Just a post to note the absurd BBC policy of soft-pedalling the Oil-for-Food scandal until they can make it a partisan 'them and us', US/UK vs the decent chaps just doing their transnational duty etc etc. Such dishonesty is sickening, and Koffi, like one of those slapstick comedians in old Western comedies, crawls out from the melee he's encouraged on his dirty hands and knees. I noted a couple of related articles in the post below (maybe even the one above is an updated form of one of them), where the Beeb were building a little bandwagon of blame to counteract what they habitually term the 'hostility' of the US to the UN.

To be honest it doesn't matter if the US were letting Saddam get away with smuggling, to some degree. Let's see: they ejected him from Kuwait a the cost of US lives; they policed his dangerous territory at the cost of a permanent presence there. What did the UN ever give? What right had it to make strategic decisions? yet they were doing just that, and for profit. Surely the crucial point is that Saddam's sources of money went far beyond the US's ability to control them, significantly due the UN's incompetence and criminality. Consequently the threat Saddam posed was being bumped up by UN actions and UN inaction. Reason enough to sack Koffi.