Right Wing Nut House

Looks like Italian communist journalist Guiliana Sgrena’s lies and distortions about the tragic incident that occurred at the American checkpoint in Iraq have had their desired effect. Prime Minister Berlusconi is announcing that Italian troops will leave Iraq in September:

Italy is to begin withdrawing its troops from Iraq in September 2005, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has said.

He told Rai state television the pullout would take place “in agreement with our allies”.

Italy has 3,000 troops in Iraq - the fourth largest foreign contingent.

Italian politics is notoriously unstable. In order to maintain his position, Berlusconi has done a masterful job of balancing his support for the United States in Iraq with addressing domestic concerns of his center-left coalition.

Sgrena comes along and basically upsets the apple cart:

“I spoke to Tony Blair about it, and public opinion in our countries is expecting this decision,” he told Rai.

He said the exact numbers would depend on the Iraqi government’s ability to deal with security.

The BBC’s Tamsin Smith in Rome says it is the first time Mr Berlusconi has suggested a timetable for withdrawal.

Local elections coming up next month may have had something to do with the announcement of the decision. Captain Ed thinks it may be something a little more sinister:

One wonders if this wasn’t a negotiated commitment between Italy and Giuliana Sgrena’s kidnappers. It certainly looks that way, or else it appears to be a reaction to American demands to stop paying ransoms to terrorists.

Not sure I agree that Berlusconi would acquiesce to a terrorist demand that pushes around the Italian military. But he may have added up the domestic political costs of maintaining forces in Iraq while realizing in any future hostage situation, he would be under enormous pressure from the US not to deal with the terrorists.

The left will have a hoot with this news, which begs the question…

Which side are they on?

This is pretty unbelievable:

UN inspectors in Iraq spent their working hours drinking vodka while ignoring a shadowy nocturnal fleet believed to be smuggling goods for Saddam Hussein, a former senior inspector told the US Senate yesterday.

In a move that provoked fury from officials of the Swiss firm Cotecna, an Australian former inspector detailed a picture of incompetence, indifference and drunkeness among the men acting as the frontline for UN sanctions.

Watch for the Cox and Forkum cartoon soon.

It gets better:

At another monitoring site where the UN was supposed to check humanitarian aid supplies, Mr Ventham noticed “the team leader and his fellow countrymen [the nationality is unstated] spending the majority of their time in each other’s rooms drinking vodka as opposed to managing and leading the team”.

There he noticed small vessels and barges moving to a small island each night.

Kind of give a whole new meaning to the initials WMD; Weally Messy Drunks.

There’s already been evidence of the Russians helping Saddam spirit something out of the country in late January and early February of 2003. Speculation was rife that the convoy of trucks that left Iraq for Syria’s Bekka Valley could have contained what was left of the Iraqi WMD program.

Now we find out that the people in charge of enforcing the will of the UN preferred getting drunk in their hotel rooms rather than seeing the Security Council resolutions obeyed.

Aren’t you glad that John Kerry lost?

UPDATE

Here’s what I wrote of the UN after the Russian connection to Saddam’s violations of the sanction’s protocols were made public on October 28 of last year:

What makes these revelations so serious is the impunity with which the international community routinely violated the sanctions against Iraq. “Grown-up nations” as Kofi Annan called France and Russia were not only up to their armpits in the ever-unfolding Oil For Food scandal, but actually sold banned materials to Saddam as if the UN didn’t even exist. (Note: The next time you hear that santimonious son of a bitch Chirac dissing the US for acting unilaterally, throw your popcorn at the TV like I plan to. That kind of hypocrisy deserves to be answered with a glove to the face and pistols, at dawn, at 20 paces).

In the cold light of dawn here, what’s becoming depressingly clear is that the UN is worse than a hollow shell, it is in fact an obstacle to peace in any form, of any kind. How can the United States in good conscience follow the dictates of an organization, so corrupt, so filled with cynicism, graft, and outright thievery that it won’t enforce it’s most fundamental dictums and instead, turns a blind eye to these kinds of outrageous violations of its OWN rules?

With today’s revelations, I almost look like a goddamn prophet.