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Oil-for-Food Update: Two of Paul Volcker’s three investigators have resigned in protest. They claim the U.N. leadership whitewashed their findings so that Kofi Annan could claim that he was exonerated (despite the fact that one of his close aides was found to have shredded reams of potentially incriminating documents).

Maybe someone should remind Senators Biden and Voinovich about the consequences of an excess of diplomacy when bluntness is needed. Sending a Warren Christopher to the United Nations is no way to preserve the relevance of that body.

Update: Paul Volcker on Kofi Annan: “I thought we criticized him rather severely; I would not call that an exoneration . . . .”

It makes you wonder why the investigators’ findings needed to be “repackaged” by senior U.N. staff, or by anyone else.