![[this day]](http://radio.weblogs.com/0103811/images/dailyLinkIcon.gif){kind=small}
The USA is not just squaring up to Saddam Hussein because he is a big bad threat, although I'm sure that's part of it. It is also going to take out Saddam's Iraq because it is a good place to set about influencing other important places from, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, and because it is takeable.
![[this item]](http://radio.weblogs.com/0103811/images/sharpPermaLink3.gif){kind=small}
The North Korean ship that last year delivered Scud missiles to Yemen transferred a large shipment of chemical weapons material from Germany to North Korea recently, U.S. intelligence officials said. The ship, the Sosan, was monitored as it arrived in North Korea earlier this month carrying a shipment of sodium cyanide, a precursor chemical used in making nerve gas...
As [Kennan's] strategy, containment sought to achieve three goals: the restoration of the balance of power in Europe, the curtailment of Soviet power projection, and the modification of the Soviet conception of international relations.
Saddam Hussein was last night reported to have placed his defence minister and close relative under house arrest in an extraordinary move apparently designed to prevent a coup.Tyrants never sleep well.
Amid the mocha coffee and the petits four, Jacques Chirac lost the argument. Shortly afterwards at his press conference, he lost his temper too. ... Kofi Annan [said] that if Saddam Hussein continued with his defiance, then the security council would have no option but to face up to its responsibilities - confront the Baghdad regime with military force. At Mr Annan's hawkish stance, Mr Chirac stood up and, with Gallic passion, began a defence of the French position. Flinging his arms up and down, he declared that war was a terrible thing and that thousands of innocent people would lose their lives in a second Gulf war.It is a question of life and death,he said.It was suggested that, at this point, the most dramatic moment of the evening occurred. Silvio Berlusconi, the diminutive Italian premier, eyeballed Mr Chirac and insisted:
I'm just as concerned about life and death as you are.He asked the French president to consider what happened to innocent people in Bali and in New York's twin towers.Then, the normally mild-mannered Bertie Ahern, the taoiseach, interjected and pointed out that the only person getting away with defying the will of the international community was Saddam. He added that the weapons inspectors could not go on indefinitely. By this time, Mr Chirac was positively steaming at the pro-American forces reigned against him. But there was more. Jan Peter Balkenende, the new Dutch prime minister, underscored the hawkish line, saying the issue was Iraq's full compliance and that it was now just a matter of weeks, not months, before the matter had to be resolved.
We have to reinforce the pressure on Iraq,he said. Spain's Jose Maria Aznar also called for international cohesion, pointing out that the UN had only got so far with the Iraqi dictator by threatening force.Then, Tony Blair said his piece, deriding the 12 years of deceit by Saddam and stressing he had to come into compliance "100%". Looking at his colleagues one by one, he told them bluntly:
There is no intelligence agency of any government around this table that does not know that the government of Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.
the main issue is the extent of U.S. ambition in the Arabic-speaking countries after that's all done. This foreshadows the debate likely to dominate foreign-policy circles for decades: What should be America's role in the world?To bring the blessings of liberty to the Middle East and Southeast Asia, thereby defeating islamofascism and communism, the most immediate threats we are facing.
In all my 38 years, I have never before felt such a sense of personal shock. I am shocked that so many of my friends would rather a brutal dictator remained in power — for that would be the direct consequence if their views won out — than support military action by the United States. I am ashamed that they would rather believe the words of President Saddam Hussein than those of their own Prime Minister. I am nauseated that they would rather give succour to evil than think through the implications of their gut feelings. It is a shocking experience to realise that your friends are either mindless, deluded or malevolent. ... I have tried to point out that saying you are in favour of "peace" is meaningless. Which sane person is not? The question is: peace on whose, and what, terms? If it is peace on the terms of brutal dictators, secured by allowing them to build up whatever weapons arsenals they wish, then that is not peace. It is suicide.
For months President Bush has repeated the refrain that his mind is not made up on whether to invade. Most people simply assumed the president had already decided on war. But perhaps the world should pay more heed to the president's words. Mr. Bush already has a sizable coalition and international law on his side. At some point one must recognize the possibility that the White House is delaying by design.
Watching the marchers here one could not help feeling that larger demonstrations could have been organized by the estimated 1.2 million people, mostly Iraqis and Iranians, who have died as a direct result of the tyrant's policy of repression and war in the past 25 years. Others might have joined them: the four million Iraqis driven into exile and the 1.5 million Iraqis and Iranians disabled during eight years of war.
The French President, still smarting over letters and articles from existing and future EU members backing the United States and Britain, suddenly turned on the new boys. In a reference to Bulgaria and Romania, still negotiating their EU membership terms, M Chirac said:If anyone had wanted to damage their chances of joining the EU, they could not have done it in a better way.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has a four-to-five-page typewritten catalog of risks he keeps in his desk drawer. He refers to it constantly, updates it regularly and has incorporated suggestions from senior military commanders into it and discussed it with President George W. Bush.
In engineering we have a saying that there comes a time when the product has to be ripped out of the hands of the engineers and shipped over their screams. ... There's an optimum point; ship too soon and risk that the product will perform badly. Ship too late and you may miss your market window, or [give] a competitor time to release something which will hurt you. Get it right and you can make millions of dollars; get it wrong and you can lose that much, and maybe even see your company go out of business.
Rupert Murdoch's Fox News has been expelled from Iraq... Last week Mr Murdoch gave his unequivocal backing to war in Iraq...What does this mean about other Western journalists, the ones "tolerated" by the Iraqi dictatorship?
Former U.S. secretary of state Lawrence Eagleberger has laid the blame for the civil war in former Yugoslavia squarely on the shoulders of Germany. Speaking on American PBS-TV in December 1994, Eagleberger declared that Germany bears "full responsibility" for the bloody conflict because of its "insistence on recognising Slovenia and Croatia at all costs" in November 1991. As predicted by the UN, the U.S. State Department and the European Community, the German action led to a wildfire escalation of the conflict to Bosnia, he said.