Report: Iraq Asked Finland About Anthrax

guardian ^ | 2/15/03

[ConservativeLawyer]

I wonder if somebody at the WSJ lurks here.

"At some point one must recognize the possibility that the White House is delaying by design."

"The delays have also seriously damaged the U.N. It is now clearly irrelevant. The Security Council would not be confronting Saddam had President Bush not confronted the Security Council. If the U.N. inaction stays in the spotlight much longer, the debate will turn to whether the U.S. should remain in such a feckless body. Australia's Prime Minister John Howard is already openly saying that his nation's security is more closely linked to the U.S. than the U.N."

From: The Crawl to War: What are you waiting for, Mr. President?

[bonfire]

There's a thread that needs you:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/845723/posts


Help them please!

[The Great Satan]

Gotta dash now, but glad to see the light is dawning at the WSJ.

[Fred Mertz]

I've been following this thread and holding my tongue because I'm not sure what's going to happen.

You, on the other hand, are predictable. You do your best work after 1 a.m. Eastern. Thanks for the flag.

[piasa]

I agree; it seems a foregone conclusion that we are going to smack the scumbags. We don't deploy what we've deployed so we can withdraw, nor do we keep certain folks waiting too long once deployed.

Not only are we looking for a good dark night, but we're looking for favorable sustained winds, too, in the event a certain loser sets oil fields on fire, etc.

[bonfire]

So true. I force myself to stay awake til the wee hours to get my fix.

[piasa]

I wonder how many Iraqi soldiers have defected across the borders or to the rebels so far? If Hussein has his general (s) under house arrest, maybe he's wondering if his officers are going to bug out on him early on- the ones who don't like him but can't say anything, and the ones who love him but don't want to be around in a post-Hussein Iraq to be "group hugged" by the vengeance minded Iraqi people.

[patriciaruth]

Interesting explanation of your view of the game.

It would make a great movie or book. But I think the real world is messier than chess, and so I still think I am going to win our bet.

[patriciaruth]

In explaining how Arafat was marginalized, you not only have to mention that Bush wouldn't meet him due to his antipathy for him and Sharon has systematically killed a lot of his shadow minions and destroyed his compound and hence his operation, but....

You have to mention that the Israelis were tired of being bashed on CNN regularly and threatened to ban CNN from the country while letting FOX News Network in. After that scare, the news media in general stopped making every Israeli reaction to Palestinian terror attacks a nonstop news event complete with overlay of horror and sympathy on behalf of the Palestinians.

I think this racheting down of the news coverage also had an effect on marginalizing Arafat.

[Mitchell]

From http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1-582263,00.html, February 18, 2003:

Tony Blair insisted today that there was "no rush to war" against Iraq but the credibility of the UN would be at stake if it failed to enforce the requirement on Iraq to disarm.