CATS AND DOGS: Steven Den Beste is praising Hans Blix. No, really! Den Beste writes:
Credit where credit is due: the Blix report to the Security Council seems to be reasonably truthful and fair. He didn’t try to justify or ignore or cover up the fact that Iraq is not actually wholeheartedly cooperating with the disarmament process, and clearly pointed out the fact that the effort to interview Iraqi scientists had been a bust. He pointed out that the 12,000 page report filed by Iraq was nearly all old material, and that little or none of it applied to the years after 1991. He pointed out that there were substantial stocks of weapons known to still exist when the inspectors left in 1998 which had not been accounted for.
It is not what I had expected, and I am impressed. It seems to be an accurate appraisal of what has happened, and it is equally clear that it shows that Iraq has not actually embraced this as an opportunity to voluntarily disarm, as it was required to do.
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In fact, reactions from all over the world were totally predictable. Everyone had already decided what they would say even before Blix and El Baradei made their reports, but with Blix frankly stating that Iraq has not fully cooperated it makes some of those responses seem a bit lame. For instance, Germany’s Joschka Fischer stated that “war is no answer” and said that the inspections required more time. I’m told by a friend in Germany that this may well not be Fischer’s own opinion, but it doesn’t really matter. Germany still opposes war and always will as long as Schroeder is chancellor, unless Germany itself becomes the victim of a major terrorist attack.
In the mid 1980s, Robin Williams used to do a funny routine (back when he really was funny, and before he turned into Mr. Weep-a-Rama in the movies) that because British bobbies were unarmed, all they could do when faced with an armed criminal was to yell “Stop! Or…I’ll say ‘Stop!’, again!”
The EU–because they are unarmed bobbies, wants to say the same thing to this armed criminal.
Hey France and Germany…it’s now or Neville!
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