AZORES SUMMIT TEXT — THE

AZORES SUMMIT TEXT — THE ULTIMATE IN ELISION: The statement that the Trio Con Brio issued at the end of their Azores summit represents the highest form of elision: neither the word “war” nor any synonymous or similar terms is mentioned anywhere at all. The nearest the statement comes to mentioning anything as distasteful as war is “serious consequences”, as in “If Saddam refuses even now to cooperate fully with the United Nations [but wouldn’t you have thought that this is for the UNSC itself to decide, not three random member-states?], he brings on himself the serious consequences foreseen in UNSCR 1441 and previous resolutions.”
And then, moving right along here, we are taken straight to the never-never land of bounteous and trouble-free reconstruction: “In these circumstances, we would undertake a solemn obligation to help the Iraqi people build a new Iraq at peace with itself and its neighbors… ”
Whoosh! You never heard the “giddy-up” of one (or more) of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as he/they rode along between the lines there, did you?