Wretchard has posted a good analysis of the predictable defense of Kofi Annan over at The Belmont Club.
Seems that the L.A. Times' James Traub thinks that criticism of Annan from conservatives is hypocritical given their defense of Donald Rumsfeld after the Abu Graib prison scandal.
But Wretchard notes that Annan's involvement in the oil-for-food scandal is a little different than the prison scandal going on during Rumsfeld's watch as SecDef:
[T]he Secretary General's failure "to sound the alarm over Iraqi swindling and for a slow and grudging reaction when the allegations first surfaced earlier this year" is not primarily about thievery and corruption, although it is about that: it was mainly about flouting international law; it was about subverting the will of the Security Council. It was about Kofi Annan becoming a law unto himself.
It's a good article, check it out.
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