Hans Tells it Like it is. . .

And reveals far more than he probably should.
Hans Blix Slams Iraq War - HANS Blix, the former chief UN weapons inspector, slammed the Iraq war as a "tragedy" and blamed it on leaders ignoring the facts.
Really? Which facts? Which leaders?

Writing in The Guardian on the fifth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, Blix, who clashed with Washington in the run-up to the Iraq war, described the war as "a tragedy - for Iraq, for the US, for the UN, for truth and human dignity".
I happen to agree with all of that - but not in the sense that Blix intends it.
In the sub-headline to the comment piece, Mr Blix, who headed the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, wrote that responsibility for the war "must lie with those who ignored the facts five years ago".
Once again, I agree. Once again, though, we need to clarify. Which facts, Mister Blix?
At the time of the Iraq war, Mr Blix accused the US and Britain of exaggerating the threat from Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's alleged "weapons of mass destruction" - traces of which have never been found.
Apart from the fact that every nation was operating under the same cloud of misinformation, the statement - 'traces of which have never been found' - is an outright lie, actually. It should come as no surprise whatsoever, though, especially when there has been some suggestion that Blix was deliberately downplaying his team’s findings at the time. This, however, is moot. These are not the only facts we were considering at the time, and nor should they have been.
In his comment piece, he said the war was a "setback in the world's efforts to develop legal restraints on the use of armed force between states". . .
Legal restraints? What dreamboat puff ball of planet is this idiot (and others like him) living on? What law carries any authority whatsoever without an accompanying threat of sanction, and the very real prospect of that sanction being applied?
Mr Blix wrote that had coalition troops not deposed Saddam, "he would, in all likelihood, have become another Gadhafi or Castro; an oppressor of his own people but no longer a threat to the world".
Oh well, that would have been much nicer, wouldn’t it, Hans? Saddam could have quietly kept right on shovelling people into mass graves and we’d have been none the wiser. Win-win, I guess. Of course, there's one tiny problem with Hans and his convenient parallel: as far as I’m aware, neither Libya nor Cuba have indulged in this, or this, or this. . .

The reality is, these people bleat about the ‘Iraqi tragedy’ now – while choosing to completely ignore the Iraqi tragedy as it was. This is the position of a moral pygmy. An effete, who would rather avert his or her eyes than acknowledge the appalling truth and have to act, thank you very much. But the money quote’s coming up, folks, and one of the very few on the anti-side coming even close to admitting that indeed it is our failure in Iraq that they’re really after, and precisely why:
He said that one positive sign to emerge from the conflict was that "it may be that the spectacular failure of ensuring disarmament by force, and of introducing democracy by occupation, will work in favour of a greater use of diplomacy and 'soft power'".
‘One positive’ – ‘spectacular failure’. The egregious BS that are the words ‘spectacular failure’ aside – ‘diplomacy’ and ‘soft power’ worked so well in the decade leading up to Iraq’s invasion, did they? Well - I guess it depends on what you mean by ‘well’. A lot of people did extremely well out of the ‘diplomacy’ and ‘soft power’ efforts with Iraq. Very well indeed. . .

Blix couldn’t have put it more clearly - our loss is their ‘gain’. Regardless to say, I think Blix is an idiot (the nicest take possible). Without threat of sanction, there is no authority, there is no hope of legal restraint – end of story. Ten years of Saddam snubbing his nose at the UN taught us that much. Or you’d have thought it would, if there weren’t far more agendas at play here than these perfidious little creeps will ever admit.

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