The “finer points” of EU procedure, as you put it, are actually the fundamental points of EU structure, but never mind.

The fine points of EU procedure may be of interest to legal scholars but I consider them beside the point. The point is (as I believe I made clear several times already) that any body (or person) that holds adversaries to a higher standard than it holds its own members or friends (the US) is being hypocritical, and thus cannot expect any criticism it makes to be taken seriously.

Arguments that this differential treatment is the unavoidable result of some legal or procedural rules are simply too self-serving to be entertained.

To answer your specific question: I would like to have seen the EU take specific steps to “embarrass”, “sideline”, and in other ways punish the invaders of Iraq. Had that happened, I would have been quite sympathetic to EU criticism of more minor offenses such as non-cooperation with elections monitors.

Engels,

If my points above appear non-substantive to you, then we will have to differ on what “substantive” means.

Throughout this, you seem to be unwilling or unable to recognise that since Russia is not a member of the EU, the EU is going to behave differently than if it is an internal matter. Or perhaps it is that you do not know what the EU is or what it does.

You also seem to be able to compare apples and oranges quite happily, whilst forgetting that there actually is no orange yet in existence, since the EU criticising Russia over its election results hasn’t happened yet – (a) the elections haven’t happened and (b) criticism was an idea of Henry’s.

Do you actually wish the EU had criticised someone over Iraq? Or do not wish it to criticise Russia? Or do you just dislike the EU enough to criticise it over something it hasn’t done/may not do?

“but did you condemn…” gambit…

So expecting someone to hold himself and his friends to the same moral standards that he holds his adversaries is a gambit?

With the application of the “shorter” technique, and the references to rhetorical “gambits” and “laws”, it seems that making substantive arguments is quickly becoming an obsolete mode of reasoning.

One is the name of a country, the other a designation of borderlands.

As for the Iraq war, that was entirely outside of its area of competence. Various individual member states, on the other hand, as members of the UN Security Council, were taking very different views of the Iraq war and acting, as was their right, as individual states. How appropriate would it have been for a collective body, without competence in the area of military action, to have taken a stance for or against its various member states? Note that Russia of course is not a member of the EU - the EU taking a stance on something regarding an external state is somewhat different from taking a stance on things regarding internal states.

In any event, arguably the more appropriate European body to be commenting would be the Council of Europe not the EU - still collective but in a more related area – that of human rights. Difficulty with that is that Russia is a member, which is one reason why the Council of Europe has been somewhat quieter on the subject of election irregularities in Russia than, say, Belarus.

Did the EU “seek to embarrass” or to “sideline” any of its members or the US over the Iraq war, or is this treatment only reserved to those guilty of serious crimes like not cooperating with elections monitors?

It can “seek to embarrass” or “sideline” by the means at its disposal – political statements, trade sanctions, whatever. That’s an entirely different kettle of fish.