Like the Curate's Egg, this Telegraph commentary on UNscam is good in parts. Michael Morris and others have commented on The Telegraph's ambivalence towards the Iraq war, and this article penned by the Foreign Editor Alan Philips manages to look both ways too. For instance, we are told that 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, which sounds authoritative enough. It's reasonable to point out that the deal cut with Saddam was wrong in principle since it was founded on his authority to administer money to his fellow Iraqis. Even had the deal been reasonably policed by the UN it would have given Saddam breathing space. UNscam goes much further than that though. It suggests that the UN connived with Saddam to secure his position at the helm of Iraq.

The Telegraph goes into its own la-la land when it suggests that boosted by his illegal revenues Saddam was 'able to drift comfortably off into a fantasy world'. This flies in the face of the evidence that Saddam was scheming with contacts at high levels in sympathetic countries to circumvent the US/UK opposition to his regime. This was a plan, not a fantasy- as, incidentally, was the bolstering of Fallujah and the wasting of Basra- and the UN where it was corrupt was not just inept, but criminal. So, the Telegraph dismisses the UN as a 'Ship of Fools', which I would dispute, and actually lets it off the responsibility for its actions. It's a fairly shallow analysis with some good flourishes, relying more on a world-weary cynicism than examination of detail, which is a shame for one of the few newspapers with the pedigree (and the circulation) to give a mature public lead on this issue.