership of the United Nations fails the laugh test so often that it would elicit more chuckles than an average Saturday Night Live skit if the impact on real people wasn’t so serious.

On Annan’s watch, young girls in the Congo have been victimized in the worst ways by U.N. staffers and peacekeepers. Iraqi civilians starved as a result of the U.N.’s gross mismanagement of the Oil for Food program. Millions of innocents were slaughtered in Rwanda, and millions more are now being killed in the Sudan as result of U.N. negligence.

For better or worse, the United Nations has a serious role to play in maintaining safety and security around the world. And the U.N.’s continued failure of leadership is no laughing matter.