Turner/Cronkite on Iraq/UN.

The cover of our October 21,2002 issue warned that the pending war with Iraq, for the ostensible purpose of "Overthrowing Saddam," was actually "a ploy to empower the UN." In our last (November 17) issue, Senior Editor William F. Jasper clearly demonstrated that the war, and the administration's occupation and reconstruction policies, have indeed been crafted to further energize the UN, a conclusion recently underscored by such champions of world government as U.S. billionaire Ted Turner and retired CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite.

On November 6, Agence Prance Press (AFP) reported that Turner believes "it's very possible that the UN will come out of it [the war] much stronger than it was before," since "unilateralism and our action on that war hasn't been that successful for the United States, and Britain." "We might," he told reporters at UN headquarters in New York City, "learn a lesson and give this preemptive war and unilateralism another thought."

Turner was at the UN to present a progress report on the United Nations Foundation, which he founded in 1997 with a personal pledge of $1 billion. According to AFP, he "also lauded the foundation's inclusion of the sixth woman on the 11-member board of directors, former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former director of the UN's World Health Organization." Turner and AFP neglected to mention that Brundtland has also served as first vice president of the fifth Socialist International (SI), which was formed in Germany in 1951 as a successor to the First International founded in London in 1864 (Karl Marx was the latter's first honorary chairman). Among other things, the SI seeks to create socialist governments that will meld once-sovereign nations into an all-powerful international government.

Walter Cronkite, in his November 5 syndicated column, also suggested that the answer to the Iraq dilemma "might well be found in the very place where our misadventure began--in the United Nations." "We could," he wrote, "regain our prestige and help the peaceful freedom of all the world's people if we now throw our strength into rebuilding the strength of the United Nations." Indeed, "This is the grand opportunity for us to lead the much-needed effort to restore the prestige and potential effectiveness of the United Nations."

Lamenting that the UN Charter placed "too many limits" on UN authority, Cronkite urged the US to "put its heart and its expertise into correcting these and other lesser problems and increasing adequate international financing" so the UN can be endowed "with the independence and strength it needs."