All Talk?
Well said, Bill.
The Bush administration has been quite successful at leaving the impression, despite little evidence, that decisive action is always just around the corner. Running around saying "this time we mean business" is all very well, but it can't work indefinitely. The talk about "zero tolerance" sounds like so much bluster. My gut feeling about the Bush administration and Iraq has always been that they are using publicity stunts and grandstanding to play for time while they figure out what to do. I'm afraid that that may still be the case. (The Iraqis are lying about the weapons programs, and they're shooting at us, for God's sake-- what part of "zero" don't they understand?) Saddam seems to believe that the US will ultimately shrink from taking action and that the weapons inspections charade will be distracting enough for long enough to allow him to continue his nuclear program to "completion." It is, indeed, his only hope, but it may well be granted to him.
A confrontation with Iraq is inevitable. If Bush doesn't deliver on his promises to meet the threat in the next month or so, my guess is that it will occur some time in 2005, under some president other than him. Yet it's by no means certain that this will not be too late. Some of Bill's commenters accuse him of panicking needlessly, but there are grounds for worry. There are many possible scenarios, all of them nightmares. Here's how one commenter (to another item) sees it playing out:
If Saddam ever got a nuke and couldn't get a second one before the US invaded, I'd guess that he would set it off in the Iraqi desert and then tell the world that he had four or five more. This would probably stop the war in its tracks. If this happens, Bush has failed and we will learn how to live with a nuclear armed Iraq just as we will learn how to live with a nuclear armed Korea. That future will include the end of Israel and the total dominance of the Mideast by Saddam. Additionally, if an Islamic/Western conflict becomes inevitable then so does nuclear war.