French Confessions

French "ambassador for life" (that's his real title) Jean-Bernard Mérimée has confessed to accepting $156,000 paid in the form of oil allocations from Saddam's regime issued under the UN oil for food program.

Since one of the arguments in support of the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam was systematically undermining the sanctions regime by bribing influential public figures in at least two UN Security Council permananent members (France and Russia), one would think that evidence in support of this corruption would be newsworthy. However, neither the NYT nor the WaPo has deemed this story worthy of mention. (Or perhaps it's just that they don't read the French press.)