PEP 1441: The other if-then-else issue

[Tim Churches]

While the international Python community passionately debates PEP 308,
we should not forget another issue which is worth getting hot under the
collar about: the looming attack on Iraq over weapons of mass
destruction (WMD). The US position (at least, this week's position)
appears to be :

if not (immediate_evidence_of_past_destruction_of_WMD) then
(fire_3000_cruise_missiles_at_Baghdad) else
(find_some_other_reason_to_bomb_Baghdad)

If you think that the current set of optimal solutions to the various
problems (depending on who you are) posed by Saddam Hussein's regime
does not include the firing thousands of cruise missiles at Baghdad, or
the invasion of Iraq by US and allied ground forces - both of which will
surely result in the loss of tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent,
non-combatant Iraqi lives - then please take a moment or two to make
your feelings known to your friends, acquaintances and most importantly,
your political representatives. E-mail or write to them, write to your
local newspaper, or better still, invite your family and friends to
attend one of the many protest rallies being organised around the world
for this weekend. 

As food for thought, herewith some observations made recently by Richard
Butler, former United Nations chief weapons inspector and long-time
advocate of nuclear disarmament (ABC-TV 7:30 Report 26/12/2002):

"If the United States attacks Iraq three or four or six weeks from
now in order to remove its weapons of mass destruction, it will be doing
so as the country in this world in possession of the largest quantity of
weapons of mass destruction.

What is terribly wrong here is that the fox is in charge of the chicken
coop. The five permanent members of the Security Council who have this
responsibility to see that no one gets weapons of mass destruction are
themselves armed to the teeth with those weapons of mass destruction.

These five powers have promised the world in writing, in May 2000, that
they would take active steps to reduce their nuclear weapons. And they
have done nothing about it.

There is a fundamental difficulty here that those who have this great
power have also accepted a great responsibility, but they've not yet
carried it out. And I put it to you that as long as these states in
possession of weapons of mass destruction do nothing about progressively
reducing theirs, then other states like North Korea, Iraq and so on,
will take steps to acquire them."

I wonder, was it widely reported in the US which country was responsible
for the watering down of protocol implementation provisions at the Fifth
Review of the International Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention in
October 2002? Yes, just three months ago.

It was the USA.

Why? Because the US objected to "intrusive verification inspection
provisions" proposed in the Fifth Review (the US also torpedoed similar
provisions in the Fourth Review in November 2001). And George W. Bush
now wants to bomb Baghdad ASAP because Saddam is playing games over
verification inspections. Can we all look up from our Python code for
just a moment and ask ourselves "What the <deleted expletive> is going
on here?". Has the world gone completely mad?

OK, flame away...

Tim C