In many ways this process has been like a chess game. There was the initial phase involving diplomacy, weapon's inspectors, peace activists and French/Russian duplicity. We (the U.S.) might not have played that part of the game to our best advantage. Involving the U.N. was probably the price demanded by Tony Blair. However, doing that probably made sense. It took time to mobilize our military and going through the process of diplomacy might have yielded some advantage. In a perfect world, we might have organized a coallition of the entire World demanding Saddam's exile or annihilation. Saddam might have knuckled under if he faced monolithic world wide opposition.

The next part of the game involved the establishment our presence in Iraq while shocking the Iraqi leadership into immediate capitulation. The regime in Iraq holds its power by terrorizing the Iraqi population. If the Iraqi population feared us more than the Baath Party, they might have immediately revolted. Also if the leaders of Iraq had no hope of surviving our attack, they might have promptly surrendered. Unfortunately neither condition has occurred. We are less fearful than Saddam and unfortunately Saddam's henchmen still believe that the French/Russians/Arabs will come to their rescue in the end.

We now face the end game. The following URL describes it:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20966-2003Mar24.html

Saddam's people will soon use their WMDs against our troops. Unfortunately, this choice will bring war to a new level of barbarity. We will have conclusively demonstrated that Saddam did indeed have WMDs, was hiding them despite the U.N.'s comical attempts to find them and was prepared to use these weapons against us. The good(?) news is the people of Iraq will soon fear us more than Saddam. This will result in the ending of the war. The bad news is we will have won a Pyrrhic Victory. The cost in human life and material destruction will be terrible. Despite this I think Bush and Blair have made the correct decision. Because of their decision, the destruction will be in Iraq and not in North America or England. It's just too bad that doing the right thing will cause so much death and destruction.

Gary