With weapons inspectors now in Iraq and apparently well on the job, it seems like a good time to reassess things, although all the evidence is preliminary. First, as I understand the news, the inspectors have already made unannounced visits to some of the sites featured in the Blair satellite dossier and found nothing. Perhaps the Iraqis have demolished the relevant buildings and removed the equipment, but I imagine this would leave some traces. A more plausible view is, as Thomas Friedman says, that anything of significance is much more carefully hidden, ‘inside mosques or under cemeteries’. This degree of concealment would rule out, I would think, an active nuclear weapons program. In any case, it does not appear as if the Blair dossier provided the level of evidence supporting war that was claimed at the time.

The next big date is 8 December when the Iraqis have to make their declaration, listing all their relevant sites, data etc. They’ve already denied having any weapons program, but this is consequence-free ‘cheap talk’. I doubt that they’ll turn up with a blank sheet of paper, but they may well try to hide something, and if they do, they’ll probably get caught. So war remains a likely outcome, but not a certain one.

Given the way the UN has coalesced behind the inspections and the vigour with which they are proceeding, I think the likelihood of the favored warblogger scenario, a unilateral US invasion, has dwindled nearly to zero. By contrast, even after Iraq accepted the UN resolution,Steven Den Beste predicted ‘We’re still right on track for hostilities to begin in December, unless there’s a coup in Iraq before then.’ The point about a coup, reflected Den Beste’s belief, now refuted by events, that if Saddam accepted unfettered inspections, he would be overthrown. (Of course, in a regime like Iraq’s such a coup could happen without any warning to outsiders and would be a highly desirable event. ) But the warbloggers, arguing on the basis of wishful thinking, have been consistently wrong ever since Bush’s address to the UN, and I think will be proved wrong yet again.