Michael Ledeen in today’s New York Sun on the strings that come with UN humanitarian aid:
[H]ere’s an excerpt from an e-mail I got today from a reliable source: “There is now $12.5 billion repeat billion in funds held in escrow by the UN in the ‘oil for food’ program–the escape clause in the sanctions that let the Iraqis market about three million barrels a day ‘to feed the children, etc. since 1996. The French and the Russians are refusing to let the Security Council turn it over to the U.N. agencies to send in humanitarian relief because that would ‘legitimize the US-British war.’ And (expletives deleted) Kofi Annan only makes sanctimonious statements without indicating what the real problem is.” [New York Sun, 3/28/03]