Quotes of the Day

In the end it was France, rather than the U.S. that carried the day at the UN. After two days of debate in the Security Council, the Bush administration appears to have accepted that no authorization of force will be contained in a Security Council resolution on Iraqi disarmament at this stage. While there was widespread endorsement for insisting on verifiable Iraqi disarmament, there was almost no support in the Security Council for Washington's demand that a resolution setting terms for renewed inspections also authorize the use of force if Baghdad fails to comply. The UN consensus appears to be to test Baghdad's offer to comply with new inspections before authorizing force. And that means accepting the French proposal to delay any authorization of force to a second resolution, if the Security Council judges Saddam to be in breach of the new inspection terms. In its new compromise offer, the U.S. reportedly accepts the need to first send in the inspectors, and bring the issue back to the Security Council if they're blocked. France is studying the offer, and Russia has responded positively.

The proposal also reportedly withdraws contentious U.S. calls for armed detachments and officials from the U.S. and other permanent Security Council members to accompany inspectors. But Washington continues to demand the right of UN inspectors to question Iraqi scientists outside of the country. The new proposals are likely to achieve a consensus in the UN over how to approach disarming Iraq — but potentially at a cost of waiting months before any attack on Iraq might be authorized.

U.S. Fails to Persuade UN
(October 16, 5pm)

The UN Security Council opened its formal debate on Iraq Wednesday with no sign of agreement between its principal players over how to tackle Iraqi disarmament. France and Russia have bluntly demanded that the U.S. amend amend its proposed resolution to delete any suggestion of an automatic authorization of force should Saddam fail to comply with UN terms for weapons inspections. While the U.S. and Britain insist that stating the threat of imminent force is essential to pressure Saddam Hussein to comply with intrusive weapons inspections, most other members are reluctant to cede to President Bush the Council's prerogative to judge whether or not Baghdad is complying. France continues to demand a two-step process, in which a new resolution is adopted setting tough terms for arms inspections, but leaving the authorization of force to a second resolution if Saddam fails to comply. And French President Jacques Chirac has left no doubt that the deeper concern driving the debate is whether the UN goal is regime-change in Baghdad (favored by the U.S.), or simply disarmament (favored by most other Council members).

Nor is the U.S. and British challenge confined to convincing their fellow Security Council veto-wielders Russia, France and China. The Financial Times points out that the support of the ten elected members of the Security Council — Colombia, Ireland, Mauritius, Norway, Singapore, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Guinea, Mexico and Syria — is essential to achieve the nine-vote majority necessary to pass a resolution. Right now, most of those countries lean more to the Franco-Russian view than the U.S.-British approach.

Bush's Dilemma: No Laughing Matter

Now that Congress has handed him the car keys — in a congressional resolution he signed on Wednesday — President Bush is left to make the call himself on whether to go to war. By effectively recusing itself from the decision, Congress has left Bush to deal directly with the American people on a war whose support is by no means overwhelming. And that's far from easy, given the likelihood that unless Saddam does something remarkably stupid in the next few weeks — or the administration is sitting on some "gotcha" piece of intelligence that will be rolled out on the eve of giving the attack order — U.S. public support for the war is more likely to ebb than to grow the longer the delay. Indeed, even now there's a significant discrepancy in poll numbers supporting a war when the rider of substantial American casualties is added to the question. And analysts suggest that in the event of an invasion, the American public will have to be prepared for the possibility that even if things go well, U.S. casualties will indeed be substantial.

Interestingly enough, in skeptical Britain pollsters found that support for attacking Iraq climbed from 32 percent to 42 percent as a result of the Bali terrorist bombing despite the fact that claims of an Iraq-al Qaeda link have yet to gain traction on either side of the Atlantic. Indeed, many European commentators warned that the lesson of the Bali attacks was that al-Qaeda ought to remain the West's priority, but Secretary of State Colin Powell, backed by Tony Blair, insisted that it was necessary to confront both threats simultaneously.

Still, in gauging the public's readiness to go to war in Iraq, the White House may also want to pay attention to the extent to which the administration's talk of Iraqi threats is becoming a source of satire for wags ranging from Saturday Night Live to the editors of the fantasy supermarket tabloid Weekly World News whose current issue warns of Iraqi submarines in Lake Michigan. That's not the sort of humor that's going to get Americans in the mood for war.

As Tikrit Goes, So Goes Karbala?

And talking of humor, Saddam showed his on Tuesday by staging a referendum on his continued presidency, in which every one of the 11.5 million Iraqis eligible to vote had cast a ballot, and there was not a single nay among them. Reporting from Saddam's home town of Tikrit, the Financial Times notes that the locals have ambiguous feelings about their homeboy's success. The paper also cheekily points out that Saddam's farcical referendum actually has a precedent in an election staged in Iraq by the British in 1921, in which the only candidate, King Faisal, received 96 percent of the vote.

Mr. Sharon Goes to Washington

In order to win Arab support for his Iraq campaign, President Bush needs to keep the Israeli-Palestinian conflict out of the headlines. And that means he's likely to ask Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon to show restraint in dealing with the Palestinians in the months ahead, as well as to refrain from entering the war with Iraq — even if provoked by an Iraqi missile attack — at least without first checking in with the White House. Both of those may be bitter pills for Sharon to follow, and the extent to which he toes the line may be determined in no small part by the vagaries of Israeli domestic politics — particularly his battle with Bibi Netanyahu for the Likud party nomination. But there's a third danger looming that may also require even more active mediation by the U.S. — the water dispute with Lebanon. Israel has warned that it may bomb a pumping station built by Lebanon on the Wazzani River, which feeds Israel's fresh water supply in the Sea of Galilee, if the Lebanese begin diverting water to nearby villages. But Hizbollah is itching for a fight, and has warned that it will respond within minutes to any Israeli strike by firing missiles into Israel. Israel has long warned Syria that it holds the regime in Damascus responsible for reining in Hezbollah, and that Syria will be the target of Israeli retaliation for any Hezbollah attack. And the last thing Washington needs is another Arab-Israeli war on the eve of its Iraq invasion.

President Bush's speech to the nation on Monday may have helped him win congressional authorization to invade Iraq if necessary to disarm Saddam Hussein, but he's having a harder time with the international community. Indeed, the parts of Bush's speech that went down best abroad appear to be those that emphasized that war is neither imminent, inevitable nor preferable. And the Guardian reports that even some members of the U.S. intelligence community expressed skepticism over some of the dots connected by the President.

The European inclination to see a war as potentially more dangerous than any threat currently posed by Saddam Hussein will be reinforced by a CIA assessment released this week suggesting that Iraq poses no imminent threat of conventional or non-conventional attack on the U.S. — but that this could change if he's invaded.

Still, the Bush administration appears to have won the Europeans over to the idea that the Security Council needs a tough new resolution setting out exactly what is required of Iraq and establishing a clear mandate for effective UN weapons inspections. Even the Russians look set to accept the principle of adopting a new resolution, now that the U.S. appears more inclined to accept the French proposal that the Security Council set tough terms for inspection, but save the authorization of force for a second resolution if Saddam fails to comply. But the U.S. and France continue to differ over just what the first resolution should demand. They're likely to reach agreement over Washington's insistence that Saddam be made to declare his current weapons of mass destruction before the inspectors return, and to submit to intrusive, anywhere-anytime inspections that include Saddam's "presidential sites" — a demand to which Iraq is hinting it will submit, as demanded by its Arab neighbors. But the French and other Council members are unlikely to yield to the U.S. demand for "armed inspections" (inspectors accompanied by troops) or for the right of the U.S. and other permanent members to send their own inspectors to accompany the UN teams.

Still, once he has congressional authorization to bypass the UN if he sees fit, President Bush may brandish that threat in the hope of scaring other Council members to concede — but it's likely to be a game of brinkmanship, because UN authorization remains the most commonly cited precondition among U.S. allies for supporting an invasion. Congressional critics have made pursuing the matter through the UN their precondition for backing Bush, and even Tony Blair may need to UN-sanctioned war in order to deliver his support. The British leader was warned this week by his solicitor general that backing an invasion of Iraq for purposes of regime-change would be a breach of international law.

After Saddam

Just how and by whom Saddam Hussein should be replaced is the focus of another fierce Iraq debate in the Bush administration. The Pentagon civilian hawks who've driven the Iraq campaign within the administration support the call by some Iraqi opposition groups for a "provisional government" for Iraq (comprising exiled opposition groups) to be recognized right now, and installed in the course of an invasion. The State Department says parachuting in a government formed abroad is a recipe for civil war, and prefers the reins of power (and the considerable spoils attached to managing an oil-rich country) to be in the hands of the UN until democratic elections can be held. The hawks use the example of De Gaulle's role in exile to make their case; the doves appear to be avoiding the temptation to draw the comparison with the ready-made governments the Soviets installed in Eastern Europe in the wake of the retreating Nazis. And nobody's even talking about Hamid Karzai, the exiled Afghan leader installed by the U.S. in Kabul, whose grip on power is looking pretty shaky.

The Sharon Factor

Throughout the war on terrorism, Tony Blair has periodically been required to play the role of a kind of substitute Secretary of State, saying some of the things that domestic political concerns and Bush administration infighting prevent Colin Powell from saying out loud. It may be worth noting, then, that Blair and his government are increasingly alarmed over the state of Israeli-Palestinian affairs as the Iraq invasion season approaches, and have demanded that both sides be compelled to start final-status negotiations over Palestinian statehood by year's end. That suggestion has been firmly rebuffed by the Bush administration, but in making his rounds of Arab capitals to rally support against Iraq, Blair's foreign secretary Jack Straw is echoing the demand for urgent action on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Monday's Israeli raid in Gaza that killed 14 Palestinians has dominated Arab media in a week when the Bush administration is trying to rally Arab support against Saddam. The U.S. has urged restraint on Israel for fear that an upsurge of violence will turn already skittish Arab allies even more strongly against an Iraq invasion, and President Bush has invited Sharon to Washington next week for talks. But Sharon has his own ideas about what Israel needs to do during an Iraq war, and they may not be exactly what the Bush administration had in mind.

The Al Qaeda Factor

Two attacks in as many days on U.S. forces in Kuwait by elements believed to be linked with al-Qaeda raises fears that bin Laden's network may be planning its own Iraq campaign, aimed at harassing U.S. forces gathering in staging areas around Iraq. And through a series of propaganda broadcasts by its top leaders that have coincided with signs of new activity in the Gulf region, the bin Laden network is doing its best to signal the U.S. that it remains an ongoing threat.

Concerned that UN arms inspectors might return to Iraq on the basis of current resolutions rather than the tough new ultimatum being sought by the U.S. and Britain, Secretary of State Colin Powell on Monday told Jim Lehrer that inspectors would not be sent back until a new Security Council resolution had been adopted. But a UN representative rejected Powell's comment, stressing that the inspectors were answerable only to the Security Council. Privately, however, UN sources have told Time that chief arms inspector Hans Blix would indeed be reluctant to send his team back to Iraq before the Security Council has resolved its differences over the inspectors' precise mandate. It may also be why Blix is using his current talks with Iraqi officials in Vienna to establish whether Iraq would accept an anywhere-anytime inspection regime, which would require rolling back a 1998 agreement between Iraq and the Security Council that put Saddam's presidential palaces and certain government buildings into a separate category of inspection requiring advance notice and chaperoning.

Whose 'No-Fly' Zone is it Anyway?

As diplomatic arm-wrestling continues over whether, when and on what terms UN arms inspectors return to Iraq, the U.S. and Russia have gotten embroiled in a slanging match over the 'no-fly' zones. Moscow accused Washington of undermining efforts to return the inspectors by bombing Iraqi air defense targets over the weekend; Defense Secretary Rumsfeld shot back angrily that coalition pilots were simply defending themselves from Iraqi attack in the course of implementing UN Security Council resolutions. And the fact that such attacks continue, said Rumsfeld, was a sure sign that Iraq had no intention of complying with weapons inspections — he even added the novel spin that aircraft patrolling the 'no-fly' zone were actually performing "aerial inspections."

The famously "forward-leaning" Rumsfeld may be overextending himself a little here: The 'no-fly' zones over northern and southern Iraq are not prescribed in any UN resolutions. They were established by the U.S. and its coalition allies in 1991, as a means of enforcing UN Resolution 688, which requires that Iraqis be protected from repression by Saddam's regime. (At the time, Baghdad had been engaged in the vicious suppression of rebellions by the Kurds in the north and Shiite Muslims in the south.) And while the arms-inspection system relies in part on aerial surveillance, these flights by U2 spy-planes with fighter escorts are arranged by the UN. Rumsfeld's comments on Monday marked the first attempt to link the 'no-fly' zone to arms inspections.

Saddam, of course, has his own agenda — Iraq has never accepted the 'no-fly' zone and has routinely fired on coalition planes there for most of the past decade, insisting that it is simply exercising its right to defend its sovereign airspace. Saddam's diplomatic game, right now, appears to be to promise cooperation with arms inspectors on existing resolutions, at the same time as vowing to defy any new resolutions and ramping up his challenge to the 'no-fly' zone policy. And that helps both Secretary of State Powell and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld — the former because it helps make the case for a new resolution that gives Iraq no room to evade disarmament, and the latter because it gives the U.S. and Britain a pretext even now for air strikes to disable Saddam's air defense system.

Talkin' 'Bout a Resolution
(September 30, 3pm)

Chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix held "businesslike" discussions in Vienna on Monday over renewed arms inspections. But the real drama was elsewhere, at the UN Security Council, where the U.S. and Britain continue to press for a tough new ultimatum to Iraq on disarmament. Washington and London want a new resolution giving Saddam a week to comply, and a month to declare all his weapons of mass destruction, or else face military consequences. Russia and France are balking at the proposal, seeking a return of the inspection regime but without prejudging its outcome. The Russians and French suspect Bush and Blair of seeking a resolution designed to be rejected by Iraq, thereby triggering a war. The combination of their reluctance and U.S.-British insistence points to some form of compromise resolution, which restates the terms for Iraqi disarmament but falls short of anything the Bush administration could construe as an authorization of force at this stage.

Iraq helped the British and Americans over the weekend with tough comments rejecting any new inspection terms, although Baghdad insists that it will comply with existing UN resolutions. One reason for the distinction may be that existing UN Security Council resolutions treat Saddam's presidential palaces as a separate category, requiring advance notice and international chaperoning of inspections. The U.S. and Britain will plainly work hard to close that gap, even in any compromise that emerges from this week's diplomatic wrangling.

The Sharon Signal

Despite the Bush administration's slow progress in securing UN backing, Washington has left Saddam Hussein in no doubt about its intentions. The surest signal came over the weekend in the Bush administration's sharp slapdown of Ariel Sharon: Israel backed off its latest siege of Yasser Arafat's Ramallah compound under heavy pressure from the U.S. And the fact that the administration was willing to take the domestically risky step of leaning on Israel one month before the midterm elections can be interpreted as a measure of the seriousness of Washington's search for Arab consent for an attack on Iraq.

Saddam was engaging in his own diplomatic offensive over the weekend, dispatching his foreign minister to Tehran to woo his erstwhile nemesis against the common (American) foe. But Baghdad got little support from Iran, whose foreign minister proclaimed Tehran neutral on the conflict, but warned that it was up to Iraq to avoid a conflict by complying with UN resolutions. Next up, Turkey, where U.S. and Iraqi officials are expected in short order. Turkey's national interests complicate its position, leaving Ankara still seeking guarantees on issues ranging from economic compensation to the fate of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Al Qaeda Link?

Although administration officials have lately begun asserting more forcefully that Iraq has links with al-Qaeda, very little evidence has thus far been offered. Newsweek offers up a story of a young Iraqi who may have been a bin-Laden operative but doesn't suggest he was actually working for the Iraqi government at the same time. And Europeans have been skeptical about the al-Qaeda claims. The Brookings Insitution's Michael O'Hanlon poured scorn on the suggestion of an imminent danger from an Iraq-al Qaeda alliance. Still, the administration is claiming the hot evidence comes from detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere, and it's hard to argue with that. Similarly, however, those skeptical of the administration's efforts to make the case for going to war are unlikely to be convinced by such can't-tell-you-I'd-have-to-kill-you sources.

Another rumor that puts bin Laden and Saddam on the same page, however, is the suggestion by German forensic scientists that Saddam uses body doubles. The range of possibilities opened by this news is too diabolical to discuss. Let's just say we'd better hope that somebody collected a DNA sample back in the ?80s when Saddam was on cozier terms with Washington.

Blair, meanwhile, has managed to come away from a bruising debate on Iraq at his own party's congress with a motion allowing him to go to war if diplomacy fails. But antiwar sentiment remains strong, with over 150,000 people having joined a protest march in London on Saturday. President Bush looks set to get a resolution of support from his own legislature soon, although continuing congressional debate on Iraq suggests the White House may have to accept more limited terms for authorizing military action than it would have liked.

Secretary of State Colin Powell has told the BBC that the U.S. may go ahead and oust Saddam Hussein even if he complies with UN resolutions on weapons inspections. He told the British broadcaster that removing the Iraqi leader was the most effective way of disarming Iraq — a position echoed by Britain's foreign secretary Jack Straw on Wednesday. The more hawkish voices in the Bush administration prefer to avoid a return of arms inspectors to Baghdad, for fear of slowing the momentum towards an invasion. But even Britain, Washington's closest ally, is committed to testing Saddam's compliance with the inspection regime as a means of securing UN approval for any attack.

Prime Minister Tony Blair's dossier indicting Saddam has made a strong case for disarmament, but it also ignited a revolt inside his own party against any quick march to war. Reviving the inspection regime, possibly with tougher terms and tighter deadlines, remains the focus of the UN Security Council as discussion turns back to Iraq on Wednesday. Veto-wielding permanent members of the council continue to wrangle over the timing and content of a new resolution, but indications at this stage are that Russia will seek to delay any new resolution until chief UN arms inspector Hans Blix returns to UN headquarters in New York from a meeting with Iraqi officials in Vienna on September 30 to discuss the planned return of inspectors. But any new resolution adopted at this stage is unlikely to include the authorization of force, with most of the Security Council likely to support France's position that such authorization should be contained in a second resolution if the Council deems that Iraq is refusing to comply with a new inspection program.

The delays in winning UN approval are likely to infuriate the hawks in Washington, although military planning for an invasion is steaming ahead even amid the diplomatic arm-wrestling. And Powell's comments suggest the administration is not about to lose its momentum on Iraq. That also appears to be helping the President's party in the midterm election campaign, with GOP strategists working to shift voters' focus away from the economy and onto Iraq.

Bush's Other Mideast Problem

Efforts to win all-important Arab consent for an invasion of Iraq are have not been helped by the new standoff at Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah. Political calculations may have prompted Washington to abstain on, rather than veto a UN Security Council resolution demanding Israeli withdrawal from Arafat's compound — the U.S. had previously vowed to veto any resolution that didn't explicitly denounce specific Palestinian groups responsible for terror attacks. But Arab representatives did not lose the opportunity to question why the standards of compliance and enforcement of Security Council resolutions were different for Israel and Iraq. President Bush in recent days has turned up the rhetorical pressure on Israel to withdraw, calling the siege "unhelpful" and unlikely to stop terrorism or encourage Palestinian reform. But Israel demurred, saying it would withdraw only when the PA stopped terrorist groups from attacking Israelis. Sensing a diplomatic opportunity, Yasser Arafat is posturing defiance and rejecting Israeli demands and reported Arab compromise proposals. The siege helps Arafat stay the march of Palestinian reformists looking to kick him upstairs. But more troubling to the Bush administration is the growing signs of a revival of Palestinian street protests sparked by the current clampdown. Clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians defying curfew are not the sort of imagery the administration wants on Arab TV screens as it seeks support on Iraq.

Iran Claims Vindication

Iran's leaders seldom find much to cheer about in the words of President Bush, but that's changed with all the war talk on Iraq. Tehran's army on Tuesday claimed that Washington's denunciation of Iraq's invasion of Iran and its use of chemical weapons in their eight-year war vindicates what Iran has been saying all along. Back at that time, of course, Washington saw things a little differently. Damning Saddam

The Iraq spotlight shifts to London, Tuesday as Tony Blair prepares to help the Bush administration inject more urgency into the UN debate over how to handle Saddam Hussein. Blair is hard at work getting his cabinet on board, and preparing a new UN resolution that will set out strict terms and deadlines for Iraqi compliance. The centerpiece of Blair's effort, however, will be a long-awaited dossier on Saddam's nuclear program, due to be released on Tuesday. Britain's Observer newspaper reports that the dossier will offer a comprehensive account of Saddam's ongoing efforts to attain nuclear weapons — London won't suggest that Iraq actually has any strategic nuclear capability as yet, but it will offer more than enough evidence of ongoing efforts to acquire such capability to make Blair's argument that "Saddam must be stopped."

Arm-wrestling at the UN

Tuesday also sees the UN Security Council resume discussions over a new resolution on Iraq. And the UN battle looks set to be more drawn out than the Bush administration would have liked. There's little chance of a resolution authorizing force against Iraq right now, and the Permanent Five veto-empowered members of the Security Council continue to debate whether any new resolution is necessary at all — Russia continues to resist U.S. pressure to restate the terms to Baghdad, but they could conceivably be brought around. Still, the best the U.S. and Britain may get right now is a resolution restating what is required of Iraq and setting deadlines for compliance. Following the French proposal (see below), the authorization of force would have to come in a separate resolution, and only if and after the Security Council had determined that Iraq had failed to comply with the inspection resolution. And that could still take months.

Helpful Saddam

Blair and Bush got some unexpected help from Saddam Hussein at the weekend, however, when the Iraqi dictator insisted he would accept no new UN resolutions. A defiant Saddam helps the U.S. and Britain make a case for regime change; a quiescent Saddam makes it more difficult. Still, the Iraqi leader is probably reading the diplomatic tealeaves and estimating that he still has time for more defiance. As war gets closer, the same Arab regimes that persuaded him to accept the return of inspectors will, no doubt, urge him to comply with whatever the UN demands if he wants to avoid a war.

UN resolutions and Blair's dossier may also