Another U.N. rathole: Another reason to leave
February 15, 2008
Pittsburgh Tribune Review
Original Source: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/archive/s_552460.html

At what point do recurring reports of corruption at the United Nations cease to be news? Perhaps when the United States stops paying the freight. 
Scandal follows the U.N. like stench from a skunk. The latest involves peacekeeping operations in Sudan. 
Audits by the world body's own Office for International Oversight Services found Turtle Bay -- over three years -- squandered tens of millions of dollars. The infractions range from outright waste to suspicious contracts. 
Among them, a $589,000 deal for airport runway lights awarded to a company that helped a U.N. purchasing agent's wife obtain a student visa. 
A confidential audit obtained by The Washington Post found the U.N. procurement division did not have the necessary ... expertise to handle the large magnitude of procurement actions. 
Shades of the U.N.'s oil-for-food fiasco? That's the U.N.'s legacy. 
But while the U.S. pays a quarter of the U.N. peacekeeping tab, United Nations bureaucrats proffer lip service to criticism, calling the latest audit a witch hunt. 
It doesn't require a hunt to reveal what's obvious. 
Namely, humanitarianism, no matter how well-intentioned, is thwarted in a culture of corruption. 
Last fall presidential aspirant Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., now the likely GOP nominee, suggested resurrecting the Wilsonian notion of a League of Democracies -- composed of like-minded, freedom-loving nations. Let's hear more of what Mr. McCain envisions. 
And let's stop flushing billions down a bottomless rathole.