Today I've been thinking a lot about President Bush's "axis of evil," which lumped North Korea, Iraq and Iran together and confounded us all at the time. Maybe I've been watching too much 24 these days. The plot of last night's episode, in which it was discovered that three unnamed Middle Eastern countries had conspired to purchase a nuclear bomb and detonate it in L.A., didn't sound that far-fetched, did it?
Then, I opened up this morning's paper and learned that North Korea's plutonium production will soon be churning out approximately 1 nuclear weapon per month. This, in addition to the 2 which the CIA estimates the North Koreans already possess.
Meanwhile in Iraq, Hussein continues to drag his feet on compliance. Sure, he's destroying Al Samoud 2 missiles. He wasn't supposed to have them in the first place. Rather than acknowledge this fact, Hussein calls the destruction order a ploy designed to demoralize the Iraqis before a US-led attack. Meanwhile, he's apparently ordered the manufacture of more Al Samoud 2 missiles, according to Colin Powell.
THIS is what Blix calls increased cooperation? Odd. At the same time, Blix indicates there are still 29 non-compliance "issue clusters" that Iraq has yet to address. So he's mapped out an inspection plan so the UN inspectors can continue doing just what they've been doing all the way through this summer.
And let's not forget that third point in the "axis of evil," Iran. They've been busy trying to buy US-made arms through smugglers while working on their own nuclear weapons program.
So, let's see... it's March now. The UN plan goes through August. That's 5 months. I'm not very good at math, but even I can figure out that if Blix were to get his way, North Korea would've produced five (5) nuclear weapons and Iran's totals will be unknown by the time the UN Inspectors realized that looking for compliance out of Iraq is about as painful as, well, looking for nuclear bombs in a desert.
Hmm...
2:39:06 PM ; 
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