It appears that the sovereignty of the U.N. has been snubbed, and the Secretary General is not taking it sitting down: So Mr. Annan is complaining because his own suggestions for Iraq are not being followed. If his recommendations were followed back in early 2003, the regime of Saddam Hussein would still be in power and would still be doing this. It is not entirely clear why he thinks his ideas would carry weight with the United States and Great Britain, since they violated the U.N. Charter when they liberated the people of Iraq.

It sounds like the Secretary General is just trying to find a way to legitimize himself. After all, his primary claim to fame are the diplomatic relations he had with Saddam Hussein in 1990, again in 1998 and finally (and most unsuccessfully) in 2003. The U.N. does need to find a new cash cow to replace the Conflict of Interest (also known as the Oil-for-Food program) program which is going away in November.

Or perhaps the U.N.'s demand to control all humanitarian aid in Iraq is to protect themselves. They may want to just roll the existing Oil-for-Food program into a new Iraq Humanitarian program. This would be much superior to actually closing the books on the largest of all U.N. programs because the books are starting to look a little Enronesque:

Any readers interested in the differences between the two draft resolutions can find details here.

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UPDATE: Not wanting to miss the whine festival, the French have gotten into the act as well: Remember the French? They are the folks who voted against any type of action against Saddam Hussein, and most likely engaged in illegal trade with a sanctioned Iraq. They profited greatly from the oil-for-food program and balked about lifting those same sanctions once Saddam was deposed (although they did grudgingly agree in the end).

The Iraqi people have been rejoicing for 8 months that the actions of the Coalition did not address the wishes of the French.