BUT... YOUR POINT IS...?: The Boston Globe has got reports that Saddam was prepared to unleash biological weapons - erm, in 1991. And, erm, only if Baghdad had been nuked. Now, while the thought of sending bacterial weapons flying hither and, of course, dither is indeed a scary prospect, as a response to a supposedly civilised nation dropping a nuclear device on your head it might be considered to be a measured response.
By the way, is it possible for everyone to stop using things Saddam may or may not have planned or done before the end of the Gulf War as part of the justification for action in 2003? If the gassing of marsh arabs or plans to use nukes was so uppermost in the West's minds, why did we not do something about it when we had the chance? The end of the Gulf War was like a line being drawn under everyone's behaviour until that point - however bad Saddam's beahviour was up until then, the time to act on it has passed. Dredging up things from the eighties is the equivalent of not only thinking of "what I should have said then..." two days after a social humiliation, but then ringing up your tormentor to say "actually, I ought to have..." The constant dredging of earlier attrocities doesn't make it any better for us to drop bombs on the Iraqi people, it just reminds the world how badly the coalition let those people down in 1991.

 
AH... SIXTY NATIONS: The New York Times suggests sixty countries have had America sidle up and say "d'you know what them Iraqi diplomats really are?" So many, many spies.

 
WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN 'APPLYING PRESSURE' AND 'FORCING'?: The US embassy in Australia has admitted the Bush government has been trying to get friendly nations to expell Iraqi diplomats.

 
VICTIM'S FAMILY LASH OUT AT BALI-IRAQ LINK: PM John Howard's plea for Australians to "remember Bali" when deciding on whether to support war on Iraq has been condemned by Brian Deegan, whose son Joshua was killed in the nightclub bombing there last year. In the same way that Bush and Powell have been trying to link the horror of sep'ven with their designs on Baghdad, Howard has attempted to bounce his people into frontline action by drawing a spurious link between Australia's murdered and Saddam - only this time, he's gone too far. Deegan says "There is absolutely no connection between what occurred in Bali and the murder of my son with what this Government is proposing to do to the sons of Iraqis" and has called for a retraction.

 
BEWARE! WAR BITES!: Last week's Guardian carried examples of the sort of leaflets that are currently being dropped on the heads of front-line Iraqis in a bid to try and scare them into easy surrender when that by-no-means-inevitable war kicks off. They were quite sweet, really, like a cross between the old public service announcements they used to show to stop people putting rugs on polished floors and Lord Haw Haw's Nazi propoganda broadcasts of the 1940's. "Don't put yourselves at risk" warns one. Careful! Empires At Work. "We can see everything" reads a caption on a picture of a satelitte "Do not use chemical, biological or nuclear weapons." Now, some Iraqis might wonder why, if the US can see everything, they don't just release the pictures of those weapons to the UN to ensure victory at the next vote. Another says, more or less, if you don't fire at us, we won't fire at you. Which would be a fair deal, although it might have a bit more moral substance to it if it wasn't coming from the nation that blew up the backs of retreating soldiers during the last gulf war. Of course, if the Americans really wanted to cause mass desertion in the desert, rather than wasting time dropping stupid leaflets, they'd just have a plane scattering dollars over the front line. That really would work.

 
SOME OTHER FRONT: You'd have to wonder if the New York Times has been allowed to carry reports of America torturing Afghans to death in a bid to tighten up the pressure on Iraqis as they wait for the first bomb to drop.

 
PLANE CRAZY? The Sun has got a story on its front page today that "could sway waverers back behind a war." Apparently it's a robot plane drone that they believe Hans Blix "buried" in his report to avoid war. "It could be used for a chemical weapon attack on the West." Well, if it does have such an incredible range to get over the whole of continental europe, and if Saddam did have chemical weapons, and did want to use them, and the plane could be steered over such a distance, then, erm, yes, that might be a good reason to support a second resolution. But really, we suspect the reason why Blix didn't flag up the plane was because he thought he might make himself look ridiculous suggesting that a bloody remote control airplane was a serious risk to us all.
FYI: The Sun's Friday front page claimed a schoolboy had been insulted by Prince Philip. Not only was the story total bollocks, but it was the Sun's lying story which upset the kid and reduced him to tears. You may also want to spend some time wondering if you'd really want to take the word of a paper which has been turning increasingly homophobic since its new editor took over.
One other thing: If the plane is part of an Iraqi weapons programme, surely the fact Blix's men have seen it doesn't really stack up with the claims that Iraq is throwing three-ring circuses to hide their weapons from the UN?

 
POPS STOPS PEACE BOPS: There's something a little odd about the fuss over the George Michael appearance on Top of the Pops at the weekend. Producers wouldn't let him wear an anti-war tshirt, and only allowed his backing singers to keep the shirts on because they had nothing else with them and full-frontal teatime nudity is frowned on even more than messages of peace. The official line was "we're not here to give George a political platform, but to allow viewers to see one of the biggest stars on the show for the first time in a generation." Which would be fine, but he was singing an anti-war song - has it really got so shaky at TOTP that they really care more about what you're wearing than what you're singing? Presumably, Tatu could have been trilling "We lick underage minge, us/ we perform teen cunnilingus" and they'd have been allowed on providing they wore something a bit more demure.