"Scandal Pimps"

I've seen bits and pieces attacking the right-wing spin on the "Oil for Food" (OFF} Scandal", but this piece [via] puts it all together

Distortion #1: Everything that went wrong with Iraq during the program's existence, regardless of who was responsible or where the problem occurred, is laid at the doorstep of the U.N. Secretariat (that is, the actual U.N. staff). Conversely, member states' (including the U.S. and U.K.) tolerance of -- and at times culpability in -- the Iraqi government's corrupt dealings is downplayed or simply not reported.
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Distortion #2: The amount of corruption and mismanagement found on the U.N.'s watch is so exaggerated as to be unrecognizable when compared to the facts.
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Distortion #3: The suggestion is made, defying the evidence, that "huge" profits influenced individuals and states to oppose the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. War opponents are painted as being "soft on dictators" in exchange for big, big money.
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Distortion #4: The fact that OFF was a highly successful program, despite all of its flaws, is sometimes just not reported. More often, though, the implication is made that the opposite is true, that corruption kept the program from fulfilling its mandate to provide relief to desperate and malnourished Iraqis (and to keep WMD technology out of Iraq).
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There's no reason to shy away from the real OFF scandal: a scam linking greasy oil barons, multinational corporate raiders and money-laundering bankers to one of the most brutal dictators of recent memory.

What the article doesn't say is that OFF was the only thing that kept the US embargo on Iraq from being an atrocity on a par with Mongol invasions. So it's only an atrocity, a war crime, not a war crime of historic proportions....