Ace of Spades HQ

November 29, 2004

Blogger Assignment Desk: Explain What the Hell William Safire Is Talking About
— Ace

A premise lifted directly from Kausfiles: I have the gall and presumption to instruct other bloggers what they should write about.

But honestly, I'm curious. Safire's column makes it sound like there's a lot of bad stuff going on, but either my eyes glazed over or I'm just too dumb but I really don't know exactly what Kofi Annan and his son did wrong.

Don't misread me-- I know they did something wrong. I just don't know what the hell it is.

If someone can make this all a lot clearer than a NY Times columnist, well then there feller, you may have a career in opinion journalism.

Plus, doing so will inform me, and thereby allow me to sound smart at all of those fancy cocktail parties that I don't go to.

Assignment Retracted: This New York Sun piece, upon which Safire's column is pegged, seems to explain things a bit better.

Posted by: Ace at 06:38 PM | Comments (10)
Post contains 177 words, total size 1 kb.

1 The upshot is that Kojo appears to have done what Dick Cheney is accused of doing with Haliburton.

It looks like neither Kofi nor Kojo were entirely above-board aout Kojo's continuing association with Cotecna. They had earlier said there was no contact, and that Kojo got no more money from them. Now it appears that Kojo was getting 2500 dollard a month for four years after he was supposed to have cut ties with the company (after they started working for the UN).

The larger questions are: 1) How much did Kojo (and, by extension, Kofi) know about Cotecna's complicity in signing off on spoiled food and medicine going into Iraq, 2) Why wasn't this reported earlier, when the initial questions were raise (i.e. what are they hiding?), and 3) was Kojo just getting the money as a non-compete payoff or was he still running cover for Cotecna inside the UN?

Posted by: Jimmie at November 29, 2004 06:58 PM (9DMA1)

2 I see the Sun piece is by the redoubtable Claudia Rosett, who has been flogging this story like a rented maidservant. She's the reason Oil-for-food is a household name, at least in my household and, I suspect several conservative households.

Whose kneecaps will we need to crack to get this woman a Pulitzer prize? Cause she needs one.

Posted by: See-Dubya at November 29, 2004 08:31 PM (PUZhO)

3 Actually, a number of my less-than-conservative friends have begun to wax outraged on this, which is a very good sign indeed.

Posted by: someone at November 29, 2004 08:47 PM (kMRF+)

4 Ace - it appears that your trackback code is failing - I have one here but the window won't display - seems to be true for other trackbacks as well.

Please see my post:

http://pullonsupermanscape.typepad.com/pull_on_supermans_cape/2004/11/united_nations_.html

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5 Great!

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