By Chuck Quilty

“Few of us,” wrote the playwright, Arthur Miller, “can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied.”

The United States is attempting to scapegoat the United Nations for alleged irregularities in the Oil-for-Food program which allowed Saddam Hussein to skirt the sanctions against Iraq and accumulate 1.74 billion in illicit funds according to Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group formed after the invasion to find Iraq’s WMD. The 1.74 billion figure cited by Duelfer is considerably less than the 10.1 billion estimated by the U.S. General Accounting Office of the 21 billion estimated in a Senate subcommittee report. The current accusations raised by Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) against the U.N. are hypocritical and cynical beyond belief. They are a disgusting attempt to hide the Bush administration’s failed Iraq policy and the death and suffering it has caused.