by Steve Hutcheson

Created on: July 28, 2007

The real scandal of the Oil for Food scandal has been the politicization, particularly by the current US administration of the event rather than a move towards addressing some of the factors that led up to the event and the outcome. In light of all the facts, some 2000 companies and individuals, predominantly US business have been implicated yet the responsibility for their behavior has been handed solely that of the UN and not of the member nations from where they emanated. It is a bit like condemning the hamburger chain and the shareholders when one of its employees steals the change from a customer or more so, a customer steals something from another customer in the car park.

What has tended to get obscured in this argument also are the facts and the culpability of the organization for the actions of independent companies and of Saddam Hussein during this period and of the poor direction given to the UN by the members of the UN security Council.
There were two levels of action happening. One was the blatantly criminal behavior of a few individuals including the UN Program Director at the time Benon Sevan whom are now being indicted or prosecuted for taking kickbacks and bribes. Interestingly the first to be indicted on this matter has been an American who was not actually engaged with the UN.
The other was the large scale theft and smuggling of the oil out of the country that in fact bypassed the UN process altogether. The UN had the responsibility to monitor the contracts as they were presented to them by the Iraqi government. What they had no control over was the myriad illegal activities going on in the background between the Iraqi government and the foreign businesses there. It has been argued the US new of the illegal activities yet chose to do nothing about it. US Senator Carl Levin was quoted in the New York Times, "There is no question that the bulk of the illicit oil revenues came from the open sale of Iraqi oil to Jordan and to Turkey, and that that was a way of going around the Oil-for-Food Program we were fully aware of the bypass and looked the other way."
Protection of the oil pipelines against theft and illegal smuggling was outside the control of the UN as their mandate was only to inspect those transactions that went through their process however they have been incorrectly handed responsibility through public mis-perception of the events. The Security Council unanimously accepted the Volker Report that cleared the UN of major wrongdoing however

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