Kofi and the scandal pimps

[atommom]

Routine distortions, exaggerations and unreported context about the United Nations Oil-for-Food program (OFF) makes it arguably one of the worst-covered stories of our times.

That's hardly an accident. The story confirms a cherished piece of the conservative worldview, namely that the U.N. is populated by corrupt, inept and hostile anti-American bureaucrats whose sole purpose is to constrain the United States from using its unrivalled -- but wholly benevolent -- power to influence world affairs.

Oil-for-Food has been used by critics of the U.N. not only to disparage the institution as a whole, as well as the idea of multilateral diplomacy, but also to explain away opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq as being motivated mostly by craven profit-seeking.

But most importantly, OFF has been used as a way of changing the subject. We're supposed to focus on "corruption" at the U.N. and ignore both the actual corruption in the program -- almost all of which was between the regime of Saddam Hussein and international bankers, energy traders and other assorted hucksters, some connected to the Bush administration -- and the moral questions raised by a sanctions program that has been blamed for the deaths of as many as a million Iraqi children under the age of five.

On all counts, the diversion has been a success. For progressives, the most instructive part of the story is how a "scandal" conceived and cultivated by a small group of writers within a small circle of conservative publications has been so thoroughly embraced by the mainstream media. While most of the right's claims about the U.N.'s supposed perfidy are readily debunked, the mainstream press repeats them uncritically.

http://www.alternet.org/story/26055/

[atommom]

1. kick