Sarin not evidence of WMD: Blix

FORMER chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said that a shell containing sarin nerve gas used in an attack in Iraq was most likely a stray weapon possibly from the first Gulf War.

Blix said today that the discovery of the nerve agent was not a sign that Saddam Hussein's regime possessed weapons of mass destruction before the war last year.

The US-led coalition used that claim to justify the invasion even though UN inspectors failed to make any significant finds before the war.

The former Swedish foreign minister said the 155-mm shell used to attack a US military convoy Monday could have been part of a group of old, unused shells that were simply debris leftover from the war in 1991, adding the weapon could have been scavenged from a dump.

"It doesn't sound absurd at all. There can be debris from the past and that's a very different thing from having stockpiles and supplies," he said.

"Whether this may indicate something more ... I think we need to know more about it."

Saddam's regime was told to destroy any weapons of mass destruction under UN resolutions passed after the 1991 war. Blix reiterated that his inspectors found no such weapons in the run-up to the invasion.

"We found a dozen warheads that were intended for chemical weapons and they were empty," he said.

His inspectors also found four other shells that were designed to carry chemical weapons, including the sarin used in the attack Monday, but they were also empty.

US Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said in Baghdad that two soldiers were treated for minor exposure to sarin, but no serious injuries were reported. He said he believed that insurgents who planted the explosive didn't know it contained the nerve agent.

Blix, former director of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, has sharply criticized the US and Britain for invading Iraq without UN approval. He retired last year and currently heads a new Stockholm-based independent commission on weapons of mass destruction.

I WILL COMMENT ON THE FOLLOWING:

1) UN is far from perfect (insert Churchill quote here) but I would not go as far as to call it evil.

2) “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried.“

3) I can agree to all three. But as a voluntary org. it will always only be as relevant as the members allow it to be. Regarding Sudan I fully understand after recent reporting but IMHO no country can be especially proud of dealing with Africa. Important here is that Sudan is at the UN and can be influenced there, if they were not like Zimbave it is much more difficult to handle.

The Churchill quote I was thinking about is the one about democracy not beeing perfect but it´s the best so far.

***

THIS is classic willful naivety white-washed with pretensions of world-democracy.

The problem with all these high-minded pretensions toward democracy is that the U.N. isn't really a democracy. It is a joke. Or to the extent that it technically is a democracy, it is a Democracy of Dictators; one dictator, one vote.

Most of the countries in this world are run by dictators and they therefore are a majority at the U.N. -- so do you suppose human rights are EVER going to be taken seriously by the U.N.? The world isn't anywhere near ready for a world government; we are just so irreconcilably far apart philosophically that any attempts at a world governing body are like including the fox in the chicken coop. I think this is unlikely to change in my lifetime.

Sudan's murderous regime will NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER be dealt with by an organization that puts Sudan on its Human Rights Committee. (See what I mean about the fox in the chicken coop?) This kind of insanity endless at the U.N. but that example should tell you ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW about what the U.N. really is and whether it can ever be effective at what it pretends to do.

On its very best days, the U.N. is merely ineffective. But most of the time it is flat out destructive. It keeps dictators in power by hamstringing efforts to isolate or dethrone or otherwise undermine them. It creates a perilous illusion of world consensus on right and wrong that would be lost if the U.N. was disbanded.

If that's not enough, consider how the U.N. saves all its wrath and bile for the USA and Israel. Two democracies with exemplary human rights records and the most humane (and yet somehow most effective) militaries on the planet. Yet they have nothing to say about Sudan, Rwanda, Tibet, etc., etc., etc.

It reminds me of how people in bad neighborhoods feel free to protest and otherwise bad-mouth cops all the day long, yet all you can hear are crickets chirping when the subject shifts to gangs or other thugs from their neighborhoods. People like to bad-mouth those who won't seek retribution and prefer to keep silent about those who will. They take out their frustrations on the target they know won't hit back. It's easy to crap on cops and the U.S. because they know that the self-restraint -- the very humanity they claim cops and the USA lacks -- guarantees their safety.

I propose a world-wide union of democracies; dictators, et al need not apply. It has a history: NATO was a very effective organization of democracies with a clear mission that everyone was on board with. If we ever get the sense to kick the U.N. out of NY and move it to Paris, the next time we put together a world governing body, let's leave the fox out in the cold this time.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.