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What we have here is a hostage situation. A career criminal has pulled off his piece-de-resistance -- 9-11 -- and he's taken a bunch of hostages in an attempt to get away with it. The hostages are you, me, everybody. Now the cops (Bush and our allies) have to try and resolve the crisis with the minimum loss of life. This analogy -- or rather, this reconceptualization of the situation -- underlines the importance of the good-cop-bad-cop gambit. The hostage-taker has to be left with something to play for. That's where the "good cops" come in. For as long as possible, Saddam has to be convinced that he has a shot of getting off scott-free. His old "friends" -- Russia and France -- come in handy here. Towards the end, he's going to give up on getting off scott-free. He's still going have to be left with something to play for, even if it's only Baghdad. This can be arranged.

So we must be hoping that as the criminal Saddam keeps lowering his ransom demands, he will eventually settle on remaining the 'King Of Babylon', otherwise known to the west as the 'Butcher of Baghdad'. Then I suppose at some point in the not too distant future he will be out on a balcony smoking a cuban, when blame. Thats all fine and dandy, but someone out there still has the anthrax. Heck, we dont even know how much they have. This also requires that Saddam have complete control of the deterrent. For all we know he is contemplating giving some of it to his friends at the New York Times editorial staff.

Who are you... Jimmy Carter? Delicate balancing act?

Once we have a lull in our bombing, Saddam will release every chemical weapon he has left.

That is the “end scenario”. Game over... we take out Baghdad with tac-nukes.

This ain't no cop show dude, it's reality.