Say Anything Blog

As though the United Nations didn't have enough problems, along comes a book by three former UN employees detailing sex and drug parties among other scandals.

Washington Times - The book, "Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Matters," covers the authors' experiences during the mid-1990s in Cambodia, Somalia and Haiti and paints unflattering pictures of the operations and the peacekeepers. It is due out on June 1.

The U.N. peacekeepers sent to Cambodia in 1993 to restore normalcy and supervise open elections, resembled "the international jet set on vacation," writes Mr. Cain, a Harvard law-school graduate.

The writers describe sex parties in "a villa" in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, that was "well-known for its Friday night parties," where alcohol and drugs were commonly used.

A favorite drink among the U.N. personnel at the parties was the "Space Shuttle." It was made "by distilling a pound of marijuana over a six-week period with increasingly good quality spirits. It is a work of love, and the final product is an amber-colored liquid that tastes like cognac. We drink it with rounds of Coke."

In another section, the authors say the "peacekeeping troops" sent to Cambodia by Bulgaria were not really soldiers.

They write that the Bulgarian government, starved for hard currency, actually cut a deal with inmates, offering them pardons if they accepted the U.N. assignment. Bulgaria, in turn, received financial compensation from the United Nations for its troops.

"The Bulgarians wanted the money, but didn't want to send their best-trained troops. So ... they offered inmates in the prisons and psychiatric wards a deal: Put on a uniform and go to Cambodia for six months, you're free on return," the book says.

Scores of criminals accepted the offer, were given uniforms and became U.N. peacekeepers, the authors say.

Mr. Cain describes the Bulgarians as "a battalion of criminal lunatics [who] arrive in a lawless land. They're drunk as sailors, rape vulnerable Cambodian women and crash their U.N. Land Cruisers with remarkable frequency."

John Kerry, and now even our President, is calling for a greater U.N. role in Iraq. My question is, can we trust the U.N.? Judging from all the recent revelations of scandal and corruption I'm not so sure we can.

The United Nations needs to either be completely overhauled from top to bottom or it needs to be dissolved, but allowing it to exist in its current state of corruption isn't doing anybody in the world any good.