Me just dumb pawn

I’ve gotta be missing something in this CNN article. Here’s the money quote:

The Bush administration believes that it is one vote shy of having nine of 15 votes needed on a U.N. Security Council resolution that sets a Monday deadline for Iraqi compliance, a senior U.S. State Department official said, and officials are focusing diplomatic energies on Mexico and Chile to secure their backing.

Germany, Russia, China, France, and Syria are firmly against. That’s 5 out of the 15. The US, UK, Spain, and Bulgaria are your clear yes votes. That’s 4 yes votes out of the 9 needed.

That leaves Pakistan, Mexico, Guinea, Chile, Cameroon, and Angola. For the CNN quote above to be accurate, all of those countries except Chile and Mexico would need to have signed on. However, just yesterday, Pakistan said it would abstain. Note also that the three African nations in the undecided list have historical and economic ties to France.

So did Pakistan change its mind? Did all three of the African countries decide to jump to the American side? Would Rumsfeld have made damaging comments if the undecideds were lining up on the US/UK side anyhow? Is the CNN article just a calculated leak of false information? God knows.

Edit: The article now says Pakistan changed its mind and all three of the African countries will vote yes. So that answers those questions, except for the one about Rumsfeld. You know… particularly after the Blix drone reporting mess, I’m starting to wonder if it’s a good thing that CNN.com is OK with altering stories after they’ve been posted. From a journalistic reliability standpoint, I’d like to see CNN articles marked as either fixed or subject to change.