Will The Real Hans Blix Please Stand Up?

Reading the UN Inspectors has lately been akin to watching an episode of To Tell The Truth.

Blix himself, in a new interview, claims that Iraq has "no credibility", but that the inspection process should be allowed to continue so long as Iraq cooperates. (No word from Blix about U.S. non-cooperation with weapons inspectors.) Further, as some media "outlets" reported "fading cooperation" with weapons inspectors (citing only UN and/or U.S. "officials"), CBS News (which to its credited also broke the "Shock and Awe" story) found inspectors "privately complaining about the quality of U.S. intelligence and accusing the United States of sending them on wild-goose chases," and The Independent reported upon an "outburst" from Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov complaining that, "Inspectors are being subjected to very strong pressure in order to provoke their departure from Iraq, or to present to the Security Council assessments which could be used as a pretext for the use of force against Iraq."

We'll recall that prior to Blix's last progress report, the buzz in the print was that he was going to take Iraq to task, but in fact ended up dissing Powell's UN "evidence" session. There's no telling in which direction the Blix pendulum will swing when he delivers his next report. But he's set to issue a list of demands to Iraq this week.

What You Can Do: This blog has argued on more than one occasion that the Bush Administration's and United Nations' focus upon Iraq's WMDs to the exclusion of all others' is racist and hypocritical. But given the political realities, we should make clear, when we place our phone calls to Washington, DC on Wednesday, that Blix's demands should not be perceived as a final block on the road to war, but as the final hurdle in the path to removing sanctions.

Posted by Eddie Tews at February 24, 2003 01:00 PM