Written by: Beck

[I]t would be interesting to replace the words "Kofi Annan" and "The UN" in this article with the words "Ken Lay" and "Enron" and then try to imagine any conceivable circumstances in which the Times would print that article. When it's Enron, we need to have immediate prosecutions, lengthy prison sentences, and, hopefully, nasty jailhouse assaults during a long, post-conviction prison stay.

But when the proprieties of Kofi's Crowd are suspect, then we must all avoid a hasty and unseemly rush to judgment. Indeed, like OJ Simpson's tireless search for the "real killers", the NYT seems to be urging us to look elsewhere for the real culprits in the OFF scandal.

[...] But, the Times feels that [the fact that Saddam had revenue sources outside of Oil-for-Food which the US knew about and tacitly condoned] is a compelling enough explanation to let Mr. Annan off the hook, at least for now. Which is funny, because that's a lot like writing an article about Enron, and demanding that people lay off of Ken Lay because, after all, he had nothing at all to do with the financial shenanigans at WorldCom, and all that Martha Stewart insider trading stuff was completely outside of Enron's purview. I mean, OK, true enough, but...so what? Nobody's calling on Mr. Annan to resign because the Clinton Administration allowed Turkey to trade with Iraq. They're calling on him to resign because the UN appears to be corrupt and bloated with pelf. [ed: Yes, "pelf" is an actual word].