WTF News Item

I had hopes of embarking on a saner line of posts after the immigration debacle of the past weeks until I came across this WTF news item. There is just so much one can keep up with these days, which makes it is a bit madding when things slip. Here is one item that I have read several times yet I am still befuddled.

More than four years after Saddam Hussein's ouster, the Security Council voted Friday to shut down the U.N. inspection bodies that helped uncover his illegal weapons programs but were then banned from Iraq by the United States. . It was approved by a vote of 14-0 with Russia abstaining.

The U.S. had been trying since 2005 to get the Security Council to wrap up the work of the inspectors. Iraq's new leaders had also been lobbying for the council to stop using the country's oil revenue to pay the salaries of the inspectors, and the resolution adopted by the council frees up $60 million dollars for transfer to the Iraqi government.

So here we go with my befuddlement. WTF were these people doing for the past four years besides collecting money for doing nothing? In a bit of understatement, Britain's U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry said that for some time neither of the U.N. bodies "have been in a position to carry out their functions in a way which serves the aim of disarmament and nonproliferation."

No kidding, some time? Four damn years of feeding at the US and British feed bag and they didn’t even bring their own silverware. It does get worse so hold on.

Since leaving Iraq, the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission known as UNMOVIC has continued to study satellite imagery in efforts to keep track of equipment with dual civilian and military uses that could be used in biological, chemical and missile programs. On Thursday, the commission published a 1,200-page account of Iraq's weapons programs and the lessons learned in the verification process. Do you realize they wrote a total of one page a day for 4 years? Hell public elementary school can do better than that; they can probably manage two pages misspellings and all.

So, for four years you have been looking for equipment used by a dead dictator with US troops running all over the place killing terrorists to see if said equipment could be used in a dual use mode? Come again? WTF are you looking at, do you know? You are looking at either US equipment used to kill terrorists or you are looking at a democratic Iraq government sandwich truck. Do you know how asinine you sound?

According to the United Nations, in the 1990s, U.N. inspectors uncovered significant undeclared banned weapons programs, including a biological warfare program that Saddam sought to conceal, the chemical nerve agent VX and other advanced chemical weapons capabilities, and the indigenous production of long-range ballistic missile engines. You know those things that George Bush made up to get elected?

The IAEA's Director General Mohamed ElBaradei recalled that he reported in early March 2003 that the IAEA "had found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq" — and would have been able to provide "an objective and thorough assessment of Iraq's nuclear-related capabilities within a few months."

What ElBaradei left unsaid was that soon after U.S. forces invaded and toppled Saddam.

UNMOVIC's Acting Executive Chairman Demetrius Perricos warned the council in a final briefing Friday that the possibility of terrorists or insurgents getting their hands on toxic chemical agents "is real," especially in the present security environment in Iraq. Don’t worry Demetrius, they don’t exist – just ask John Kerry our expert or perhaps you should ask Moveon.Org, our other assho...er experts.

He also cited a number of outstanding issues that "cannot be resolved and therefore contribute to the residue of uncertainty" about Iraq's chemical, biological and missile programs. These included the fate and whereabouts of 25 Al Samoud II missiles that were not destroyed before inspectors left in 2003, 326 SA2 missile engines, the status of the Muthanna chemical weapons facility, and the fate of liquid anthrax dumped in Baghdad in 1991. Again, don’t worry Demetrius, they don’t exist, it is just your imagination. Just ask John Edwards our junior expert

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin objected to the council's failure to comply with previous resolutions demanding that the inspectors certify that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction before terminating their mandate.

"The adoption of this resolution does not give any clear answers to the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," Churkin said. I thought I told you John Kerry made that perfectly clear.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the efforts of the U.S.-led multinational force in Iraq and the U.S. Iraq Survey Group, which investigated Iraq's weapons programs from 2003-2005, "have demonstrated that the current government of Iraq does not possess any weapons of mass destruction or delivery systems." I am beside myself with your intellect Zalmay. The current government does not possess any weapons of mass destruction – yep, you shore did your job.

Someone please tell me it’s me and I read too much into things. This was put out buy the UN and the media and we are suppose to sit here and say, “Hmmm, makes sense.” Gawd, I’m glad it’s the weekend.