re [lbo-talk] inspectors on the france/germany/russia stance

steve philion philion at hawaii.edu
Thu Apr 3 22:06:03 PST 2003


according to die zeit quoted in le monde, inspectors said that the france/germany/russia stance has only slowed down inspections. saddam would watch closely the divisions in the security council before deciding to cooperate or not.

does this reflect a division between inspectors ?

to be noticed as well: the iraq war is not on the top page of le monde online anymore, they have a few related articles but that's all.

jch

--I think it's fair to say that this was a pretty smart calculation on saddam's part, namely recognising that no matter what Iraq did there would be an invasion. The strategy, then, of playing off the Security Council countries against each other, in light of the extraordinarily weak case of the Americans for war, was a wise one to go with.

And that is how weak the antiwar movement is in the US, reflected in its call for longer inspections and no war without UN approval. On the other hand, given the weakness of the American case, the call all along for UN approval before war was, in effect, a call to no war since the likelihood of the US convincing anyone that it had a strong case, aside from its 2 states' leaders in Europe, was so low.

steve



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