As this LA Times report (free registration required) shows, arguments like those I’ve been making for months are finally sinking in with the US Administration

It’s wrong to assume anything has to happen in January or February. We’re not in this to call a quick war, so don’t assume any timetable,” a senior State Department official said Thursday on condition of anonymity.

I’ll be particularly interested to read the response of Steven Den Beste to this. He originally forecast a December war, then revised it to War in February. I think it’s clear now that Den Beste’s analysis was based on the mistaken assumption that the US could go to war with no allies, or alternatively that it could drag sufficiently many of them (notably Britain and Turkey) into war without going through the UN process.

Once it’s clear that the US needs to go through the UN, the logic of war by timetable (US military preparations leading inexorably to a war where timing is dictated by logistical and tactical considerations) becomes irrelevant. The UN process must be pursued until it either produces a definitive outcome or has blatantly failed. The obvious definitive outcome is a discovery of hidden Iraqi weapons or a UNMOVIC declaration that they have enough evidence to convict Saddam. The obvious failure would be acquiescence in obstruction by Iraq, particularly if this took the form of a French or Russian veto of a UNSC resolution.

For Blix and UNMOVIC have made very skilful use of the situation. On the one hand, their statements have been highly critical of Saddam, putting on enough pressure to secure prompt compliance with some pretty humiliating demands. On the other hand, they’ve said they need more time, something which everyone except the US Administration is very happy to give them.

What are the likely outcomes now? I see three main possibilities:

(a) As always, UNMOVIC may discover weapons or a locked and guarded gate. It seems unlikely now that this will happen in a physical sense, but we could see something analogous with an Iraqi scientist either informing on Saddam or being done away with by his security police

(b) A negotiated outcome in which Saddam goes into exile. His Arab neighbors would love this. The US would be unlikely to accept a replacement from Saddam’s family or inner circle, but given their support for dictatorships across the region, they’d be hard-pressed to say no to, say, a military government with a professed commitment to democracy in the long term. The weapons inspections would continue of course, but no-one would care too much.

(c) A long period of inspections, finding no ‘smoking gun’, and accompanied by a gradual easing of sanctions.