Thursday, February 05, 2004
Where in the World is Hans Blix?
He's hanging out in Stockholm, winning prizes, making fun of the Kay report, and generally blixing it up. Where he isn't is on TV in the US. To get to talk about Iraq's lack of WMD's around these parts apparently you have to have been all wrong about them for the past decade. It also helps to be an ex-vice president of a defense contractor that's heavily involved in managing and profiting from post-invasion Iraq, oh yeah, and voting Republican.
Where in the world is Scott Ritter? Well, voting Republican isn't enough ... uh, apparently having been correct back when you got character-assassinated for doubting the official doctrine isn't good enough even if you happen to be a card-carrying Republican. Scott Ritter, these days, is saying things like, "There was not a single intelligence service in the world that said Iraq maintained massive stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction," on Australian radio.
Do yourself a favor and follow that last link and listen to the whole thing on the RealAudio stream. It's quite an interview; Ritter is pissed, really fired up. For instance, of Kay, he says
David Kay was a political appointee from day one. He is not there to search for the truth. He is there to spin data to the political advantage of the president. And for David Kay to stand before Congress and say that the president does not owe the American people an apology, The intelligence services owe the president an apology -- [it] is clearly a politically-motivated statement that has nothing to do, again, with the search for truth but rather to protect the president from the bad decisions that he made and, in fact, the misleading and often times fabricated statements that he used to justify this war.
