Inspections

Well, the United Nations has an embargo on Iraq, as we all know. The United States would like the embargo lifted so that Iraq can begin selling oil to the United States (and probably other countries too). Their argument is that the embargo was against Saddam Hussein's regime, and not against the Iraqi people. The U.N. may decide that the embargo is contingent on the removal of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Here's where the shell game comes in--Iraq claims not to have Weapons of Mass destruction, and the United States claims they do have them. Now that the war is over, we are begin asked to find the weapons and destroy them. Except we can't, apparently, because we can't find them. Now the New York Times has a piece on a captured Iraqi scientist, who claims that we won't find any weapons of mass destruction because Iraq destroyed them before the war. They buried some of the building blocks of their military program, and the military has apparently recovered those burials sites.

So we will have to see what comes next. William F. Buckley has a piece suggesting that if the UN doesn't want to be further delegitimized they had best play ball and let Iraq off the hook.