>>>You come up with a reliable method of sweeping the city of Los Angeles and locating every last amphetamine lab there. House to house search? Every house? A biolab would be no larger, and use less reagents than a meth lab.

Sure: use sensitive sensors to trace the sources of all volatile solvents (like ether) used in its manufacture. We can do this today. Question of money & manpower.

>>>Could you come up with a method of preventing illegal drugs from getting over the American border? We can't find more than a fraction of the illegal activity in our own country, and the government here is cooperative. Iraq is the size of Texas, and the government has a vested interest in us finding absolutely nothing.

In America, it's a question of money & manpower, again. In Iraq, I'm not sure it's necessary. I assume you are talking about smuggling fissiles into the country. We have international efforts to keep these materials out of the hands of non-authorized people in the first place. We have international efforts to track down these materials that are known to be unaccounted for. We have international efforts to interdict the activities of pretty much all smugglers of all contraband. Further, in Iraq's case, we would have people on the ground searching for any use of these materials, aided by the best surveilance technology that our intel services can provide.

There are no guarantees. There *never* will be any guarantees -- even if we go to war. To turn this kind of unanswerable question around: please prove that the war will be a success and that its outcome will leave us better off than if we don't wage it.

>>>Remember, our first real nuclear reactor was under a football field in Chicago.

With today's technology and ground inspectors, we would have found it. We have, for instance, found underground marijuana farms.

>>>Without eliminating the Iraqi tyranny, there is no practical way to police its activity with certainty.

There will never be a way to keep these materials out of the hands of people who wish us ill. Whatever's left of the regime will still have access to whatever they have access to, today. There mindset might be different, post-regime-change. They might go underground like al Qaida and devote themselves to doing us harm.