Major Powers Insist on Iraq Inspections

In a dramatic showdown, major powers rebuffed the United States in the Security Council on Friday and insisted on more time for weapons inspections after top U.N. inspectors failed to give Washington the ammunition it needs to galvanize support for military action against Iraq.
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A monument to hypocrisy
Every one of us must raise our voices, and march in protest, now and again and again,
writes Edward Said

It has finally become intolerable to listen to or look at news in this country. I've told myself over and over again that one ought to leaf through the daily papers and turn on the TV for the national news every evening, just to find out what "the country" is thinking and planning, but patience and masochism have their limits. Colin Powell's UN speech, designed obviously to outrage the American people and bludgeon the UN into going to war, seems to me to have been a new low point in moral hypocrisy and political manipulation. But Donald Rumsfeld's lectures in Munich this past weekend went one step further than the bumbling Powell in unctuous sermonising and bullying derision. For the moment, I shall discount George Bush and his coterie of advisers, spiritual mentors, and political managers like Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham, and Karl Rove: they seem to me slaves of power perfectly embodied in the repetitive monotone of their collective spokesman Ari Fliescher (who I believe is also an Israeli citizen). Bush is, he has said, in direct contact with God, or if not God, then at least Providence. Perhaps only Israeli settlers can converse with him. But the secretaries of state and defence seem to have emanated from the secular world of real women and men, so it may be somewhat more opportune to linger for a time over their words and activities.
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CIA 'sabotaged inspections and hid weapons details'

Senior democrats have accused the CIA of sabotaging weapons inspections in Iraq by refusing to co-operate fully with the UN and withholding crucial information about Saddam Hussein's arsenal.

Led by Senator Carl Levin, the Democrats accused the CIA of making an assessment that the inspections were unlikely to be a success and then ensuring they would not be. They have accused the CIA director of lying about what information on the suspected location of weapons of mass destruction had been passed on.
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The Turning of the Media

In my last column, I described how there are two ways to view the goals of the weapons inspectors. You can either look at them as a method of ensuring peace, or as a method of finding a reason for war.

For those who want a war, the inspectors are seen as trying to find something, anything that would justify a war, and only one single find would be totally sufficient to precipitate a conflict. And, if the inspectors don’t find anything, then they are viewed as ineffective, and this is then taken as another reason for war.

For those who don’t want a war, the inspectors can be a method of keeping Iraq contained. If you’ve got a couple hundred inspectors going around Iraq for months at a time, they’re going to be able to find and dismantle a lot of stuff, just like they did the last time they were there. However, if they don’t find anything, it is taken as evidence that Saddam really doesn’t have anything left around.
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Austria Blocking Movement of U.S. Troops-Rumsfeld

Billboard Ban

A Viacom division is refusing to run antiwar ads on its outdoor sites
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