[BruceZ]

The inspector's role was not to play hide and seek with Saddam. Their role was to watch the weapons being destroyed, and to verify that they were in fact being destroyed, or inspect the evidence that they had been destroyed previously. I think everyone knew that it wasn't going to work like that, and that was the point of sending them, to show the world that Saddam would not cooperate with the UN inspection process as mandated by UN resolution 1441. This was a touching all bases gesture in order to get the UN and the rest of the world on our side. It doesn't appear to have been effective towards that end, so I agree with you that the war should have been over long ago.

I was thinking that what we ought to do to turn the tables on Saddam and use his own delaying tactics against him is to tell him we are giving him one last chance to comply by a certain date, and then attack him before that date. Kind of a Dirty Harry move. That would really catch him off guard, probably save US casualties, and perhaps even keep him from being prepared to use WMD. It may even save Iraqi lives since Saddam may not have his human shields installed yet, though we do want to give the civilians time to take cover. The problem is that there are many Iraqi soldiers who want to be in the right place to defect as soon as the war starts, but not any earlier for obvious reasons.

One question I have never heard asked is this: If the inspector's can't find the weapons now even though they can go anywhere they want in Iraq, how are we going to find them even after we change regimes?