Informed Speculation

The Wall Street Journal gives Kofi Annan a proper sendoff:

When Mr. Annan was named Secretary General 10 years ago, he did so as the U.S.-backed candidate of reform. Jesse Helms, then-chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Mr. Annan that “if you choose to be an agent of real and deep-seated change, you will find many supporters–and even allies–here in the U.S. Congress.”

Senator Helms’s expectations were not met. Seven years later–thanks to U.S. military action that Mr. Annan did everything in his power to prevent–we learned that he had presided over the greatest bribery scheme in history, known as Oil for Food. We learned that Benon Sevan, Mr. Annan’s trusted confidant in charge of administering the program, had himself been a beneficiary of Iraqi kickbacks to the tune of $160,000. We learned that Mr. Annan’s chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, had ordered potentially incriminating documents to be destroyed. We learned that Mr. Annan and his deputy, Louise Frechette, were both aware of the kickback scheme but failed to report it to the Security Council, as their fiduciary duties required. However, we haven’t yet learned whether the senior Annan illegally helped his son Kojo obtain a discounted Mercedes, an issue on which the Secretary General has stonewalled reporters.

Earlier this year, Mr. Annan was also forced to place eight senior U.N. procurement officials on leave pending investigations on bribery and other charges. Vladimir Kuznetsov, the head of the U.N. budget-oversight committee, was indicted this year on money-laundering charges. Alexander Yakovlev, another procurement official, pled guilty to skimming nearly $1 million off U.N. contracts. The U.N.’s own office of Internal Oversight found that U.N. peacekeeping operations had mismanaged some $300 million in expenditures.

Mr. Annan’s response to all this has been a model of blame-shifting, obfuscation and patently insincere mea culpas, apparently justified by his view that a Secretary General has more important things to do than administer his own organization.

Good riddance to bad rubbish…

Another all-day meeting for me today, so I hope you’ll forgive me if I take this opportunity to remind you that voting in the 2006 Weblog Awards is in its final two days.  I’m still in a solid second, but I’m not ready to concede yet, no, sir! Rather than honking, vote for me if you’re glad to see Kofi go…

UPDATE 6:26 a.m.: On an unrelated note, I see that South Dakota senator Tim Johnson had surgery and is in critical condition…best wishes to him…let’s pray he has a full recovery…