"The noble art of losing face
will one day save the human race."

That comes from an interview article with Hans Blix published in the Guardian this week, where it is said to be "his favourite phrase when navigating these Byzantine negotiations", and it is "is informative about his philosophy". (The quote is from a Danish poet, Piet Hein.)

It occurred to me that, only a couple of weeks ago, when Hans Blix said that going down the peaceful road of inspections it would take a couple of months to make sure there weren't any weapons of mass destruction in Saddam's hands, the reaction of the US-UK axis was that that was far too slow to take as a serious option. And today I see predictions that this war is likely to last until Christmas. (Echoes of how they used to say in 1914 "It'll all be over by Christmas...) "As long as it takes" is, I gather, how Bush put it - which is of course something he would never have said about the inspection process.