Once again, it’s the Bush Administration vs. the World

Bush Republicans Attack United Nations, Deflecting Attention from Cheney Corruption

Commentary ~ December 4, 2004: George Bush and his minion Republican attack dogs launched a vicious assault this week on United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan because, they say, his son received $125,000 in payments from Cotecna, a Swiss contractor in the oil-for-food program. This accusation conveniently overlooks the fact that Dick Cheney continues to get $1 million a year from Halliburton, the company that received billions in uncontested contracts from the U.S. Government through Cheney’s influence.

The New York Times reported that Mr. Annan's son, Kojo Annan, was employed from December 1995 until the end of 1998 by Cotecna Inspection Services, a company based in Geneva. On Monday, the United Nations confirmed that Kojo Annan received nearly $2,500 a month after leaving the company, payments that did not cease until February 2004.

Seth Goldschlager, a spokesman for Cotecna in Paris, told the International Herald Tribune that the $2,500 a month in health care compensation was part of the noncompete agreement that is required by Swiss law.

$2,500 a month for an official’s son vs. $1 million a month for an actual official? Realistically speaking, if there was any corruption, wouldn’t Kojo have asked for ten times that amount?

For all this so-called “corruption,” Cotecna won a $4.8 million contract to monitor the import of aid items to Iraq under the oil-for-food program, which permitted Iraq to sell oil to buy goods to offset the effects of sanctions between 1996 and 2003. Halliburton, far and away the largest recipient of Iraq reconstruction dollars with about $18 billion in contracts, has seen revenues increase by 80 percent in the first quarter of 2004, compared with the same quarter of 2003, according to the Financial Times. Next in line is the Bechtel Group of San Francisco, with nearly $3 billion in Iraq reconstruction contracts. USA Today has reported that Bechtel executives gave thousands of dollars to both Bush presidential campaigns, and two of the company's top executives serve on advisory boards for the White House and Pentagon.

Bush officials claim the United Nations is responsible for Saddam Hussein's diversion of over $20 billion into personal accounts, despite the fact that much of this came from illegal sales of oil to Jordan and Turkey – which the U.S. knew about but didn’t stop because of strategic alliances with those two countries.

Nevertheless, Senator Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican who is chairman of the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, grabbed the headlines for his president by calling for the secretary general to step down.

However, Coleman and his fellow storm troupers cannot even keep their stories straight. This week they had to retract an earlier assertion that the U.S. House subcommittee was misled by Cotecna Inspection Services. Representative Christopher Shays issued a statement declaring that the subcommittee "regrets this misunderstanding and is fully satisfied that Cotecna has, to date, complied with the subpoena for all documents relevant to our investigation

Shays, a Connecticut Republican who is chairman of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, had asserted earlier that Cotecna misled his panel by failing to disclose that Kojo Annan, son of the UN secretary general, had received payments totaling as much as $150,000 from Cotecna after he had left the company, where he worked from December 1995 to December 1998, as part of an agreement not to compete with the company in West Africa

While Bush xenophobes regroup their UN attack strategy, the rest of the world is rallying to the UN’s defense. Outside the United States, the secretary-general has been picking up support from many of the 191 U.N. member states. The four other veto-wielding members on the U.N. Security Council — Russia, China, Britain and France – have rushed to his defense. On Friday, the European Union threw its weight behind Kofi Annan. The ambassador of the Netherlands, which currently holds the EU presidency, went to Annan's 38th floor office at U.N. headquarters Friday morning to express support to the secretary-general on behalf of the 25-nation bloc. Leaders of Africa's 54 nations sent a letter of support on Tuesday. Furthermore, more than 3,000 UN staff members have signed a letter of support for Annan

Once again, it’s the Bush Administration vs. the World

The bottom line is that Bush and his Republican Guard are upset with the Secretary General for not falling in line with their Orwellian view of the world. Annan angered Bush officials with his claim in September that the war was "illegal," his refusal to send a large team to help with January's election, and his warning that an all-out assault on Fallujah could undermine the vote and further alienate Iraqis

Fortunately, some in the administration have clear heads – the ones who are now leaving. Departing secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, who praised Mr. Annan as a "good secretary general," noted that the investigations focused on the oil-for-food program, not on Mr. Annan.

Back to News Index