More talk more diversion.

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More talk, more diversion.

In President Bush’s speech at the UN yesterday many took note of his call for a “new anti-proliferation resolution” to counter the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

Now it’s becoming clear that that was just a throwaway line meant for domestic consumption, one fashioned by speechwriters rather than policy-makers and intended to give Americans the impression that the president was pushing some sort of new UN-friendly, multilateral intitiative.

Not true. Apparently the policy-makers and diplomats knew nothing about it until the words came off the president’s lips.

As the AP noted with gentle understatement: “U.S. and British diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they were surprised by Bush’s call for a weapons resolution and that Tuesday was the first time they had heard about the idea.”

(We’ll be linking to another story soon with further reporting on this.)

What’s more, the actual counter-proliferation experts say such a resolution would be close to meaningless since the key controls and restrictions are already covered by existing treaties.

Needless to say, the folks in the hall knew this. This was for domestic consumption, some padding spun up by speechwriters to balance out the speech.

More talk, more diversion, more denial.

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