You gotta be kidding me...

[kyburg]

A senior Iraqi official said tonight that Saddam Hussein's government has not yet decided whether to comply with a demand from the United Nations' chief weapons inspector to destroy a powerful new missile system.

You gotta decide this one?

You can disarm without being blow to pieces, or be blown to pieces. There is no anti-war protester who will support Saddam Hussein if he insists on keeping anything Hans Blix don't want him to have. Jesus Fucking Christ.

Idiots.

Comments

[legolastn.livejournal.com]

I believe this is simply one of the methods being employed to keep some semblance of Iraqi national sovreignty. Diplomacy is all about keeping up appearances. Reality is dealt with only secondarily. I don't think they are stupid enough to believe they actually have a choice to not comply with UN demands without having the US jump all over it. However, for some examples, the Iraqi "parliament" could:
a) decide to comply with the demand, and Saddam could then acquiesce to their "wishes," thus giving him the appearance of being more democratically inclined, even though everyone would know it was a load of bull.
b) decide to reject the demand out of hand, and Saddam could then make a decree to the contrary, thus giving him the appearance of a man of reason who will bravely go against the will of the people to do what is right, even though again everyone would know it was a load of bull.
c) neither comply nor reject, per se, but request as a caveat to the disarming that the UN would have to make some promises of protecting them from invasion from neighboring countries because of their inability to defend their borders if they comply. This could be a particularly genius approach, since the threat of, say, Iran trying to make a power-grab after they disarmed is a very real possibility, making them seem willing to comply but reasonably reluctant to expose themselves to harm.