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Iraq-Jordan
Blix Says Iraq Worse Off After War
2004-04-06
EFL - caught via Drudge - More babble from Mr. Magoo
The costs of the war in Iraq have outweighed the benefits of removing Saddam Hussein, former U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix told a Danish newspaper.
... thereby demolishing any reason for anyone to listen to anything he has to say, ever again.
"It’s positive that Saddam and his bloody regime is gone, but when one weighs the costs, it’s clearly the negative aspects that dominate," Blix told daily Jyllands-Posten in an interview. The Swedish diplomat has criticized the United States and Britain for going to war without U.N. approval rather than allowing his team to continue its hunt for banned weapons. In the interview, Blix said the war had contributed to a destabilization of the Middle East and a move away from democracy in the region, adding that even though Iraqis had been spared life under a dictator, it was at too high a cost. "Bush declared war as a part of the U.S. war on terror, but instead of limiting the effects of terror, the war has laid the foundation for even more terror," Blix said.
Either that, or it's taken the war to the terrorists...
Posted by:Frank G

#12  H.D. Miller, thank you for providing those numbers. I just had to disabuse someone of the notion that Iraq is worse off today than it was, over a year ago, when Saddam was in power.

I've tried to search for the exact source and cannot find it. If you have a direct link to J. Burns' NYT article, or any other with the numbers, I'd really appreciate it.

Posted by: Zenster   2004-04-08 12:05:06 AM  

#11  Rafael - I thought he was Swiss!
Posted by: .com   2004-04-06 10:39:12 PM  

#10  I guess it's hard to keep from being bitter when you've been made both a laughingstock and irrelevant. About the only way Blix could keep working was by continuing to look for (but never find) Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction" while playing the role of "weapon of mass destraction". Bush blew him out of the water by destroying any need for distraction, and Blix has proven worthless for anything else. Hence, his bitterness. It's kind of hard to go back to being a worthless little leftist campus screecher (I won't dignify him by calling him a "professor") after you've been the center of worldwide attention, even if your main job was to NOT do your "main job". What a worthless piece of ambulatory swamp gas.
Posted by: Old Patriot   2004-04-06 10:33:24 PM  

#9  The guy's a maroon. Here's my take on his comments:

Blix says: "The war has liberated the Iraqis from Saddam, but the costs have been too great."

What sort of misguided cost accounting goes into figuring that?

On average, Saddam was killing something like 3600 Iraqis a month, and brutalizing thousands more with torture, rape and imprisonment. By comparison, the best estimate for deaths since January of 2003, one given by Iraq Body count stands at a little over 10,000.

So by this measure, more than 40,000 people are alive who would not have been if Saddam had remained in power. (I won't even try to calculate how many rapes or incidents of torture have been avoided.)

Link
Posted by: H.D. Miller   2004-04-06 5:13:42 PM  

#8  if i ever catch that blix creeping round my part of the country on his holidays i'll wring his fat little neck till he stops breating,nothing but a waste of precious oxygen.Fucking little swedish nonce!
Posted by: Shep UK   2004-04-06 4:17:35 PM  

#7  Shaddup Blix!
Posted by: Anonymous4049   2004-04-06 3:49:28 PM  

#6  I always wondered where he stood on the 'Oil for Palaces' investigation......
Posted by: CrazyFool   2004-04-06 3:32:26 PM  

#5  Ooh-rah Matt. Too bad you couldn't of left a copy of the small wars manual on it as well.

As for Blix, I thought this guy was a weapons expert of some sort not a geopolitical super-strategist. So for his theories on de-stabilizing the region he can stfu.
Posted by: Jarhead   2004-04-06 3:08:03 PM  

#4  Has it ever been proven that Blixie is a carbon-based life form? He seems to be from a different planet. I guess WW2 was too high a cost as well. Those Swedes..
Posted by: Rafael   2004-04-06 2:53:28 PM  

#3  I expect to see Blixie at some downtown stoplight soon, with a squeegee and an "Ego severely damaged. Will interview for food." sign around his neck.
Posted by: tu3031   2004-04-06 2:21:51 PM  

#2  And when will he be addressing the Kurds on this issue? Does Kirkuk U. have a commencement ceremony?

I saw a stack of Blix' books prominently displayed at a local bookstore. I'm afraid that I may have inadvertently left a history of the US Marine Corps on top of the stack.
Posted by: Matt   2004-04-06 2:20:35 PM  

#1  What he really meant to say:

"It’s positive that Saddam and his bloody regime is gone, but when one weighs the costs and ignore the benefits like the one I just mentioned, it’s clearly the negative aspects that dominate,"
Posted by: Raj   2004-04-06 1:49:01 PM  

00:00