The Speech Kofi Annan Should have given

During my decade as secretary-general, and indeed for some time before that, I have indulged in more than my share of half-truths, quarter-truths, cover-ups, immoral inanities and staggering hypocrisies. I have shuffled paperwork while ignoring genocides, I have rushed to shake hands with tyrants while deriding democrats; I have suffered from memory gaps while adroitly recalling just enough to know what needs covering up. I took office promising to reform the U.N., and instead produced a record that deserves to be summed up by such phrases as peacekeeper rape, procurement bribery, and Oil-for-Food.

Read the rest here.  It’s nauseating to see incompetence lionized and excellence shunned, but today’s U.N. is a pretty nauseating institution.  That would be Annan’s legacy in a just world.

2 Responses

  1. I read his comments and it is nauseting to me how he can condemn the US as human rights violators due to Abu Graib which the perpetrators have been sent to prison and Gitmo where the accusations or Koran abuse have proven to be false, while the UN has it’s soldiers raping women in Africa, ignoring human rights abuses in North Korea, and allowing the systematic slaughter of people in Darfur.