Why can't they see this?

What is it with the American news media?

Why did we see stacks and stacks of articles, and endure hours of televised debate and angst, over U.N. Ambassador John Bolton's alleged anger management problems - and yet we get almost nothing about one of the great scandals of our time, the U.N. oil-for-food outrage?

Do the national media not understand the scope and atrociousness of the scandal? Or is it just easier and more fun to demonize a conservative U.S. administration?

Folks, you need to understand: John Bolton's cuddliness, or lack thereof, doesn't matter beans. What does matter is that the rampantly corrupt and bloated United Nations appears to have:

- siphoned off millions of dollars that could have gone to help needy Iraqis since the 1991 Gulf War;

- allowed a pipeline of questionable, if not illegal, funds to flow to the Saddam Hussein regime - allowing it to survive, and ordinary Iraqis to suffer;

- not only failed to enforce its own resolutions against Saddam, but helped bring about the need for the war in Iraq by propping up a dictator with blood on his hands and all the way up his arms.

The corruption that this scandal represents - sweetheart oil deals and apparent kickbacks to U.N. officials - is both world-class and historical. Millions of people have suffered as a result, including the U.S. and coalition troops who might not have had to enter Iraq if the United Nations was truly that - united - and had starved Saddam rather than his people.

This is an unforgivable outrage, and a call for more heads to roll. The probe into the scandal has been plodding at best, but has at least led to a little light being shed on this darkness. The committee investigating the scandal says there is strong evidence of a kickback scheme involving the head of the oil-for-food program, Benon Sevan. Another oil-for-food official, Alexander Yakovlev, has actually pleaded guilty to soliciting a bribe from a company seeking an oil-for-food contract and having accepted nearly $1 million in bribes from U.N. contractors in work un-associated with the oil-for-food program.

You have to wonder how much further this scandal will reach.

And whether the U.S. news media will ever see it for the monstrosity it is.