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...Washington easily won the argument at the UN that the international body could not tolerate Iraq's refusal to submit to inspections - the Security Council unanimously passed a resolution requiring that Iraq immediately and unconditionally readmit the inspectors. Which Iraq did. The inspectors visited hundreds of sites, and turned up nothing. Inspections, of course, provided the opportunity for renewed intelligence gathering in Iraq, and the ability to update what intelligence services knew about Iraq's activities. The presence of the inspectors also functioned as a block on any ongoing WMD activities. But the Bush team had plainly planned...
...Iraq even before 9/11, and with General Wesley Clark's charge that 9/11 provided such a pretext even though there was no connection between Iraq and the attacks. And the idea of seeing Iraq as a new threat based on old intelligence was precisely prevented the Bush administration winning UN backing...
...rather than put itself at odds with a pro-democracy movement among Iraq's majority community, Bremer has sought to accommodate the ayatollah's objections. Sistani's demand, backed by tens of thousands of demonstrators in Iraq's major cities in recent weeks, has prompted the U.S. to seek UN intervention. Sistani has indicated that he'll take no for an answer on elections only if it comes from Kofi Annan, who has agreed to send a team to assess the viability of an early vote...
...UN says elections can't be held by summer, the Shiites will insist on something substantially more democratic than Bremer's caucus plan. Sistani wants elections to ensure that the Shiites finally achieve political influence commensurate with their majority status. Ever since Iraq was first created in the mapping rooms of the British Foreign Office, its Shiites - and Kurds - have been ruled by the Sunni Arab minority. Coalition officials believe one of the factors fueling indigenous support for the insurgency is the Sunni minority's fear of losing its traditional privileges. Accommodating Sunni concerns, as well as the crypto-secessionist...
...Faced with an increasingly complex and messy situation in Iraq, the U.S. needs a lot more international help extricating itself than it needed going in - indeed, Washington's ability to prevent its standoff with the Shiite majority over elections from erupting into confrontation now depends on a UN team agreeing that elections by June are not practical. Mr. Cheney's mission in Europe appears to have been to mend fences in order to win European backing in Iraq and elsewhere. The problem, however, is that not only was U.S. diplomatic influence was severely damaged on the march...