Coalition couldn't have given U.N. inspectors more time, British official

[Judi Lynn]

Coalition couldn't have given U.N. inspectors more time, British official says

MICHAEL McDONOUGH, Associated Press Writer Friday, October 3, 2003

(10-03) 03:29 PDT LONDON (AP) --

U.S.-led military pressure against Saddam Hussein would have diminished if U.N. weapons inspectors had been given more time to search for Iraq's alleged banned arms, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Friday.

"If we allowed more time, we were simply allowing more time for deceptions and defiance by the Saddam regime," Straw told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. "Gradually, the resolve of the international community to deal with this matter would have died down.

"The only reason we got the inspectors back in was because of the military threat. ... That military threat was bound to be a time-limited one."

But Straw denied that the U.S.-led coalition had decided to invade Iraq as soon as it began deploying troops to the region, months before the war began.

"Our hope all the way through was that the threat of military action backing inspections could lead to a peaceful resolution of this," he said. (snip/...)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/10/03/international0629EDT0505.DTL

[Spentastic]

1. Ha fucking ha

"If we allowed more time, we were simply allowing more time for deceptions and defiance by the Saddam regime," Straw told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. "Gradually, the resolve of the international community to deal with this matter would have died down.

What? This bloke is insane. I'm actually livid at the moment, the shades of grey that defined the initial rejections of force by the U.N have been ignored and replaced with the assertion by Straw and Blair that the U.N would have done nothing. This is a lie and should be exposed .

Now explain why a spook can look for weapons and not find any and be lauded for it where Mr Blix tried the same and was basically accused of being a liar.

[Brucey]

2. This is laughable in so many ways, where to begin?

One simple point: there are more than two ways to resolve conflicts. If you feel you don't have time for UN inspections it does not mean you have to bomb brown people. Why don't we bomb all the countries that haven't obeyed UN resolutions? There are other ways of dealing with problems. It is nonsense that there wasn't time. Iraq was of no threat to anyone. They couldn't even fly planes. They had no missles to even reach Israel. The spin never ends.

[punpirate]

3. Straw knows...

... that the deal was done between Blair and Bush at the ranch, in August, 2002. The more he talks about it, the closer the British press is going to come to that truth.

Only in Orwell's _1984_ does 2+2=5.

Cheers.

[Devils Advocate NZ]

4. This is a joke! This man should be laughed out of office!

He is saying that the threat of force was necessary to get the inspectors in to Iraq, but that the inspections couldn't be allowed to continue because the threat of force would have been reduced!

What?

This guy is not only a liar, he is a fool. Especially if he thinks ANYONE is going to buy that excuse.

If Straw had been telling the truth, he would have said:

The inspections were required to justify the threat of force, but we couldn't wait for the inspections to complete because then we wouldn't have had any justification for the use of force.