Oil for Food My Foot

Few of us give a whit about the so-called Oil for Food scandal. It's little more than a pet project for neocon Republicans, so-called "conservatives" in Washington, and like-minded folks at the United Nations and in the British Commons.

The so-called Oil for Food scandal obfuscates the real issue—the sanctions imposed against Iraq by a maidservant United Nations (and enforced by US and British warplanes) were responsible for killing more than a million people, half of them defenseless children. Denis Halliday, United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Baghdad, resigned his post in 1997. "I don't want to administer a programme that satisfies the definition of genocide," said Halliday. Halliday's successor, Hans von Sponeck, also resigned. “How much longer can democratically elected governments hope to get away with justifying policies that punish the Iraqi people for something they did not do, through economic sanctions that target them in the hope that those who survive will overthrow the regime? Is international law only applicable to the losers? Does the UN security council only serve the powerful?” von Sponeck and Halliday wrote for the Guardian in November, 2001.