In my opinion, the all-out assault will be preceded by internal guerilla uprising probably by Kurds. This will distract Saddam. He has to divert part of his elite troops to fight these guerillas. While this insurgency is in progress under the direction of CIA/SpecOps, U.S. will try to instigate defection of high ranking people or army units. Then U.S. can mount an invasion. But due to WMD, the invasion force may be spread out and move in slower pace. Anytime Saddam uses his WMD to Kurds, American troops or Israelis, U.S. will use her small nukes for retaliations. It is politically less provacative for U.S. to nuke Iraq than Israel. I know, U.S. is a great satan in Mid-East. But U.S. is still more popular than Israel. Finally, if the stalemate develops in the battlefield for some reason, U.S. will again use nukes to finish the war. U.S. cannot afford to have prolonged attrition battle Muslim extremists are so fond of waging. U.S. should not give any hopes to them. If they play madmen, they will be nuked.
Take control of the air, use some search forces and other means to locate him, and depend on the various new missile defense weapons to counter the wmd threat.
The U.S. will proceed to position our forces as if we plan a conventional attack (and to give us the option of engaging in such an attack at any time). But meanwhile we'll infiltrate our special forces into Northern and Southern Iraq under cover of our air power in the "no-fly zones". Our aircraft will intensify their activities, and start hitting some targets without waiting to be "locked onto" by radar. Any suspected missile launch facility will become fair game. Soon missile sites in central Iraq, outside the "no-fly zones", will be targeted.
This is our "slowly boil the frog" strategy. We just keep increasing our military action but hold off the massive air and land attacks. We launch special forces raids on suspected WMD facilities. We assist anti-Hussein Iraqi forces in the north and south. And we allow fear and defeatism to percolate throughout the Iraqi government and military. Saddam has to keep purging and fighting off coup attempts (or suspected attempts), and he becomes more and more isolated, spending most of his time hiding in underground bunkers.
As long as the U.S. holds off on full-scale war, Hussein will be unable to use his WMDs against Israel, since that would immediately trigger massive retaliation and all-out war and make him appear responsible. Meanwhile Hussein can cling to the (vain) hope that the pressure of "world opinion" might yet prevent a U.S. attack.
Eventually Saddam and his government crack apart from the pressure, and our Iraqi allies take over with virtually no loss of U.S. life.
Saddam had WMD (chemical and or biological weapons in the last Gulf War) but he didn't use them against either Israel or Saudi Arabia for fear of nuclear retaliation. On the other hand, if his back is to the wall, he has nothing to lose and he might very well decide to use everything, in which case the U.S., or more likely Israel, will retaliate with nuclear weapons, possibly seting off the whole region and bringing on WWIII. Given that these are not trivial issues, I wonder why Congess isn't debating the issue around the clock. If it's necessary to risk nuclear war to bring down Saddam, Bush should ask congress to step up to the plate and explicitly declare war on Iraq. At least we'd get to hear the best arguments, pro and con.
Warp factor five, Mr. Scott!
--Boris