Yes. I am back in Paris. For proof, check out the Mullfoto of the day on the
Secret Decoder Ring page.
I'll get to WHY I'm in Paris for the C�te d'Ivoire Peace Talks over the weekend, so stay tuned on Monday. C�te d'Ivoire, for those who failed the National Geographic quiz last month is on the west coast of Africa. Africa is the continent just south of Europe. Europe is where France and Germany and those kinds of countries are located.
The crack United Nations weapons inspectors - who have thus far barely been able to find sand in the desert - found 11 empty biological and/or chemical warfare warheads in an ammunition dump yesterday.
How was it that the inspectors found these boxes in, as early reports are indicating, the back of an ammunition warehouse?
The Central Intelligence Agency them to look there, that's how.
This might not be THE smoking gun, but it certainly looks like 11 bullets which were once in the gun; and might well have been squirreled away in preparation for being reloaded.
The CIA will tell the inspectors where to look for more stuff over the next few weeks. And the inspectors will find more stuff when they look there.
The Iraqis are claiming they forgot they were there. The Iraqis didn't send in a four-page outline, in large type of what they thought they might have in the inventory to the Security Council this past December. The declaration they filed was TWELVE THOUSAND pages long. They could have - and should have - accounted for every enzyme and bacterium, and every nut and every bolt for every warhead constructed to carry them.
It's like a scene from COPS when the guy's care is stopped for having no tail lights, no bumpers and only three tires and then, when the state trooper asks him to empty his pockets, seventeen syringes fall out.
"I forgot they were there" will not prevent the perp from assuming the position and ending up having a cop's hand on his head to protect it as he is put in the back of the trooper's cruiser.
Bad boy, bad boy.
There is an anti-war demonstration scheduled for Washington, DC this weekend. This might not cause anyone to change their mind about attending, but it certainly takes some of the edge off the theory that President Bush has been making it all up.
All this is putting more and more pressure on Saddam's neighbors to come up with some plan to get him and his family out of there before President Bush does it for them.
While all this has been going on it's been hard to remember that Joe Lieberman joined the Democratic parade for the Democratic nomination for President.
He wasn't in the race three days before he had to hold an emergency meeting with American Jewish leaders to explain his recent statement expressing, as Dan Balz and Allen Cooperman wrote in their Washington Post piece, "strong support for the aspirations of the Palestinian people to an independent state, encouraged a Saudi role in peacemaking and criticized the Bush administration for not staying engaged in promoting Israeli-Palestinian negotiations."
Let's recount (bad word) ... Let's recap the way these guys have broken from the gate:
Edwards bombed in his Meet the Press appearance right after he announced.
Gephardt forgot he was supposed to be opposed to the Confederate flag in South Carolina shortly after he announced, and now
Lieberman has to apologize to the people who should be his most ardent supporters.
Yeah. This is a tough group.
I have not heard from Nancy Pelosi. Someone please tell her the county code for France is 33.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: That fascinating Mullphoto, a link to the Washington Post piece on Lieberman, and a map of where the Cote d'Ivoire is located so you can win bar bets.
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