Quote:
Originally posted by Ronn_Bman:
Cerek, the French government has said, as you mentioned, that it will VETO anything that could be thought of as an authorization for war. No, fighting isn't completely ruled out by the French government, but their bar is set so high they may as well have ruled it out. The inspectors have to say "we can't work with the Iraqis anymore" before the French government will even consider a use of force. 
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And the Iraqis are clever enough to string along the inspectors and the UN by barely cooperating - enough to say that some progress has been made, but not enough to ensure that disarmament will happen.
I mean, he's had 12 years to disarm. This is the second round of inspections. Do the anti-war people honestly think that Saddam is going to roll over and surrender all his WMDs now?
Without the threat of war, I very much doubt that Iraq will voluntarily disarm.
As for letting weapons inspections run its course, it will take a very looonnnggg time for them to ferret out what Saddam has had years to hide.
So my opinion is that the UN should say to Iraq, "Look, stop pussyfooting around. You either surrender all WMDs (including th emeans to manufacture new ones) or we come in and do it for you."
My fear is that the UN would let Saddam play his games, and if any of his WMD falls into terrorist hands, and an incident happens somewhere in the world, ot would be too late then. The US and UK could say, "I told you so!" but what good would it do then?