The Teflon Bureaucracy

No human institution is perfect. I accept that and I think most people do as well. Early on in Mr. Bush's presidency many corporations such as Enron, Tyco and WorldCom were plagued with scandal and people were quick to assign vast amounts of guilt to all corporations around the United States. "Corporate Criminal" and "Corporate Responsibility" were the buzz phrases and people were acting like a few corporate scandals amounted to restarting the French Revolution. More to the point, the Democrats, among others were calling for the head of George W. Bush claiming the buck of corporate responsibility stopped with him.

Fine I won't even bother to argue that point.

But what's good for the goose is good for the gander and that brings me to the UN. The UN and specifically Secretary General Kofi Annan, has been swimming in scandal for quite some time now. The Observer out of England reports that,"Annan is mired in the deepest crisis of his career as America continues to put pressure on him to resign. His 10-year tenure at the head of the UN is in danger of collapsing under the weight of a series of scandals ranging from sexual harassment claims involving top UN staff, to human rights abuses by UN soldiers and officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the long-running Iraq oil-for-food corruption investigation."

Sex abuse, Human rights abuse, graft, possible sponsoring of terrorism? Obviously the Democrats are demanding that Annan step down from his position of authority...no wait, that would be the greed-head, war-mongering, racist, neocon Republicans.

The Democrats on the other hand are reserving judgment. According to Newsmax.Com, "Rep. Kucinich, D-Ohio, fired off a letter today to Secretary of State Colin Powell claiming that criticism of Annan was 'disgraceful and premature.' Believe it or not, here is an actual line from Kucinich's letter, as revealed by the Associated Press: 'There has been no hint of impropriety on the part of the secretary-general, who on numerous occasions has proven his honesty and integrity.' "

Let's chalk this up to partisanship and just say there's no integrity in national politics. That's fine except the Bush Administration appears to have learned nothing from the last election. Specifically, you cannot appease the opposition. There can be no bipartisanship in Washington while policy debate continues to resemble a race riot. But that doesn't seem to stop the Bush Administration from trying to befriend vipers.

Case in point, yet another article from Newsmax.Com states that, "The United States expressed confidence in Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday and said he should remain at the helm of the United Nations, an abrupt turnaround from its refusal to back him last week after a U.S. senator called for his resignation."

Well that's just dandy. So let me get this straight, Tenet screws up WMD in Iraq and he doesn't get fired. Rumsfeld fails to plan for a prolonged insurgency in Iraq and he doesn't get fired. Nearly every National Security case former US Attorney General John Ashcroft pursued was either dismissed or downgraded to trivial charges and he doesn't get fired. And now Kofi Annan is presiding over an organization that is an impediment to the U.S., has issued numerous resolutions against Israel despite other Arab countries being just as guilty if not more, has been implicated in countless sex and human rights abuses, and may be partially responsible via the Oil For Food Program for sponsoring terrorist organizations and yet we don't want the guy fired. Mind you, we the American taxpayers fund this nonsense to the tune of 25% of $1.3 billion a year. Loyalty is way expensive in Bush World.

The only reasonable explanation for wanting to keep Annan around is that the Bush Administration must think they'll replace him with Osama Bin Laden.