This week's issue of The Economist is particularly outstanding. Among the more notable articles is an accounting of a fascinating study which concluded that human evolution has led to longer female lifespans in recent history.
Another article is the following fascinating review of Hans Blix's new book from The Economist..... this article speaks for itself and includes lots of juicy tidbits. JDG http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2498679 Iraq and weapons of mass destruction A disarming tale Mar 11th 2004 >From The Economist print edition Without Saddam Hussein's co-operation, it was impossible to be sure that Iraq had dismantled its weapons programme. That was the problem Disarming Iraq: The Search for Weapons of Mass Destruction By Hans Blix Pantheon; 285 pages; $24. Bloomsbury; �16.99 DAYS before America, Britain and the other coalition partners launched their attack on Iraq last year, Hans Blix, the United Nations' chief weapons inspector, met Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League. Mr Moussa was planning to visit Baghdad in a last-ditch effort to avoid a war. In the end, he never went. But Mr Blix had suggested a two-fold message for the man he dubbed �the emperor of Mesopotamia�: that the only chance to avoid an onslaught was for Saddam Hussein to make the long-refused �strategic decision� to tell all about his weapons or weapons programmes; and that, if it came to a fight, Iraq must refrain from any use of chemical or biological weapons. Otherwise, people who now opposed armed action would say the action had been proved justified. In his new book, Mr Blix makes clear that he was one of those who opposed the use of force. He regrets that inspectors were not given more time to try disarming Iraq peacefully. In the light of the subsequent failure to find stocks of chemical or biological weapons, he is critical of George Bush and Tony Blair for over-selling the immediacy of the threat. And he thinks they were anyway wrong to start such a war without explicit UN backing. Yet, as his chat with Mr Moussa showed, and despite finding no more than a few empty chemical shells himself, Mr Blix at the time also had a �gut feeling� that Iraq still had weapons hidden away and was up to no good. And, for all the frantic attempts by Iraqi officials to fend off force, Mr Blix is clear that they never provided the �immediate, active and unconditional� co-operation that the Security Council had demanded, unanimously, the previous November in resolution 1441. That resolution had given Iraq a �final opportunity� to disarm or show what it had done with its weapons. All documents relating to nuclear, chemical, biological and missile programmes and research, whether military or civilian, were to be given up. Iraq failed to do any of this. Its 12,000-page declaration a month later did not answer any of Mr Blix's outstanding questions. Yet most council members still opposed using force. So what had been the point of 1441? And what could more inspections have hoped to achieve? As Mr Blix acknowledges, inspectors would not have been in Iraq at all without the build-up of American and British troops on its borders. Yet Mr Bush had made quite plain to the UN General Assembly in September that his goal was not simply to get inspectors back (after four years' absence), but to ensure Iraq's proper disarmament, with the UN or, if necessary, without it. Thus to America, after 12 years of Iraqi defiance, 1441 was indeed the final ultimatum. Yet the French, concluding that America was now bent on war no matter what, dug in their heels. >From his dealings with American officials, Mr Blix saw it differently. Had Saddam Hussein responded, he argues, the military build-up would have been slowed, or stopped. Yet, like France, Germany and Russia, he wanted more time for the inspectors. Force might be contemplated at some point, but not now. Why couldn't these differences be bridged? Mr Blix accepts that the military force built up to pressure Iraq into admitting the inspectors, once at full strength, could not be held indefinitely through the summer heat. He skates more lightly over why the rift in the Security Council became so bitter. The main reason was that the big players had all been through this before. During earlier inspections in the mid-1990s, trust had broken down badly in the council when first Russia and China, then France, tiring of mounting Iraqi intransigence, argued for a switch to less intrusive monitoring and an easing of sanctions so that trade could resume. The inspection regime collapsed. Now the same countries were espousing inspections they had once deemed no longer necessary, in a way that, to American eyes at least, again hindered proper enforcement of Iraq's obligation to disarm. Yet Mr Blix is clear about the main reason why military preparations eventually outpaced fraught diplomacy�Iraq's own obduracy. It did eventually make the process of inspection easier, and allowed the destruction of some illegal missiles, but this was far too little, and too late. Have inspections since been vindicated? Mr Blix points out that the UN had succeeded in disarming Iraq, only without knowing it. But that is the difficulty. Without ready Iraqi co-operation, of the sort Libya has shown in giving up its illicit weapons and missiles, how would anyone have known it. Iraq gave every indication of hiding something. And indeed it was. The American-led inspectors who have been combing Iraq since the war have found materials, documents and evidence of research programmes that should have been handed over to the UN. They have also uncovered efforts, unknown to Mr Blix and his team, to acquire illegal far-flying missiles with help from North Korea and companies in Russia. Why would Saddam Hussein pay millions for missiles if he had no powerful warheads to put on them? Like so much about Saddam's Iraq, this is a mystery. But Mr Blix's hunch before the war, that he was up to no good, wasn't far wrong. Disarming Iraq: The Search for Weapons of Mass Destruction. By Hans Blix. Pantheon; 285 pages; $24. Bloomsbury; �16.99 _______________________________________________________ John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED] "The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity." - George W. Bush 1/29/03 _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
