UNSCAM

I have been surprised by how many of my friends have no idea what the UN-oil-for-food Scandal(also referred to as UNSCAM) is all about.  Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised--after all, I live in Ann Arbor, which has been described as "20 square miles, surrounded by reality".  But what really bothers me is the incredible lack of information in the newspapers about this incredible scandal.  For those of you who haven't a clue about what I'm talking about, it is this:  The program set up in the mid-90's by the UN to supposedly help the Iraqi people get food by permitting Saddam Hussein to sell oil was riddled with special deals, kickbacks to UN officials, and allowed Saddam to enrich his own pockets and those of his friends, while actually doing very little to feed Iraq.  The current estimates of how much money was "diverted" is over $10 billion.  It should come as no surprise to anyone, that the countries primarily implicated in this scandal are France and Russia, who vehemently opposed the Iraq War and clearly stood to lose the most money if this UN gravy-train was interrupted.  If you would like to find out more about this Scandal --and there are new details and new names being revealed every day (in fact, this makes the Enron Scandal look almost financially anemic), but you can search forever in the mainstream media to find out about it (For some reason they seem to feel (like John Kerry) that the U.N. is sacrosanct and incapable of evil) then go to this website, called the "Friends of Saddam".   Some of the original articles are here, here, and here.