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...skeptical senators - the unkindest challenge to President Bush's plans to take out Saddam Hussein this week came from erstwhile true-blue American hero Scott Ritter. Familiar to Americans as the rock-jawed Marine intelligence officer who stood up to Saddam's bullies in 1998 while serving with the UN inspection team, and got himself singled out for expulsion even before UNSCOM was withdrawn, Ritter was back on America's TV screens this week, but with a dramatically different message: President Bush had no proof of any new weapons of mass destruction threat emanating from Iraq, Ritter says...
...Still, on the matter of Iraq's defiance of UN resolutions, Bush has a cast-iron case - and he devoted much of his speech to cataloguing Saddam's multiple and continuing infractions. UN weapons inspectors were withdrawn in 1998 after their work was frustrated by Iraq, ahead of a four-day punitive bombing campaign by the U.S. and Britain. The inspectors have not been allowed back since, and the resulting standoff has seen the UN sanctions regime crumbling, while substantial components of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programs remain unaccounted for. Thus President Bush's exhortation to the international...
...Bush's repeated references to the credibility of the UN being on the line were clearly aimed at shaming the international body into enforcing its own writ. But that goal may be beyond the reach of an administration openly disdainful of international consensus on so many other issues. The administration's stance on issues ranging from the Kyoto protocol to the International Criminal Court have led even NATO allies to view the Bush Administration as a delinquent global citizen, and pro-Western Arab governments make the argument that when the unconventionally-armed country defying U.N. resolutions is Israel...
...even if he can't shame them into action, President Bush may well manage to scare them - his "if Iraq wants to avoid war" mantra was an unmistakable warning that if the UN can't stop Saddam's scofflaw pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, Washington is more than ready to do so alone. And what the European and Arab allies want more than anything else is to avoid a war whose consequences they fear will be more devastating than any threat posed by Saddam right now. It is fear of what the U.S. may do that has galvanized France...
...UN route to action on Iraq raises a strategic dilemma for the Bush administration: Is the U.S. prepared to accept yes for answer? The Administration plans to call for a toughly worded Security Council resolution setting an ultimatum for the return of UN weapons inspectors to Iraq, and authorizing the use of force in response if Baghdad fails to comply. But if Saddam submits to inspection in order to avoid war, he potentially buys himself time and muddies the waters of legitimacy even if he plans to resume his cat-and-mouse game with inspectors. This is precisely the scenario...