O ja, de speech van Robin Cook staat on-line bij de BBC. Echt riveting stuff. Rijp voor studie in rethorica’s overal te lande:
France has been at the receiving end of bucket loads of commentary in recent days.
It is not France alone that wants more time for inspections. Germany wants more time for inspections; Russia wants more time for inspections; indeed, at no time have we signed up even the minimum necessary to carry a second resolution.
We delude ourselves if we think that the degree of international hostility is all the result of President Chirac.
The reality is that Britain is being asked to embark on a war without agreement in any of the international bodies of which we are a leading partner – not NATO, not the European Union and, now, not the Security Council.
O wat schone alliteratie (“not nato… not … union … and, now, not”) ! En o wat schone parallellismen!
Daarnaast natuurlijk heeft de man ook gelijk:
Ironically, it is only because Iraq’s military forces are so weak that we can even contemplate its invasion. Some advocates of conflict claim that Saddam’s forces are so weak, so demoralised and so badly equipped that the war will be over in a few days.
We cannot base our military strategy on the assumption that Saddam is weak and at the same time justify pre-emptive action on the claim that he is a threat.
Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of the term – namely a credible device capable of being delivered against a strategic city target.
It probably still has biological toxins and battlefield chemical munitions, but it has had them since the 1980s when US companies sold Saddam anthrax agents and the then British Government approved chemical and munitions factories.
Why is it now so urgent that we should take military action to disarm a military capacity that has been there for 20 years, and which we helped to create?
Why is it necessary to resort to war this week, while Saddam’s ambition to complete his weapons programme is blocked by the presence of UN inspectors?
Only a couple of weeks ago, Hans Blix told the Security Council that the key remaining disarmament tasks could be completed within months.
I have heard it said that Iraq has had not months but 12 years in which to complete disarmament, and that our patience is exhausted.
Yet it is more than 30 years since resolution 242 called on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.
We do not express the same impatience with the persistent refusal of Israel to comply.