Not Your Sweetie

Chirac's Script for Backing Down:


Don't you think it would be extremely difficult politically for President Bush to pull back
from war? I'm not so sure about that. He would have two advantages if he brought his soldiers
back. I'm talking about a situation, obviously, where the inspectors say now there's nothing left,
and that will take a certain number of weeks. If Iraq doesn't cooperate and the inspectors say this
isn't working, it could be war. If Iraq is stripped of its weapons of mass destruction and that's
been verified by the inspectors, then Mr. Bush can say two things: first, "Thanks to my
intervention, Iraq has been disarmed," and second, "I achieved all that without spilling any blood."
In the life of a statesman, that counts—no blood spilled.