Saturday, August 23, 2003

And speaking of the United Nations
Con Coughlin sums it up in the Telegraph - The UN is unfit to take over rebuilding Iraq:
Officials at the United Nations compound in Baghdad could not have made themselves any clearer. During numerous meetings with coalition commanders to discuss the security arrangements for the Canal Hotel, the UN's administrative headquarters, they were insistent that they did not want a large American presence to protect them.

Even when members of Iraq's interim government received warnings that the remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime were planning a suicide truck attack against a "soft" target in the Iraqi capital - such as the Canal Hotel - the UN officials reiterated the view that they could look after themselves.

Salim Lome, the UN spokesman in Baghdad, was still defending this position last Wednesday morning as American and Iraqi rescue workers continued to recover survivors from the remains of the hotel.

UN officials "did not want a large American presence outside", Mr Lome explained, because it would have compromised their position as independent intermediaries between the Iraqis and the "occupying powers".
They must have started believing their own PR. Babes in the woods meet the Big, Bad Wolf.
Yet, perversely, it is the Americans, rather than the UN, who seem to be getting all the blame for last week's tragic attack on the UN.
For that and everything else, too.