This Past Week of 2/9/03
This past week there have been UN Security Council updates, world wide protests and pronouncements from Iraq. The Dr. Hans Blix report before the UN Security Council put a positive spin on what was - or should have been - a negative report. Iraq has come no closer to disclosing the location of its WMD to the UN inspectors. What it did, that provided optimism for Hans Blix was to provide 3 or 4 Iraqi scientist who were interviewed with tape recorders in hand instead of Iraqi handlers. Not much of an improvement since the point of the interviews is to learn the location of Iraqi WMD and the scientists are unlikely to say anything useful as the tapes are destined for Saddam's review. Germany, France and Russia chose to hide behind Blix's cautionary statements to continue their impression of the three monkeys - and I don't mean the ones who had there own television show.
The weekend anti-war protests are likely to have the opposite effect the protesters had in mind as they protested the US and Britain's response to Saddam WMD and not Hussein the source of the whole problem. This will likely leave Hussein to think an attack is unlikely and to harden his resolve not to cooperate with the UN inspectors. The protesters seemed to have overlooked that Hussein expelled the inspectors in late 1998 and only allowed them back in November of 2002 with 50,000+ US troops outside his borders. Without the US' show of force, we would still be where we were in 1999 with no inspectors in Iraq and Saddam free to operate in the open.
And France, Gemany and Belgium refusal to support planning to defend an fellow NATO state shows the state of the NATO alliance. As NATO expands into eastern Europe, it is beginning to look irrelevant. Agreeing to plan to defend Turkey is far short of supporting a attack on Iraq, but France, Germany and Belgium don't seem to undestand that or their obligations to other NATO members.
The inspectors are unlikely to find any WMD other than those clumsily left lying around by Hussein's cohorts (e.g. the 12 empty shells). Six more months or for that matter six more years of inspections will likely produce little as Hussein had from 1999 through 2002 to hide everything in a country the size of California. The military conflict will come sooner or later regardless of France, Germany, Russia, Belgium or the millions of well meaning but poorly informed demonstrators. The clock is ticking and only Saddam Hussein can stop it.
02/17/03 ( 330 )
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