If is very unlikely Dubya started this plan to take down Saddam without evidence as least as good as what we had against Castro in the Cuban missile crisis. How could anyone think that a president of the US would make all this commitment based on faith in some dippy UN or that SM inspectors? That is not even close to the way Bush confronts a problem.
The after action reports to congress on the Gulf War by Norm Schwartzkopf, show that Norm's greatest fear was that Saddam would attack our troops in Saudi before we had the force in place to defeat him. It was also true that it took nearly 6 months to get that force in place. We have only marginally expanded our transportation abiltities. We are most certainly playing for time.
Our plan has to give Saddam the false belief that he can avoid our attack right, up until the time we attack. Keep him busy hiding stuff and writing volumes of face reports while we build up our forces. We would want him to believe we don't have the proof. He certainly believes that if we do have it, we will attack. If he were certain we had proof, he would certainly start a terrorist counter attack now.
That is not what we want. The people planning this Iraqi action had to prepare the American people. They had to devise mickey mouse games that gave Saddam the false belief he can win. Saddam has to think he can win right up until the United States has enough force in place to assure total and complete victory. Don't forget have our civilian population here at home protected also. That means checking tons of people in U.S. That takes time.
When we have our ducks in a row would be the time to go to the UN and present the complete and total evidence, the USA has been sitting on for a year. Following that presentation, it seems likely Bush would order the US forces to start the attack following some short time period. He would then give teh UN that time period to approve the attack. The UN would have the choice to approve or dis-approve. They would not be able to decide if we attack or not.
If you go back to Dubya's UN speech that was the choice he gave the UN. You do it or we will .. he said. At that time Bush did not ask for proof. He did not say if you can't find proof we won't attack. He said you take him down or I will.
This SCREAMS to me that the USA has plenty of proof any time it wants to present it.
I would say anyone who thinks our actions depend on the UN inspector side show or Saddam Report has not been paying attention for the last 2 years.
Common Tator....this was a remarkable piece of intuitive thinking.
FP
Here you can read what as said by GW and then our freepers without the Compost blurring of the message. (Link to GW's talk which was the basis of this compost story)