Kofi Annan weighs in on the oil-for-food scandal

UPDATE 1 November 2004:
This new article from the 28 October 2004 Opinion Journal lays out new details regarding specific allegations about the recently exposed Oil-for-food scam perpetuated by Saddam and members of the UNSC. Clearly, Russia, France, and the UNSC are not friends of the United States, or at least were not when they undermined our proposed action in Iraq. The French and Russian governments seem to have been more concerned with lining their own pockets with dirty money than with the freedom and security of the western world against the fanatics who trained all over the middle east and who were financed by Saddam for years.

Original post 20 October 2004:
In today's Opinion Journal, Kofi Annan scoffed at the notion that legitimate governments such as France, Russia and China would have made back room deals with Saddam.

"These are very serious and important governments," Mr. Annan told Britain's ITV News Sunday. "You are not dealing with banana republics."

While not outright denying the charges levied recently in the report filed by Charles Doelfer, Annan essentially side stepped the issue. According to the Global Corruption Report compiled by a group based in Berlin called Transparency International,

China ranks about halfway down, worse than Colombia or Peru and tied for 66th place with Panama, Sri Lanka and Syria. Russia does worse yet, ranked between Romania and Algeria, and tied for 86th place with Mozambique.

France does much better. Though it ranks as more corrupt than the U.S., Israel or Japan, it ties with Spain for a still respectable 23rd place. That makes France one of the most corrupt countries not in the entire world, but merely in Western Europe.

I guess these are some of the allies we need help from in Iraq, as opposed to the current "coalition of the coerced and bribed" that we have now.