The report on the investigation of the United Nations' oil-for-food program -- the international effort to oversee Iraq's oil sales and alleviate suffering in that country following the first Persian Gulf War -- excoriates the entire U.N. system for its failures. No one -- not the the U.N. bureaucracy, its leadership, the U.N. Security Council or member states -- comes off well in the five-volume, 1,000 plus-page report released this week.
Complaints range from poor administration to pure corruption. Coming a week before world leaders gather at the U.N. to debate the world body's future, the report could not be more timely. Whether leaders will absorb those lessons is another question altogether.
The oil-for-food program was one of the largest humanitarian efforts in history and certainly the biggest ever attempted by the U.N. It was designed to help ordinary Iraqis survive the sanctions imposed on their country by the U.N. in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War.