A key question that is barely mentioned in the establishment media is the way that elements in the United States – and others now horrified at the behaviour revealed in the report – turned a blind eye to and probably participated in the scandal. Paul Volcker has avoided naming the companies involved in the corruption, promising a list at some future date. Will the list include US companies that were taking the lions’ share of Iraqi oil production prior to the invasion? There is also no discussion at present of why, when the Americans and British seemed able routinely to listen to conversations around the UN, they were apparently ignorant of malpractice during the years of the oil-for-food programme.
The not-so-hidden agenda is to weaken the United Nations by depriving it of political and financial investment and then deride it for the very weakness that results. The United States has pursued a cover strategy, stretching back at least to the early years of the Bill Clinton administration, of seeking to free itself from such tiresome constraints as the need for a United Nations mandate for military action.
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