But Iraq was under sanctions for 10 years for flipping the bird at the U.N. They were all but cut off from the international community because they refused to cooperate. How much more is the U.N. supposed to do?

What the UN did in Iraq pre-war was the equivalent to the modern parent saying to his/her modern child:

"OK, that's it...I'm going to count to three and then you need to go clean your room. I'm serious this time! One...Two...I'm serious, remember..Keep that in mind...Two and 3/8ths...I'm sorry that wasn't metric, um...OK, here goes...Three. There. I've counted to three. So. Seriously. Go clean your room."

What more is a parent supposed to do?

But the U.N. did "send Iraq to its room" with the only weapon they had available -- sanctions. The U.N. doesn't have the authority or the worldwide backing to the bomb the crap out of countries that don't cooperate, which is why the U.S. had to build its own coalition. Isolation from the international community through sanctions is one of the few weapons the U.N. has, and they definitely used it against Iraq.

Maybe sanctions don't sound so threatening, but they basically kept Iraq from functioning as a modern state. It's been reported that 500,000 children died under the sanctions. Certainly Saddam found ways around the sanctions and they functioned more as a blunt hammer, crippling the population rather than targeting the leaders, but you can't just blow off sanctions as a useless weapon that doesn't inflict harm. 500,000 children is a lot of harm.

500,000 children is a lot of harm -- to children. But not necessarily harmful to Saddam.

I guess I'm confused: I'm not a huge fan of the war in Iraq, but the people who are *really* against it make it sound like the U.N. should've put together the coalition to go in and bomb out Saddam -- which apparently isn't something the U.N. does, huh?

Here's the link to Kevin's review of "Iraq Under Siege":
http://www.realmagazine.com/new/articles/iraq.html

Interesting stuff ...

This is pulled from an Australian newspaper. Has a somewhat harsh tone to it, but boy is it revealing about some of the corrupt junk going on in the UN.

I don't think you can trust the UN to accomplish anything.

M.

------

James Morrow has a column in The Australian on the oil-for-food scandal:

Those named include not just Sevan but a vast array of Russian politicians, close friends of French President Jacques Chirac (including France's former minister of the interior), British Labour MP George Galloway, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter and, closer to home, Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri.

In short, it's a who's who list of high-profile anti-war and anti-sanctions voices, all revealed to be shills for Saddam.

But by far the biggest recipient of Saddam's largesse was the UN. During the program's existence, more than $US1 billion was kept by the organisation as a fee for administering the program. As one senior UN diplomat recently told London's Daily Telegraph: "The UN was not doing this work just for the good of Iraq. Cash from Saddam's government was keeping the UN going for a few years."

Amazingly, though, it has taken an incredible amount of time for this story to get what little traction it has so far gained in the media. (Certainly the anti-war Left, which is happy to believe that George W. Bush toppled Saddam to kick a few contracts to Dick Cheney's old pals at Halliburton, has been deafeningly silent on the topic.)

Perhaps because of all the DIY international lawyering engaged in by the world press corps in the run-up to Iraq's invasion, many journalists are reluctant to admit that the UN they put so much faith in was many times more corrupt than they could imagine the Bush White House being.

Or maybe they just don't want to admit that so many of the anti-war voices they used to support their stories were bought and paid for with money belonging to the long-suffering, if little-mentioned, Iraqi people.

But the naive belief among journalists with little or no international law background that no military action is legitimate without the UN's seal of approval is one thing. The continued fetishistic belief of politicians and opinion-makers in the supposed good intentions of the UN is another -- and it is something that needs to end immediately.

It's ended here.

Obviously this is a very emotional issue, as 5 comments are already posted. Each of us has a connection to these troubling events and so strong expressions can sometimes run ahead of correct information. So in the spirit of making sure the facts are right, Steve, I must correct you:
The common expression is "Whoop-de-freakin'-DOO", not "-da".

thanks,
a

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