Kofi Annan says that AIDS is a worse threat to life than (an? the?) Iraq war.

More people will die this year of AIDS than even in a war in Iraq, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Tuesday, trying to put a more balanced perspective on the attention riveted on Iraq while dire global health problems go unattended.

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Annan: ``But the challenge now is for all Zimbabweans to work together and with each other, and with the international community, to find solutions before it its too late.''

I'm not clear on this... invade Zimbabwe too? I mean, Mr. Mugabe's real busy with his Lenin-style not-quite-by-accident-famine so making AIDS not be in Zimbabwe, well that's just a lot of work on top of seizing farms and handing them out to cronies so the farms stop growing that pesky old food. Should we really bother Mugabe with this? Mr. Annan?

He said Africa is undermined by poverty, which condemns mothers and children to premature death. Other children go to bed hungry and without access to clean drinking water, he said.

Ohhh... I guess, yeah, poverty and hunger are just things that just happen without any help from the government. Say, isn't Zimbabwe a net food exporter? Is food really a problem? Let me check my records. Here we are: Apparently my facts are out of date because Zimbabwe WAS a net food exporter because of all the good soil and farms and such but some of the people on these farms were filthy white people! Western interlopers no doubt, and I'm sure they were Enemies of the Regime or something similar. Glad we got rid of them! They weren't worth a damn! All they did was sit around on their farms and grow food for people to eat!

Still, Kofi, before we invade we'd like the UN to give us a little bit of guidance here. When the 4 days are up and Mugabe's ours for the taking, with his cronies and his government torn to shreds by precision munitions, do you want the old medieval head-on-a-plate delivery to signify the end of his regime or did you want to arrange for an endowed chair at an Ivy League school? No, now, come on... he's not going to some foo-foo European university to rail against capitalism and America and filthy white people. He's got Ivy League (or UC system) written all over him.

Anyhow, we'll pencil this invasion in after Iraq, and just try to split the total casualties down the middle. But for the record, you're asking a lot.