WELL THIS EXPLAINS A LOT:

Who is Saddam Hussein’s biggest business partner?

The United Nations. The same U.N. whose secretary-general, Kofi Annan, stands as one of the chief ditherers over removing Saddam. Here are the ingredients of a conflict of interest.

Under the U.N.’s Office of the Iraq Program, which supervises the six-year-old Oil-for-Food Program, the U.N. has had a hand in the sale of more than $55 billion worth of Iraqi oil. Iraq ships oil out to U.N.-approved buyers under the terms of the sanctions agreement. The U.N. vets the inflow of “humanitarian” imports into Iraq.

The process is simple. Iraq contracts to import goods, and the U.N. gives the outside vendors cash collected from the oil sales. The U.N. has approved about $34 billion in such deals so far. The money it hasn’t yet doled out–at least $21 billion–sits in U.N.-administered bank accounts. U.N. officials refuse to divulge much information about these accounts–not even the countries in which they’re held.

Measured in dollars, this is by far the U.N.’s largest program. The sums involved are large enough–and their handling has been perverse enough–for this program to deserve more attention than it has so far received.

What, corruption at the UN? Next people will be accusing them of running sex slave networks in Bosnia, or something.