Connecting the Dots - Sullivan

Connecting the Dots - Sullivan makes what is I think the key point about endless inspections and cascading resolutions:

But what Saddam has shown - rather brilliantly - is that even the slightest concession from Baghdad is enough for the appeasers to claim that the "inspections" are "working" (even though 1441 doesn't stipulate that the inspections should have any effect except verifying Saddam's complete and immediate disarmament). There is in principle nothing to stop this process from going on for ever. De Villepin has claimed that inspections cannot go on for ever, but has never proposed an end-date, or even a simple criterion by which one could measure whether they had failed. The truth is, I fear, that France, Russia and Germany simply want to keep Saddam in power and to humiliate the United States in order to build their own relationship with the Arab satrapies and pursue their own priorities in the region. If that's their game, no compromise will satisfy them, whatever the British think. So let them veto.

Indeed - none of this is about "peace". It's about a macchiavellian jostle for power in a realigning world. France and Germany team up to jostle us - and millions of Iraqis, and potential millions of future US and Euro terror victims - will be the ones trampled underfoot.

Veto away, indeed.

Posted by Mitch at March 6, 2003 07:39 AM