MORE ON THE OIL FOR FOOD RIPOFF

I'm still not seeing the Haliburton or Enron style outrage over this.

The spokesman for Kofi Annan confirmed that the secretary-general's soft-spoken son, Kojo, was on the payroll of Cotecna Inspections of Switzerland until December 1998. In that very month, the United Nations awarded Cotecna the contract to monitor and authenticate the goods shipped to Iraq.

Prices were inflated to allow for 10 percent kickbacks, and the goods were often shoddy and unusable. As the lax Cotecna made a lot of corporate friends, Iraqi children suffered from rotted food and diluted medicines.

The U.N. press agent also revealed that Benon Sevan, Annan's longtime right-hand man in charge of the flow of billions, was advised by U.N. lawyers that the names of companies receiving the contracts "was privileged commercial information, which could not be made public." Sevan had stonewalling help.