Three Interesting Stories

Ruud Lubbers, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, has been accused of sexual harassment by an American woman who has worked for the agency for 20 years. Given Lubbers’ pathetic performance of his duties–especially when it comes to North Koreans in China–it’s tempting to presume the truth of the accusations and hound him into retirement for the good of all humanity. If it’s true, it suggests one way China might have corrupted him. Having investigated, prosecuted, and defended dozens of claims of that sort, I won’t fall into the trap of presuming guilt and will wait to see the evidence. What’s really saddest is that Lubbers’ mere incompetence in the face of a gargantuan humanitarian crisis isn’t enough to send him back to Amsterdam, and that it takes something like this instead.

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Ryongchon Update According to this story (I don’t vouch for the site, but that applies to the NYT, too), the U.S. government is confirming reports that the train was carrying Syrian technicians and WMD components. One’s heart goes out to the victims, many of them still untreated, but coyly fails to answer the knock for the Syrian death-merchants and their escorts. I suppose this must be a real disappointment after all those promises of 17 virgins. Yep, evil has an axis after all.

How do we know this? My own best guess is that our surveillance aircraft can sniff some fairly low concentrations of airborne contaminants that the smoke cloud would have contained.

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Sarin Update–The Pentagon is confirming it. No, it’s not what Powell promised us, but it reminds us to keep our minds open a little longer. If Japan successfully hid mustard gas in China for 60 years, Iraq can hide them in a desert the size of California for one year (or, for that matter, ship them to Syria while we waste time arguing with Dominique de Villepin, who is reportedly a man). Could virtually every intel agency on earth have been wrong that Saddam was lying? It’s worth asking, but I still don’t consider it likely. It defies logic that a man who had lied and given up as much as Saddam did to keep his WMD would quietly–and permanently–dispose of them. One suspects that our military is searching frantically for the ammo dump from which those shells came. Chemmo shells are normally indistinguishable except for the paint they wear. What could be easier than repainting them?

Oh, and why don’t CNN, the Washington Post, and the New York Times report this? I still don’t think it’s The Smoking Gun, but it’s at least as newsworthy as any piece of Page One Abu Ghraib porn.