Wow. 6,000 postcards is an awful lot!

But at least we're through. Before I go on to my scintillating tale of rampant John Hancockery and my subsequent tonsorial escapade, a quick comment on Mr. Lileks' Bleat of today, in which he discusses afresh the pitfalls of inspection. His conclusion?

[...] The pro-inspections argument seems to believe that if inspectors don’t find anything, this means Iraq doesn’t have anything.

Others might take reassurance from that. I don’t.

Obviously, I'm not qualified by any stretch to talk arms control (or anything else) but I will relate one little story.

Several years back, my wife took a job as a daycare director at a small local Christian school. One of the things the administration touted was that no one had ever been caught with drugs on campus, in part due to random searches by the K-9 unit of the local police department. Another nice thing was that the kids' lockers never had locks, because there never were any instances of theft.

Sounds pretty good, eh?

After a few months, a few things started to become clear, though.

The students had easy access to just about any drug they wanted. But how? Well, they would bring them to school. But what about the dogs?! Well, you see, one of the kids on campus was somehow magically (imagine me making large air-quotes and speaking with a heavily mocking ironic tone) able to find out exactly when the dog would be on campus.

By at least a week.

This child also happened to be heavily involved in all the dope taking and selling going on, and before the police came all of the contraband was removed from the lockers and put into the kids' cars. Nope, no drugs in OUR school! Why didn't they search the cars? Well, we didn't find any drugs in the lockers, did we? Why search out there?

Oh, and that thing about never having anything going missing was just as surely a crock as there being no drugs. Again, the ones charged with investigating and catching the thieving punks were best at saying "You know you shouldn't bring anything valuable to school." Like, say, your books.

What's the point? The Iraqi government is equivalent to that same bunch of coddled and protected juvenile delinquents that ran the school--bullying whoever they wanted with impunity, and then crying that they were being mistreated when given a demerit for talking in class. The U.N. is the equivalent of the do-everything-we-can-to-not-find-anything-incriminating cadre of money-hungry administrators, who just couldn't bear to see anyone's reputation ruined by actually suffering the consequences of their misbehavior (with the subsequent loss of their daddy's monthly check). Sadly, there was no equivalent of the U.S. at the school--I knew my ability to supply an effective projection of force was limited--there was the realization that some times it's better to cut your losses and leave the mess behind, so my wife began looking for another job in earnest.

The board (I guess the equivalent of the Security Council) did manage to get rid of the principal, (yes, a "regime change" I suppose, although to stick with the analogy would be more akin to booting Kofi Annan) who never could understand why he was being forced out. Not long after, several others left who were part of the problem, including the kidpin of the drug scene.

What then of Iraq? As long as the people in charge of trying to inspect the country don't want to find anything, nothing will be found. And rest assured a large chunk of our UN friends have absolutely NO interest in finding anything. Oh, we might be able to change the school principal, but the more important problem will continue to be in place as long as the delusional and fearful allow it to continue.
posted by Terry at 11:23:00 AM