Seeing through Iraq

摘要

So is the United States going to invade Iraq or not? It will take time, American officials have been soothing all week, to sift through the 12,000 pages which Iraq has now produced in accordance with last month's Security Council Resolution 1441 demanding "a currently accurate, full, and complete" declaration of all aspects of its programmes to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. For understandable reasons, the Americans do not want to give the impression that they are so intent on waging war against Saddam Hussein that they are rushing to judgment, caring nothing for the evidence. Still, these 12,000 pages are not likely to be a suspenseful read. For Iraq has already given away the ending. Even as it handed the documents over, it stated once again that it does not possess, and is no longer seeking, any weapons of mass destruction.