Where Has Iraqs Money Gone?
The Republican senators who have devoted their careers to mauling the UN are seldom accused of shyness. But they went strangely quiet last Thursday. Henry Hyde became Henry Jekyll. Norm Coleman’s mustard turned to honey. Convinced that the United Nations is a conspiracy against the sovereignty of the United States, they had been ready to launch the attack which would have toppled the hated Kofi Annan and destroyed his organization. A report by Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the U.S. federal reserve, was meant to have proved that, as a result of corruption within the UN’s oil-for-food program, Saddam Hussein was able to sustain his regime by diverting oil revenues into his own hands. But Volcker came up with something else. “The major source of external financial resources to the Iraqi regime,” he reported, “resulted from sanctions violations outside the [oil-for-food] Program’s framework.” These violations consisted of “illicit sales” of oil by the Iraqi regime to Turkey and Jord
