Nelson Ascher wrote to recommend I fisk this article by Hans Blix in The Guardian (where else?). I thought the smarmy former UN chief weapons inspector had been sufficiently pilloried by some snarky filmmakers, but I figured “what the hey?”… I had an hour to kill before lunch with an old publisher friend. I would take a look. Blix begins:
The results of a review of the functioning of the UN, conducted by a panel appointed by the secretary general Kofi Annan, will soon be on the table. That there is a need to discuss an array of questions is not in doubt – but the fact that the most powerful member of the organisation shows disdain for it is not exactly conducive to a positive intergovernmental debate.
We learned before the invasion of Iraq that in the view of the US administration, the security council had the choice of voting with the US for armed action – or being irrelevant.
What?!… Slow down, hee-haw, whoa… What we learned was that members of the UN security council itself–notably Russia, China and France–were bought and paid for by Saddam Hussein to the tune, so far, of twenty-three billion bucks. That’s the biggest bribe in the history of known bribes by a factor of what? Ten? Twenty? A thousand? Beats me, but I do know that it is sufficient to make the entire security council itself irrelevant as a deliberative body.
I could go on but…sorry, I give up. I don’t have time to waste on Blix. I’d rather take a walk down Madison Avenue than read the rest of his article, let alone fisk him. I only have one question for the former weapons inspector. Mr. Blix, where do you bank?
UPDATE: Sorry, been away from the computer for several hours. Didn’t realize Blix link was broken. Fixed now.
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