Remember when Bush was trying to get the UN to endorse his war and called the body irrelevant? And who could forget his handpicked former envoy, John Bolton, who was slipped into his position via interim appointment, deeming "if the top 10 floors of the U.N. headquarters disappeared, it wouldn't make a bit of difference." Ah and the memories of all that butch posturing coming from the 101st Keyboardists about how the UN should be defunded, if not also disbanded?
What a difference a failed surge strategy makes. Now comes Bush, via his new UN envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, with hat in hand, begging the "irrelevant" agency to pull the White House bacon out of the fire.
"While reasonable people can differ on whether the coalition should have intervened against Saddam Hussein's regime, it is clear at this point that the future of Iraq will have a profound effect on the region and, in turn, on peace and stability in the world," Khalilzad wrote.
Read that to mean, okay, we really screwed this up so could you -- like -- intervene and fix it for us? And one wonders how the White House choked down this piece of humble pie.
Khalilzad said Washington endorsed Ban's call for an expanded U.N. role. "The United Nations possesses certain comparative advantages for undertaking complex internal and regional mediation efforts," he said. [...]
"Several of Iraq's neighbors -- not only Syria and Iran but also some friends of the United States -- are pursuing destabilizing policies," he said. "The United States supports a new mandate that creates a United Nations-led multilateral diplomatic process to contain the regional competition that is adding fuel to the fire of Iraq's internal conflict."
Jeez, you think this abrupt change of rhetoric has anything to do with the fact that the majority of the foreign insurgency is coming from Saudi Arabia and Turkey is bombing in the north?
You also have to wonder what Bush said that led UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to acknowledge Iraq was now "a problem of the whole world," in the five years since Kofi had declared the invasion illegal. Even more interesting will be to see what all the UN haters will have to say if the agency succeeds in untangling the horrific mess their hero Bush created in the Middle East.
You think they'll apologize, or just ignore it?
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