Benny Avni of the New York Sun has yet another scoop on yet another scandal at the United Nations, an organization whose leader Kofi Annan can only be construed as a political foe of President Bush.

Iraqis will go to the polls this week, and the upper echelon surrounding the fast—diminishing Secretary—General Annan is at best disinterested in helping. At worst, it is willing to sell out Iraqis, hoping to injure the American—led coalition and the hated Bush administration in the process.

Either way, Turtle Bay's absence from the transformation of Iraq will be even more pronounced than in past elections. In a typical mix of sloppiness and malice, the one official who made the United Nations even a marginal player in Iraq, Carina Perelli, was fired last week.

"I'm a casualty of the Iraq wars," the Uruguayan firecracker Ms. Perelli told me on Friday. She talked admiringly about Iraqis braving assassins on their way to the polls. Then she sneered at "petty palace politics" at Turtle Bay.

"They either think preparations are too far gone so it will have no impact," Ms. Perelli said of her firing by Mr. Annan on the eve of the election, "or they do want it to have an impact."

I have not always applauded Ms. Perelli's approach to electoral processes, but it is hard to ignore the way she took an all but dormant operation inside the United Nations's political department — the electoral assistance unit — and turned it into a world powerhouse.

The UN is betraying the Iraqi people. But betraying the helpless is nothign new for this corrupt organization. The entire article is well—worth reading. Readers will find that a paid internet subscription to the New York Sun is an excellent investment, because of outstanding reporting, unduplicated elsewhere.

Hat tip: Ed Lasky

Thomas Lifson  12 12 05