The United Nations: Diplomacy Soprano Style

Bob Newman

I recently had dinner with Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. One of the things we talked about over dinner was the United Nations, which has been stunningly successful of late in providing succor to terrorists, thugs and tyrants who have killed many millions on five continents. I couldn’t help but wonder how many sleepless nights the general has spent in recent years worrying about what the United Nations was going to do—or not going to do—next that would require him to recommend Americans troops being placed in harm’s way.

Several months before the liberation of Iraq was initiated, I began reporting extensively on the top-to-bottom corruption of the United Nations, especially in regards to why so many member nations were adamantly opposed to the removal of Saddam Hussein from power. Some of my readers, listeners and viewers were skeptical when I told them time and again that the level of malignant immorality and malfeasance crippling the UN makes the Sopranos’ organized-crime operation look like a mom-n-pop corner store. I insisted that bribery and kickbacks were rife and existed unchecked all the way to the uppermost tiers of the UN, and that there was no way the UN was ever going to side with the dozens of nations who wanted Saddam out, for were the UN to do so, numerous UN officials would suddenly be making a lot less money; in some cases millions less.

Now, many months later, we find the mainstream media frantically reporting that not only is the UN’s now-infamous oil-for-food program saturated with thieves, but that the entire UN is a veritable haven for criminals in a multitude of UN offices, apparently at least up to and including the Office of Internal Oversight Services, which is the internal investigative arm of the UN. In other words, the investigators are now being investigated for widespread corruption involving staggering amounts of money changing hands in all manner of highly illegal schemes.
Kofi Annan, the UN’s notoriously ineffective, complacent secretary general, has issued a letter to Dileep Nair, the under-secretary general who runs the aforementioned investigative branch, voicing his concern. Annan has also told the world that he will make sure whistle-blowers are not targeted for termination by criminal supervisors, which has reportedly been standard procedure under Annan’s “leadership.”

Incredibly, some leftist pundits, foremost among them Walter Cronkite, maintain that the UN is a great, highly effective and honorable body that has been badly abused by the Bush administration. In his latest column, Cronkite lavishes praise on the UN and implies any problems the UN has are all the fault of George W. Bush. Cronkite somehow thinks the UN willfully and knowingly allowing Pol Pot, the Taliban, al Qaeda, the Hutus, FARC, Robert Mugabe, Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Iran, Syria, Libya and many others to butcher millions upon millions of innocent people, is just fine and dandy. Despite these facts, Cronkite says the UN is the planet’s greatest hope.

Cronkite and his complicit ilk live in a leftist fantasy world, where there are no humans willing to fight for the freedom of those who have never tasted it. Let’s hope his world never comes to full fruition, for if it ever does, mass graves like those still being unearthed in Iraq will smatter the American landscape.

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Bob Newman, a retired, decorated US Marine, is co-host of "Redmond & Newman" on 630 KHOW in Denver, and is the military science and terrorism columnist for The Denver Daily News.

bobnewman@clearchannel.com