More Oversight Coming to the UN-Thank Goodness!

Looks like the UN is in for some actual oversight by the US Congress. Imagine that! Democrats on Capitol Hill, for whom “accountability” was the watch-word for the Pentagon and our military, never seemed to watch too closely what was actually happening at the United Nations. That is about to change–dramatically. Foreign Policy reports:

“For two years, the U.N. has been the beneficiary of a policy of benign neglect on Washington’s Capitol Hill, where a Democratic Congress has pretty much left it to the Obama administration to chart its own course at Turtle Bay. Those days are coming to a swift end. An emboldened Republican majority, led by the new chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, Ileanna Ros Lehtinen (R-FL), has already signaled an interest in reviewing U.S. financial support for U.N. programs, citing the need for belt tightening. A Cuban-American lawmaker from a heavily Jewish district, Ros Lehtinen can also be expected to use her position to shore up Israel’s conservative prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and to ratchet up pressure on Iran, and the Palestinian Authority. In February, 2009, she introduced legislation to cut U.S. funding for the United Nations and the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which is responsible for providing relief to more than 4 million Palestinian refugees throughout the Middle East. Lehtinen’s intransigence could complicate the Obama administration’s efforts to ensure funding for new and enlarged U.N.-backed peacekeeping missions in Somalia and Ivory Coast.”