If we do send inspectors - they need some teeth this time around.
The first 7 years of inspections were comprehensive and effective, but several things undermined them in the security council:
1. The US began to state, then made it official policy that it would not abide by resolution 687 and lift sanctions if UNSCOM certified that Iraq was free of WMD. In other words, the "policy of regime change" removed any incentive for Saddam to comply with inspectors.
2. The devastating effect of sanctions on Iraqi civilians, (over 1 million deaths directly related to the sanctions, while actually strengthening Saddam's hold on power in the country, eroded political support for the sanctions regime.
3. Interested primarily in their economic ties to Iraq, France, China and Russia began pressuring for an end to sanctions and the compromise was a weakening of the inspections regime.
4. The successes of UNSCOM in destroying huge portions Iraq's WMD led to decreased concearn about the actual threat that Saddam posed and allowed the inspections to be manipulated by the Clinton Administration for other political considerations. IE: as the threat became less real, the residual fear of Saddam in the public became a political tool that the Clinton adminsitration, (and I think Bush's administration), could not resist using to achieve domestic political objectives, (disruption of the impeachment process, in Clinton's case, and as a way to counter the historical trend for the party of a sitting president to lose congressional seats in midterm elections - especially tempting with such a close margin of control in either house).
So, again, my opinion is that if the president is serious about Saddam's WMD,he would throw full political support behind the original inspection regime under SCR687, and use the current military buildup as the stick against Saddam's resistance, and as a political bulwark against waffling on the part of the other permanent members of the security council.
Where I'm probably just wishful thinking is in the hope that a president would resist the temptation to manipulate the situation for political gains. We haven't had a man like that in the presidency since FDR.
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