Keep Swinging Folks!
If we really wanted to cut back on some unnecessary expenses, perhaps the best place to start would be the funding that the US gives to the United Nations. Rarely has there been a more effete group of do-nothings. So I was actually pleased when I read U.S. Rebukes U.N. Official for Sharp Words in today’s Washington Post.
The Obama administration scolded the president of the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, saying that his frequent public attacks against the United States and Israel are undercutting the standing of the world’s most representative body.
The rebuke comes one day after Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann lashed out at the United States during a visit to Tehran, where he met with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other senior Iranian officials. The leftist Nicaraguan priest and diplomat defended Iran’s nuclear program as peaceful and said the United States has not cooperated with other countries at the United Nations, according to Iranian news reports.
And
Last week, d’Escoto also criticized the U.S. imprisonment of five Cuban agents convicted on espionage charges in 2001, and he urged the United Nations’ Geneva-based Human Rights Council to look into alleged human rights abuses by U.S.-led forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, charging that “there are over 1 million civilian deaths in Iraq as a direct result of the U.S.-led aggression and occupation.”
Ah, yes, the old 1 million civilian deaths figure. It never gets old. And it never verges on reality, either. The one million plus deaths fallacy refers to the Opinion Research Business survey, in which about 1720 Iraqi adults were surveyed. On the flip side, there is the Iraq Body Count Project, which used the following sources to develop counts.
- 8,913 Mortuaries
- 4,846 Medics
- 4,376 Iraqi officials
- 3,794 Eyewitnesses
- 3,588 Police
- 2,780 Relatives
- 2,423 US-Coalition
- 1,976 Journalists
- 732 NGOs
- 596 Friends/Associates
- 196 Other
The IBC has a more diverse and more authoritative base of data with which to work. The IBC suggests a number of between 83,000 and 91,000 total deaths so far. I’m not celebrating innocent casualties, but 91,000 is much better than 1 million.
So d’Escoto is nothing more than a mouthpiece for human detritus.
Mark Kornblau, a U.S. spokesman, challenged d’Escoto’s claims on the number of dead civilians in Iraq, saying the former Sandinista foreign minister “has his facts wrong and seems like he is lost in some kind of time warp.”
Alejandro Wolff, the second-ranking U.S. diplomat at the United Nations, said D’Escoto “has repeatedly abused his position to pursue his personal agenda, and in doing so he diminishes the office and harms the General Assembly. He is doing the United Nations a disservice by dividing the membership at a time when he should be a unifying force.”
It’s like folks are lining up to take a swing at this Sandanista douche nozzle. Keep swinging folks. When a US diplomat straps on the president of the UN General Assembly, you know that the target is reprehensible.
[d'Escoto] said the United States and its Western allies know that Iran has no intention of developing nuclear weapons.
Sure Miguel.
d'Douche Nozzle