← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · amundsen
Thread ID: 5205 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2003-02-25
2003-02-25 12:27 | User Profile
By Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, February 25, 2003; Page A01
As it launches an all-out lobbying campaign to gain United Nations approval, the Bush administration has begun to characterize the decision facing the Security Council not as whether there will be war against Iraq, but whether council members are willing to irrevocably destroy the world body's legitimacy by failing to follow the U.S. lead, senior U.S. and diplomatic sources said.
In meetings yesterday with senior officials in Moscow, Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton told the Russian government that "we're going ahead," whether the council agrees or not, a senior administration official said. "The council's unity is at stake here."
A senior diplomat from another council member said his government had heard a similar message and was told not to anguish over whether to vote for war.
"You are not going to decide whether there is war in Iraq or not," the diplomat said U.S. officials told him. "That decision is ours, and we have already made it. It is already final. The only question now is whether the council will go along with it or not."
The rest of the [url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62438-2003Feb24.html]article[/url]
What resolve these Republicans have to go to war. If only they showed such resolve during ANY domestic battle. Seeing as how they dont I'd characterize Republicans as bloodthirsty. What ought to disturb Republican voters is that the Republicans continue to waste their control of both Houses and the Presidency on war with a harmless to us 3rd World dictator rather than getting rid of the 60 years of socialist legislation they claim to dislike during elections.
2003-02-25 23:26 | User Profile
This is awesome. Since the decision to torch Iraq has already been made, this can go one of three ways:
1: UN caves to US demands and authorizes war, thus losing whatever authority it pretends to have as a world governing body. 2: UN stands up to US and rejects war; US goes it alone and the impotent UN loses whatever authority it pretends to have as a world governing body. 3: UN and US work out a 'compromise' and everybody goes home and lies about how they "got what they were after".
I don't see option 3 happening, though; both sides of the debate are too strongly polarized. What, is Chancellor Shroeder going to go home and say "well, we got them to refrain from ...uh, attacking Antarctica as well... and that's all we were after", after he based his entire reelection campaign on being tough on the US?
Whichever way it goes, the UN's pretty much done. We're going to need a large fork to stick in it. :D
Drakmal