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in my view, art, i think that all the major players were heavily invested in iraq---the report i tried to reference in the earlier version of this thread (the one that got locked) was to the andres zumach article based on the iraqi report to the un from the period just before the war happened--the report addressed questions of procurement, naming names, countries of origin, and levels of sales to iraq concerning the wmd systems that were at issue.
i could only find the article itself in german, sadly---the links on that thread are to it, and to infrmation from/about it in english.
the point was that all the major arms exporting companies (for example--the instances could be multiplied across economic sectors) were implicated to a considerable extent, and that means the decision could easily have been motivated by other concerns.
because if you want to simply make the vote into the result of proft/loss calculations, the same would apply to all parties. which would lead you directly into arguments about american corporate beneficiaries of war, their ties the the administration, etc etc etc.
maybe the administration simply did not have a compelling case before the unsc? maybe the vote happened as it did **because** their case was not compelling? given recent information that us mere mortals are getting access to, that assessment certainly seems more than plausible.
and what is the difficulty with admitting the possibility of principled disagreement within the unsc anyway?
given the nature of the sources for arguments that only france germany and russia stood to benefit from economic relations with iraq, the timing of that information, etc., i think it wise to be suspicious of it both as such and as explanation......
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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