Aha! Now the anti-war stance of some countries makes sense

That story is widely disseminated at the moment but verification is still pending.

I say, so what. Just as I didn't care that the US installed bugs on China's version of "Air Force One" I really don't care if Russia spied on Blair.

reply to delowan
I'm still looking for another source other than the one I found through the Drudge Report, but haven't found any yet---which makes me uneasy about it's reliability.

BumbleBeeBoogie

I think it broke on some UK agencies. I wasn't really paying attention.

Of course, they did. On certain stage, U.S. and UK also supplied weapons to Iraq, when Saddam acted as a normal military subcontractor for the West, dealing with some Iranian project and there were no sanctions imposed on Iraq. The problem is that Russia, China and France (or, at least, private companies from these countries) continued providing Iraq with military equipment and technologies after the sanctions were imposed[/i]. This is becoming obvious now, when Iraqi secret documents fall into hands of the Allied soldiers. Of course, the countries involved would prefer these documents to remain secret forever.

steissd,

UN decisions can't be both paramount and irrelevant.

UN sanctions are touted as the Bible while the UN's refusal to sanction the war is supposed to make the UN irrelevant.

I really wish people whould make up their minds about the relevance of the UN, it can't be selectively determined according to what best suits your political views.

UN refusal to back war can be easily explained by the fact that Russia, France and China have right of veto in the Security Council, and prevention of war would unilaterally serve their interests. Sanctions imposed on Iraq did not serve interests of any particular country (except, maybe, Kuwait), and they were supposed to disable the military potential of the Saddam's regime after his having unprovokedly attacked the foreign country. Therefore, we cannot compare these decisions; one was dictated by egoistic interests of former (France, Russia) or developing (China) superpowers, the second refers to keeping an acceptable balance of military force oin the sensitive area.

It's of note to mention that the same security council existed when the sanctions were imposed, it's also of note to mention that the accusation of minding one's own interests goes both ways. Many think the US is serving their own interests as well.

Again, saying one decision is valid while another is not is all too convenient.

For more info, watch Chris Mathews' Hardball on MSN 4/14
Chris Mathews is on to the story - good interviews on his 4/14 Hardball show on MSN.

I've asked friends in San Francisco to track down the San Francisco Chronicle source of the stories.

BumbleBeeBoogie