William M. Arkin predicts in the Washington Post that the
US will be at war with Iraq by springtime. (My money is on it happening sooner, but then again, I figured the war would have been fought and over by now.)
The call for Iraq to disarm will not be met under the terms of the UN’s resolution. Saddam Hussein will make a token effort to fool the inspectors as he did the last time, but Saddam’s dreams of becoming the next ruler of the new Babylonian Empire require him to have weapons of mass destruction. It is exceptionally unlikely that he would be willing to give that power up.
I would also hazard a guess that we have a good idea of what Saddam has and how much of it he has. That way when Saddam starts spinning his lies we have something to confront him with. The war policies of the Bush Administration have been far too carefully well orchestrated over the past six months for Bush to be caught with nothing. If anything, it is looking increasingly likely that the whole idea of President Bush playing "rope-a-dope" with the Europeans is the right theory, and the UN passing the US sponsored resolution by a 15-0 vote only seems to cement that theory. It will be highly interesting to find out what the US did to get all those nations on board.
However, the issue at hand still has not gone away. Iraq is still keeping weapons of mass destruction in violation of the Gulf War cease-fire. They will not give up their weapons and weapons facilities without a fight. And a fight is exactly what they will get…
I’ve been guessing that we’ve merely been waiting for better weather to invade Iraq. The best time of year to go in there is in December/January… a Christmas war is not unlikely.