This report in the Washington Post gives yet further evidence of the failure the Edison corporation, the leading ‘for-profit’ school operator in the US. Actually, the report says that Edison has never made a profit. This is scarcely surprising. The report points out that the number of students makes Edison equivalent to one of the big US school districts, but how many of them have a $125 million dollar headquarters in Manhattan (now abandoned) or a boss with a $46 million East Hampton estate (now up for sale). It’s hard to make a profit with overheads like that.

Judging by this report in the Washington Post, I’ve overestimated the good sense of the Bush Administration. The front-page lead is

‘White House denounces the overture as a ruse and “a tactic that will fail.”‘

It’s unclear in this context what “the White House” means, and the comments reported in the body of the story are all over the shop. But it’s hard to see how the Arab League and the Saudis, who leaned heavily on Saddam to agree to inspections, taking big risks with their domestic constituencies to do so, can see this as anything but a calculated insult. There’s still time to put a new spin on the story, but the obvious interpretation is that all the US talk about inspections was meaningless, and that the real agenda is war at any price.
The correct line, I would have thought, was something along the lines of “This is a welcome development, but Saddam has reneged on commitments before and we need to keep the pressure up”, which is roughly what was attributed to Jack Straw, the UK Foreign Secretary.

UpdateColin Powell’s response to the Iraqi cave-in is closer to the mark, but, judging by the reactions in the same report, Bush has lost most of the ground he gained in the last week. The obvious inference is that drawn by an unnamed ‘Arab official’ who

‘said that Washington seemed to have made up its mind to strike, even though Baghdad had now agreed to the world’s demands.’

“If the U.S. isn’t happy with this, it means that they have already decided to attack Iraq, whatever Iraq does,” he said.

When Bush made his UN speech I suggested that the Administration was following one of two strategies – a brilliantly effective strategy to secure the elimination of Saddam’s arsenal, or a very silly strategy to secure an invasion of Iraq. Actually, I think some in the Administration are aiming at one, some the other and some don’t know. But it’s clear that the net effect of all this confusion has been to greatly weaken the case for an invasion. Having dropped the claim that Saddam is tied to Al-Qaeda, and backed away from claims of a unilateral right to impose regime change, Bush is in the process of losing the argument that an invasion is necessary to get rid of weapons of mass destruction.

According to AP, received via Salon.com News. Story is also at ABC News Online:

Iraq unconditionally accepted the return of U.N. weapons inspectors late Monday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said.

“I can confirm to you that I have received a letter from the Iraqi authorities conveying its decision to allow the return of inspectors without conditions to continue their work.”

On past form, I’d guess that there will be some subsequent attempts by the Iraqi government to weasel out of their commitments, but the fact that they have capitulated without even waiting for a resolution from the UN suggests that they have realised the futility of their position, and will not push these attempts far enough to cause real trouble. It’s early days, but the prospects for a peaceful outcome and the destruction of Saddam’s arsenal are suddenly looking good.

This is a big win for Bush, the UN, multilateralism and the world in general. The only real losers are Saddam on one side and the unilateralist “war party” in the US, notably represented by “warbloggers” such as Steven den Beste. These will have the choice between (A) jumping behind Bush and claiming that this was the outcome they wanted all along, or (B) continuing to hope for Iraqi noncompliance down the track. Judging by his early response, it looks like den Beste is going for Plan B, but I’d guess the majority will plump for A while hedging their bets as far as possible.

Update I did a quick surf around the main American warblogger sites and could find almost no reaction to this news. (Feel free to point out on my comments page the places I’ve missed). Apart from den Beste, most either ignored it or decided to sleep on it before responding. For example, AndrewSullivan writes
” WHAT MEANS ‘UNCONDITIONAL’? If I were Saddam, I’d start playing games now. What the administration needs are clear criteria for acceptable inspections – so that they are meaningful and real and permanent. Those criteria must be adhered to. Saddam cannot be allowed to wriggle out of this again. That’s all I can say based on a single sketchy AP story. Check in tomorrow for more.
– 7:33:15 PM”

As far as I can see, the possibility of Saddam caving in had not occurred to most of these guys. Hence their failure to respond to a move that I’ve been predicting (more precisely, pointing out as a possibility) ever since Bush’s UN speech.

The fallback assumption that Saddam will harass the weapons inspectors to the point that a US invasion can in the end be justified still has some plausibility, but it ultimately rests on the belief that he loves his weapons of mass destruction more than his life. My judgement is that Saddam is evil but not crazy. The weapons may have been potentially useful in the past, but they’re a liability now, and he’ll sacrifice them with no more compunction than the many family members he’s had put to death.

I missed this completely on the ABC site, but found it in the Melbourne Truth of blogs

” QUIGAN, QUIGGAN, QIGGAN AND QUIGGIN

Listen to the voice of blogger John Quiggin and see the ABC spell his name three different ways in the same article.”

This kind of thing is the curse of my life, made worse by the fact that computers can’t cope with spelling errors

The Homeless Guy brings a whole new perspective to the world of blogging.

William Safire at the NYT presents an analysis almost identical to mine :
Quiggin
“To put the point more bluntly, if Bush’s objective is to ensure an invasion of Iraq, his UN speech has ensured that the goal can be achieved only if Saddam chooses to assist him by refusing co-operation. ”
Safire:
“For this approach to succeed in overthrowing the dangerous dictatorship, the White House is relying on Baghdad to show not merely consistency in recalcitrance, but an insufferable, infuriating intractability in intransigence. Bush is betting that Saddam will (a) reject the U.N resolutions as humiliating or (b) accept the final-final warning and then negotiate endlessly with the inspectors so as to make their mission impossible.

The basis for this gamble is Bush’s certainty, based on the logical extrapolation of past and present intelligence reports, that Saddam has evidence of mass-murder weaponry to hide. The Iraqi dictator cannot accede to coercive inspection, enforced by U.N. troops, without blowing up what has cost him more than $100 billion in a decade’s oil revenues to build.

That would not be like Saddam. And on that presumed defiance rests Bush’s diplomatic strategy.”

This raises an interesting point. One could say that Saddam has always pushed issues to the brink and beyond, and that therefore he will do it again this time. Alternatively, one could say that Saddam has always done what it takes to survive. I don’t know which is right. But, as a risk-averse person, I’d prefer the outcome where Saddam decides to destroy his weapons himself rather than that where the rest of the world destroys Saddam, or at least lets the Americans do it. That said, I hope Saddam’s end comes soon, preferably by a revolt from within Iraq.

Ken Parish has an interesting post on “a new American process that is believed could halve the cost of producing ethanol”. If it pans out, this could provide one route to meeting our Kyoto commitments, which the government says it will do even without ratification. (Ken seems to suggest that ethanol is an alternative to Kyoto, but I don’t follow this.)
Unfortunately, I have been following alternative fuels for a long time, and, as with large-scale solar electricity or nuclear fusion, cost-effective ethanol is one of those things that always seems to be just around the corner. At least for the next twenty years, my guess is that we’ll be focusing on more prosaic approaches such as
(a) improving energy efficiency across a wide range of activities
(b) halting and reversing tree-clearing
(c) substituting gas for coal
(d) cutting down on some energy-intensive activities
I haven’t mentioned nuclear fission yet. The capital costs of nuclear fission plants are so great that only a hefty carbon tax would make them profitable, and the price responses to such a tax (reduced usage) would be sufficient to meet not only Kyoto targets, but probably the next few rounds as well. (Of course, you can cut costs by leaving out all that expensive shielding as the Russians did, but we know what happened there).
Ken also mentions a study by ABARE which I disregarded in reporting Warwick McKibbin’s work on Kyoto. When I get time, I will put up a detailed post explaining why I don’t think ABARE’s work on this issue deserves much weight.

Over the years, I’ve often had dealings with Gerry Jackson and his group at the The New Australian, a group notable, even by blogosphere standards, for a vitriolic style and casual disregard for the facts. At one time, I was even willing to respond to their attacks on me, and wrote responses, which, to Jackson’s credit, he published on his site. I also sparred with Aaron Oakley in the pages of Margo Kingston’s Webdiary. More recently, I concluded that it was a waste of time talking to them, and decided to ignore future attacks
My position has hardened since the publication of my recent post explaining why, among the many dictators that infest the world, I personally loathe Augusto Pinochet and the late Leonid Brezhnev more than others. This elicited a stream of attacks from the New Australian group, and led me to this sickening link, where Jackson defends the terrorist assassination (the US State Department’s assessment, not mine) of exiled Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier in Washington DC in 1976.
In some sense, all murders are equally evil, but there’s something particularly repugnant about a government pursuing its enemies into foreign countries and murdering them. The first to do this on a big scale was Stalin, and Jackson’s justification for the murder is straight out of the Stalin school of falsification – Letelier, he says, was a KGB agent. Even if true, this would not of course justify murder, but as far as I can determine, Jackson’s only source for this accusation is one William F. Jasper a writer for a journal called The New American (even loonier than The New Australian), who, among other things, accuses Bill Clinton and most of his administration of being terrorist sympathisers.
In an unsolicited (but apparently widely distributed) email, Jackson claims his position is justified because I “adamantly refused to condemn Castro”. Given that this fight started with my post condemning Castro’s patron and paymaster Brezhnev, this is bizarre (did Jackson expect me to list all the dictators of the last century and condemn them individually?), but, for the record, I condemn all dictators, Communist and otherwise, including Castro.
As I said in the original post, I have a visceral loathing for Pinochet and those who seek to justify his murderous regime. Jackson will no doubt have his say on his own site, but I will have no further dealings with him or those associated with him.

Richard Butler who can scarcely be accused of being anti-American or soft on Saddam, gives an excellent defence of multilateralism and the UN

Continuing on Trollope’s Palliser novels, I’m now reading Can You Forgive Her?. I’ve also just got a beautiful Folio Society edition of the Essays of Francis Bacon. Finally, I’m rereading Hayek and Mill with the intention of going more thoroughly into debate that’s electrified this corner of the blogosphere.