Mullings: An American Cyber-column By Rich Galen

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Blix Tricks

Monday February 24, 2003

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If you missed Saturday's e-mail, you can read it here.

Hans Blix runs an outfit named the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) which is the organization charged with carrying out the inspections of Saddam's weaponry in Iraq.

Blix has made a great point of telling everyone who will listen - at least everyone with a television cameraman in tow - that he is a mere inspector - just an ole' country lawyer tryin' his level best to carry out the wishes of his client, the Secretary General of the United Nations.

He doesn't make pronouncements, he just reports what he knows - and what he doesn't know.

In fact, in a Time Magazine interview in the current issue, this:

TIME: Don't Iraq's al-Samoud rockets, which exceed the proscribed range, constitute a material breach of Resolution 1441?
Blix: The decision whether something is a material breach is for the Security Council to make.

Which is why, on Friday, when the reports came out that Hans Blix had given Saddam Hussein one week to begin dismantling those very missiles it raised a few eyebrows here in Your Nation's Capital.

Well, it raised MY eyebrows, and I have two, so that counts.

Blix sent a letter to the Iraqis demanding the destruction of the missiles, the motors, fuels, testing facilities, software and all sorts of things which, according to the letter, a panel of "experts nominated by the governments of China, France, Germany, Ukraine, United Kingdom and the United States" was "unanimous in its assessment" were "proscribed."

The missiles were not made illegal by Resolution 1441 which was adopted a few months ago. Oh no. The missiles have been (again according to the Blix letter) "proscribed pursuant to resolution 687," which was adopted in 1991.

Oh. You meant THOSE missiles?

All that is mildly interesting and generally informative, but here's the question I have: When did Dr. Blix go from being an inspector and a reporter to the one person on the planet with the authority to demand the destruction of Iraq's "proscribed" weapons?

Why, if he is a mere employee of the United Nations Security Council, isn't it up to those 15 nations who are actually members to issue such an order?

Here's why. Because if the Security Council demands the destruction of specific weapons and the Iraqis delay (again), obfuscate (again), ignore the order (again), or generally tell the Security Council that they can take those missiles and ... (again), then the Security Council would have to actually DO something about it.

But! If employee Hans Blix writes a letter then, well, it's just part of the on-going inspection process which inches ahead, stalls, falls behind, and inches ahead again; a process which, if left to Hollywood actors, France, and Germany, could go on either forever or until an "accident" occurs allowing some dreadful weapon to leave Iraq and surface in Los Angeles. Or Paris. Or Berlin.

Think about the blackmail possibilities if some terrorist organization announced it had a couple of kilos of smallpox sitting in a crate up in Beverly Hills. Or Forest Hills. Or Jenkins' Hill.

If the UN Security Council issued the order to destroy those missiles the letter would have been two words longer. And they are the two words the UN Security Council is loathe to use:

Or. Else.

On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: A definition of the word, "proscribed," a link to the text of the Blix letter, the location of Forest Hills and Jenkins' Hill and a pretty good Mullfoto.

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