Iraq agrees to weapons inspections.

If Iraq is saying they'll accept inspectors unconditionally, then there should be inspectors on the ground there tomorrow, doing whatever it takes to guarantee disarmament. I don't want to hear anything about it taking 3 months or even 1 month to get at team ready. Somebody on our side knows where to look and can be on a plane tomorrow. Unreasonable delay means Saddam gets more time to continue his WMD program.

Ned: I think that we already have all the absolutely vital operational and logistical support we need. "Going it alone" just means without the overwhelming international coalition force we had in 90-91.

My point. That's precisely why they can't go it alone -- especially if anything ends up going wrong. Then it's not just the US with egg on its face (or worse). The diplomatic, political etc. reasons for getting governments on its side are present and clear -- otherwise Bush would have never bothered with going to the UN.

Fuck that, they both have to start fresh. Let's see who can make the better ILX movie. ;-)

admittidly it was a fantasy book but they got it pretty well accurate i reckon. Of course there's always my insane arab grandma who has already dusted off the coloured headband. watch out for the insane old ladies. they will win the war.

(re "it's all about OIL stupid": yes but oil is still way better accessible longterm via a stable market-economy democracy than an imposed puppet autocracy => i don't have a problem w. analysing the white house in terms of gambling short-term on dodgy rationalised options — what other lesson cd a history of its inventions teach us? — but i refuse to believe in one that simply says HAHA THE PERFECT SOLUTION IS THE ONE WE TRIED IN CUBA AND VIETNAM IN THE 50S and IRAN IN THE 70S* => already the right's leery eye has turned towards saudi arabia as a future difficulty, as in, in 1990 the extant regime gave the US airbases, in 2001 it gave the US al qaeda...)

*(not to mention Iraq and Afghanistan in the 80s... OK lessonlearning is still not a US strong point, but this is nevertheless one of the undercurrents of argument going on in the Oval Office: the hawks being the unblooded boomers, my guess...)

My crack-pot theory: the US's main reason for playing bully boy here is to set a precedent of unilateralism. Like Israel gaining retrospective consent to bomb Iraq in '81, building a non-UN coalition of likeminded countries to invade Iraq will establish the US as the one big international player of the West unfettered by the UN. If the international community is too suspicious to support unilateralism, the next best strategy is to bully the UN without putting forward its case in anything approaching a concrete manner. If Bush can't bypass the UN completely, at least he can attempt to turn it into an uncritical rubber stamp.

Basically the UN is a flawed and compromised means of getting things done and it doesn't always get them fully done but it's still the only international-consensus means of doing them that there is. The UN's preferred method of confronting Saddam is sanctions not force - you may not agree with that method but to suggest, along with Bush, that it's doing nothing in support of its resolutions is wrong. Bush is totally entitled to want to change the UN's preferred method of course, and that's what he's doing.

On the other hand, they've toppled the evil Afghan regime, they've faced down the evil bully Saddam and made him back down, bring on the next one! Momentum, being proved right, keep the adrenaline flowing, continue to pursue terrorists to and through their havens and their suppliers. Who/where might be next in line?

Iraq hasn't actually complied with anything yet - they just wrote a letter. I think they're stalling because that's what they've always done. Iraq verifiably disarms immediately, or we do it for them. No more waiting. No more games of diplomatic Tag.

Why us... over here... with the big bombs, and all the jets, that's who.

What do people think about Scott Ritter (ex top-dog weapons inspector for UNSCOM)? For a couple of years he's consistently called the inspections issue a total scam. In the current issue of, uh, Vice Magazine he says that "for all the rhetoric President Bush has put forward about insisting that Iraq allow weapons inspectors back in, understand that the return of weapons inspectors is actually poison for American policy objectives vis-a-vis Iraq. It's never been about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, it's always been about the elimination of Saddam Hussein. The last thing we want is the light shined on the reality of the status of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand)

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/01/15/un.inspector.ritter.arrest/index.html?hpt=Sbin

:-/

read a book this dude wrote a few years ago. takes all kinds to be pedos, i suppose.