Journal: News & Comment

A sad day at the UN

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I haven't written about Iraq here, largely because I'm so ambivalent about the situation -- and I'm in no position to say much of any import to anyone. My instinct is against war, yet I have not protested against U.S. actions because (as much as I think President Bush and his cronies are in the wrong about so many things) my head tells me that they may just possibly be right here. Today's events at the UN don't help matters.

The reports of the weapons inspectors were decidedly mixed, which, at this late date, is not good. Worse, the response of French foreign minister de Villepin was poisonous: lecturing, cynical, sarcastic, amnesiac, and profoundly self-absorbed.

France seems to be using the entire Iraq crisis for its own ends, much more so than the United States is so often accused of doing. It's all about France -- the U.S., NATO, the UN, Turkey (and Iraq) be damned. If France wanted to use reverse psychology to drive the U.S. into a war just by pissing them off, they couldn't have done a much better job.

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