Oil for Food

CNN:

Saddam Hussein's regime made more than $21.3 billion in illegal revenue by subverting the U.N. oil-for-food program -- more than double previous estimates, according to congressional investigators. "This is like an onion -- we just keep uncovering more layers and more layers," said Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minnesota, whose Senate Committee on Government Affairs received the new information at hearing Monday.

I expect that this story will continue to grow, much to the detriment of the U.N. This bit here is also very interesting:

Coleman said the probe is just beginning and that officials aim to discover "how this massive fraud was able to thrive for so long." He said he is angry that the United Nations has not provided documents and access to officials that investigators need to move ahead.

If the U.N. continues to stonewall this investigation I expect that more and more Americans will question the purpose of this organization. It may be that the damage done by Oil-for-Food is too great for the United Nations to recover from anyway, but if it is not, failing to come clean will likely doom them. While I think that the U.N. has little moral authority, I would like to see the organization be preserved in the hopes that it will be able to evolve into a more moral institution. This will of course require the nature of it's members to change but it also requires cultural change within the bureaucracy itself. Obviously the U.N. failed miserably in regards to Oil-for-Food, but perhaps it can yet redeem itself.