TURN YOUR HEAD AND COUGH:

Saddam has outwitted his enemies again (Con Coughlin, 17/11/2002, Daily Telegraph)

It is Washington's worst-kept secret that President Bush had already set in place the infrastructure for a full-scale military assault to remove Saddam early next year. US military chiefs have a network of forward command posts in Jordan, Turkey, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar. "Saddam only needs to cough and we are ready to take him out," was the way one senior Bush official put it to me.

Many on Bush's team hoped the President would order a devastating bombardment of Saddam's key command and control sites as early as this week. That cannot happen now that Saddam has signed up to the UN Security Council resolution setting out strict terms and conditions for the inspection teams. Saddam's decision to capitulate has made an invasion impossible, at least in the short term.

The fear now stalking the Bush administration is that Saddam's concession to the UN could put off the day of invasion for ever, thwarting any attempt to bring about the one thing that the President has so often insisted is necessary for world security: regime change in Baghdad. "So long as Saddam behaves himself," an official on Bush's team explained to me, "the inspection process could go on for months. There is only a relatively small window of opportunity for us to take military action early next year before the weather conditions will make it really difficult. So if Saddam can string this out until next spring - he is safe."

If we've really reached the point where a government that's manufactured provocations from the sinking of the Maine to the to the Lusitania to the Greer to the Tonkin Gulf Incident can't pin something on Saddam Hussein, then the mighty really have fallen. Posted by Orrin Judd at November 17, 2002 11:54 AM