FILE UNDER 'UM, YEAH:' Norm reports:
"Iraq tried to manipulate foreign governments by awarding contracts - and bribes - to foreign companies and political figures in countries that showed support for ending sanctions, in particular Russia, France and China, the final report by the U.S.-led Iraq Survey Group said earlier this month.
But Annan said it was "inconceivable" that Saddam's activities could have influenced policy in the countries concerned."
The reading of which put in me mind of a passage from Primo Levi's The Drowned and the Saved (which I happened to be re-skimming this weekend):
"There is a famous, extremely dense verse by Christian Morgenstern, a bizarre Bavarian poet... which is quite apposite here, even though it was written in 1910... A verse so German and so pregnant that it has become a proverb and cannot be translated into Italian except by a clumsy paraphrase: 'Nicht sein kann, was nicht sein darf" (What may not be cannot be)."
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
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