The following editorial appeared in the Dallas Morning News on Nov. 7:
For all of its management problems, the United Nations isn’t the sole reason the Iraq oil-for-food program failed so badly. There are at least 2,200 other reasons.
About half of the nearly 4,500 companies in the ill-fated U.N. program paid illegal surcharges and kickbacks to former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein that helped perpetuate his regime, according to the final independent report on U.N. reform. So much for a world united against a brutal dictator.
The list of those suspected of illegal payments reads like a Who’s Who of international business:
Daimler Chrysler, Daewoo, Siemens, Volvo and numerous French, Chinese and Russian firms. And there were individual profiteers- — numerous foreign politicians and even a priest who stashed his take in a Vatican bank account.
In all, companies or executives from about 66 countries supposedly cut deals that put at least $1.8 billion into Saddam’s secret accounts and generated millions for themselves. Add Saddam’s already well-established oil-smuggling operation that seemingly escaped U.N. attention, and the sanctions became a farce of enormous proportions.
The 2,200 companies, middlemen and others bear immense responsibility for the program’s collapse right alongside the U.N.’s well-documented management conflicts of interest and its winks-and-nods.
The U.N. Security Council devised the humanitarian program to permit the Iraqi regime to use oil revenue for food and medicines. Instead, participants turned it into a corrupt money grab.
Companies and individuals suspected of circumventing the rules must face charges. The U.S. is pursuing Texas oilman Oscar Wyatt on charges that his firm improperly did business with Iraq, while Australia, Germany and France are probing various claims in the report. So should other nations.
The report reveals the hypocrisy and crass capitalism that doomed the program and allowed Saddam’s regime to survive. Those who knowingly aided the Iraqi dictator share in the blame for his brutal rule and must be prosecuted.
The world will never know whether a loophole-free oil-for-food program might have brought Saddam to his knees and averted the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In hindsight, it’s clear that the oil-for-food program never had a chance.
That is the ultimate perfidy.(c) 2005, The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

Author