John

Hate to quote a movie... but remember at the start of Gladiator where Crowe's 2IC asks "Why don't defeated people act that way " and Crowe asks "would you?"

Even an amateur historian could have predicted that SH would not act defeated just because we said he was. If the point of diplomacy is to achieve our ends without war, one would hope this includes a touch of behavioural science. Clearly not.

The real failure here was execution. I am reminded of when I was a student executive; we all voted importantly to buy a big bunch of flowers for the registrar who was leaving and was well-loved; but nobody was appointed to do the actual buying and nobody did. That's what happened here; our leaders voted and failed to make it happen. SH lied to and threw out the inspectors; we told him he was naughty then moved onto "more important" stuff. Of course SH figured it out and of course he acted to advantage himself. We all stood by and in many cases harvested the systematic flouting of our will. Today's attack should be seen as an admission of guilt by every nation- we failed to act responsibly and when SH did the obvious, one of us went to war. Failure in every respect.

Regards

JR