Nobody on either side of the Atlantic is taking seriously the Franco-German proposal of tripling the number of inspectors in Iraq and sending in UN peacekeeping troops to protect them. Powell and Rice put the kibosh on it right away, calling it "a distraction, not a solution." That is, they openly accused the French and Germans of being full of shit, of not putting forward a serious plan but wasting time. Meanwhile, the Axis of Weasels has convinced the Belgians, their equivalent of Italy in the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis, to put in the necessary objection in writing to the NATO military plan to aid Turkey. Says Louis Michel, Belgian foreign minister, "We're going to block the NATO action and use our right to veto." Go right ahead and rupture NATO, guys, and while you're at it wreck the UN too. It doesn't matter much to me, but if y'all force the Americans to act outside those organizations, they both will lose what little moral authority they still have.

How many Belgians does it take to change a lightbulb?
Only one, but first he has to kiss Schröder's ass and suck Chir...oh, well, never mind.

There's a rumor out that this week either the Americans or British will put up a resolution in the Security Council that would give Saddam a 48-hour ultimatum to stop being bolshy. The Vangua got a quick interview with John McCain in Munich; he's behind the Bush Administration on Iraq. He points out that as far as sending UN "blue helmets" there, look what happened in Srebrenica. He warns the French and Germans that they stand a good chance of being diplomatically isolated and that their attitude will damage European-US relations, though the fundamental relationship will continue. Russia's holding out for more and is threatening to line up with the Weasels on the Security Council; Putin's even bragging that he's got the Chinese behind them. I bet he doesn't. Screw the Russians.

The Vatican is rather fruitlessly trying to play international politics; they've sent all-purpose envoy, French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, to Baghdad as the pope's "special agent" with a message for Saddam. Etchegaray is one of the "peace and justice" elements in the Vatican hierarchy. It's Old Latin Europe that's running the Catholic Church, folks, just like it's a bunch of academic left moral cowards running the mainstream US Protestant denominations.

Jordi Pujol is publicly criticizing his own Convergence and Union party for joining the February 15 demonstration against the war in Iraq. Oh, come on, as if Pujol didn't personally approve everything important his party does. This is just a way to get themselves on both sides of the issue: they'll look both moral for being against the war, but smart and realistic for understanding that the national interest implies supporting the United States. That's the spin they'll try to put on it, anyway. Pujol also said that his biggest regret is having opposed the 1986 referendum on whether Spain should be in NATO, which is an elegant way of defusing an issue of inconsistency that the Socialists would have loved to fling in his face.