I like what Insty said about this story: Now, if he’d blamed the United States, it’d be front-paged all over. . . .
BAGHDAD (AFP) — Iraq’s culture of corruption stems from the actions of the international community and the controversial UN oil-for-food scheme, the deputy prime minister Barham Saleh said on Thursday.
Speaking at a new anti-corruption forum in Baghdad, Saleh said that the programme, run between 1996 and 2003 while Iraq was under UN sanctions, and what he charged was the body’s wasteful use of money were to blame for the rampant corruption that bedevils Iraq.
“A large responsibility for the outbreak of corruption in Iraq lies on the international community,” said Saleh.
“The scandals of food-for-oil and the wasting of public riches by the UN… is evidence of the serious damage that has deepened the problem in the country.”
Like the OFF scandal, France, Germany, and Russia selling material banned under the sanctions, and almost anything positive coming out of Operation Iraqi Freedom, this will be ignored, as well. Besides, the international community is too busy running around the world on private jets telling that the world is going to soon end from anthropogenic global warming and harming baby turtles.
