Dissing the UN, the New FOX Sport
Reported by Marie Therese - October 8, 2004 -
Bashing the U.N. Oil for Food Program has become the new FOX sport in the past months. Frequently, right-leaning guests have complained that the UN's special investigator, Paul Volcker, will not release the names of all the countries and companies that subverted the Oil for Food Program. On October 7, 2004 "Big Story" host John Gibson continued the UN bashing campaign in an interview with Lawrence Eagleburger, Bush Senior's Secretary of State.
(Begin excerpt.) LAWRENCE EAGLEBURGER, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: "If you want another good reason why we should have gone onto Iraq and taken it out, taken Saddam out of there, it is right here. He suborned the United Nations. He has and I don't see how Senator Kerry can ignore this. He will do so, but I don't see how he can ignore it. This is as good a reason for getting rid of Saddam Hussein as anything I can think of when he is corrupting the United Nations. It's beyond belief anybody would think that wasn't sufficient reason to get rid of him."
Later:
EAGLEBURGER: I wouldn't want to mention his name. But nevertheless, the fact of the matter is that the sanctions were coming apart. The fact of the matter is that the inspectors were not given unfettered ability to examine what was going on in Iraq. This is all rewriting history now to try to make a case for the President and his campaign. But they are the ones rewriting the history. The fact of the matter is that without going to war, it seems to me, there is no question what the Duelfer Report has said about what would have happened, clearly was on its way to happening. The bribery demonstrates that.
GIBSON: If the sanctions were lifted, Duelfer says over and over and over, if the sanctions were lifted, Saddam wanted to reconstitute his chemical weapons and he wanted to go for nuke. Is that a big leap or would you have expected with that kind of oil money he could have done that?
EAGLEBURGER: I don't think well, it would have taken time. Particularly the nuclear side I think would have taken time, but we all know he used chemical weapons before so I don't know how anybody can deny that he used weapons of mass destruction. The nuclear issue required money, but it could have been done and would have taken a bit of time.
But the point, again, seems to me is that everything indicates that Saddam, and this report certainly indicates that Saddam was intent on doing a lot of very difficult things once he got the sanctions out of the way and to me it's clear that the President's view when you see something like this taking place you stop it before it can go very far was, in fact, the right way to go.
Later:
EAGLEBURGER: Well, we can go there, but it would seem fairly obvious that we're not going to be able to count on the Security Council when it comes to serious problems, which is a tragedy, by the way. But, I think our attitude toward the U.N. has to change and frankly, I will say to you as well, I don't think we ought to permit Kofi Annan to have a second term another term as secretary general. He's got to be held responsible for this and he certainly didn't do anything about it and, in fact, probably turned his back on it. And what we're seeing now is they refuse to tell us what went wrong. (End excerpt.)
The complete transcript can be accessed at Fox News.
Comment
No WMD. No imminent threat. No nukes - not even the capacity to build a nuke. No connection to 9/11. No demonstrable connection to Al Qaeda.
Quick - find something to hang the President's hat on!
Let's tell everyone Saddam was bribing the French and the Russians so they would vote to remove the sanctions in the Security Council!
Oops! One little teeny problem. The United States could have vetoed any resolution it wanted and that would have been the end of it.
Oh, well. Back to the drawing board.
