The official Iraqi paper says the arrogant United States, in league with the devilish Zionists, is concocting an arrogant, devilish scheme against innocent, peaceful Iraq.

“No one in the Bush administration will give a fig for optimism expressed by many countries after the start of the inspection process in Iraq,” it said.

“The reason is that Washington has become a hostage of its arrogance, ambitions and Zionists’ pressure.”

The so-called “international community” is willing to tolerate an amazing amount of insane rhetoric—as long as it’s directed toward the US or Israel.

Meanwhile, the inspectors (remember them?) have been working hard, not finding anything in places where they know in advance they won’t find anything, while Saddam has commanded his followers to hide weapons components in their homes:

In London, The Times and the Independent dailies, citing unnamed British government sources and intelligence reports, said Saddam had ordered scientists, civil servants and even farmers to hide key weapons components and chemicals — or face severe penalties if they refuse.

The Times also said British Prime Tony Blair and Bush took the concealment claims so seriously that they were considering making personal appeals to Iraqi officials to tell the inspectors what was going on.

Not the dreaded personal appeals! Please! Anything but that!

Oh yeah, the inspectors, right. Well, after two whole days of grueling work not finding anything, they took today off.

International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei said the first two days of the inspectors’ work were unhindered.

“I think it’s going smoothly and we have no reason to complain,” ElBaradei told reporters in Vienna on Friday.

“We have been able to do what we set out to do in the first days and we hope that this will continue to be the pattern.” …

The 17 inspectors stayed at their headquarters in Baghdad on the Muslim weekend and were evaluating two days of work since they resumed inspections on Wednesday after a four-year gap, U.N. sources said. All Iraqi facilities close on Fridays.