What You Don't Read in the Papers

[Occhidiangela]

Maybe it was our heavy handed approach, or maybe it was their own selfish interests.

Maybe it was both?

  Either way, they allowed the only international body to become a political circus which signaled every tyrannt of just how weak an institution it really has become. Want to commit genocide, develop WMD, or terrorize the world? It's easy, you just buy off some of the security council veto members with a lucritive oil contract.

That is not new to tje Iraq situation, of course.

  IMHO, that whole UN situation was mishandled because it started with the premise that there existed a solution that would leave that Baathist Regime in power. Any scrutiny of the Bush administration and its stated goals and objectives left no room for a Baathist Iraq. This was a country that tried to assassinate a former US President. I'm not sure why that isn't considered a provocation for war. But you are right about them. All balls, no brains.

Good summary of the tension in place. As to the "tried to kill our pres" line, Pres Clinton, IIRC, sent a message in a flight of cruise missiles about that when he found out, however, as ever with a "pure silver bullet approach" the 'message' was ignored after the rubble stopped bouncing. I never thought of a cruise missile as a tool of diplomatic finesse, but the Clinton administration, and some of its military "experts" in uniform and out, did. Me, I always just saw a cruise missile as a weapon that blew stuff up and got to its target in a novel way.