I’ve got to run later this morning for the airport, so not much time to flesh this out, but here’s an interesting interview that basically says the Administration has all the smoking guns it needs, based on the Blix report, to follow through on earlier UN resolutions regarding military action.
The UN resolutions required that [he] account for those chemicals and for twelve years Saddam has just been looking us in the eye and saying ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I refuse to answer the question.’ Imagine what that would look like if this were Law and Order and if this were Jack McCoy asking that question again and again. And after each presentation of the evidence and question to Saddam, ‘What have you done with those materials.’ And the Iraqi response is ‘We’re not answering that question.’ That’s a pretty damning indictment.
And while the EU is finding its own internal foreign policy torn apart by French unilateralism on Zimbabwe …
This week, an attempt by the EU’s foreign ministers to renew sanctions against Zimbabwe collapsed because France wanted an exemption from the travel ban to enable President Robert Mugabe to attend a Franco-African summit in Paris.
The EU’s whole relationship with Africa was thrown into confusion, with an EU-Africa summit to be hosted by Portugal in April under threat. If France was allowed to receive Mugabe, the Portuguese wanted the same right.
But the leaders of the UK, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and Spain are all likely to boycott a summit attended by Mugabe, which would transform the event into an embarrassing display of European disunity.
… the Bush Administration is getting some (ahem) multilateral support from the heads of Spain, Portugal, Italy, the U.K., Hungary, Poland and Denmark, and the Czech Republic over the Iraqi situation. (France and Germany were not asked to sign the statement.)
Inneresting.