Stardate 20030119.2204

(On Screen): Blix is talking to the Iraqis to let them know that their cooperation hasn't been adequate, and what's going to happen is that he's going to walk out, and say that he's had a meeting of the minds with them and that now he needs more time to put it into effect, so obviously the US can't attack now, can it? Give us a few more months.

It doesn't matter what Iraq says; that's what Blix is going to announce. It's because he sees his primary job as preventing the US from attacking. Of course, the point of Res 1441 was that Iraq got only one more chance to fully cooperate, and they haven't done it. That was their last chance, and Blix is going to want to give them another last chance.

And so we come down to it. If, after his report on the 27th, it becomes the French policy that more time is required, then the US will have to announce its attack without further UN action. Powell and others in Washington have again been emphasizing that we do not feel any need for further UNSC action, that we think that 1441 already gives us that power, that we'd go in even if it didn't, and that we're more than willing to go in at this point.

Diplomacy has failed. War is the last resort, and we've reached the last resort.

I think the attack has already been ordered. Bush could order the process halted, but at this point it's pretty much a foregone conclusion that it's going to happen. If this be unilateralism, all the better.

In Winston Churchill's history of WWII, he says that in the interval following the fall of France that even though the situation of the UK was extremely dire, that in some ways he felt very much liberated. Because the UK fought alone, it was not entangled by alliances with others and not forced to do anything not in the UK's own interests.

In many ways, I hope that we do indeed push in the nose of the UNSC. I'm fed up with pipsqueaks like Chirac, leading has-been nations sunk in decadence and decay, who nurse delusions of significance. I'm tired of everyone else telling us what to do and telling us what not to do and telling us what evil people we are and telling us how much wiser they are. Much though I dread it in many ways, I will feel a great relief when combat in Iraq finally begins, for it will remove a great pressure from my nation. It will render most of the last year's rhetoric moot. When my nation fights despite the objections of others, and wins easily despite their warnings of disaster, it will expose many for what they truly are: people who talk incessantly because they have no ability to do anything else.