Actually Jim, there is a VERY large difference as far as why Israel should be allowed to have WMD and not other ME countries. Israel is a democracy. The concern is that WMD could be under the control of ONE person alone and not a democracy.

The other issue is of course sort-of parallel with the 'gun' issue in the U.S and WMD in other countries now. If you sign any treaty restricting WMD (there is already one in place signed by many countries) it is only required to be abided by the countries that sign it. No one else has to abide by it and who will enforce it? Also, there is no countrol to restrict the use of WMD in countries that don't sign the treaty. So it is much like the gun issue in the U.S. - those that are law abiding will not have guns, but the criminals that don't obey the law will still have them and then the law abiding citizens have no protection against the criminals. The only difference here is that as with WMD, the analogy would be that the police would not have guns either to protect the citizens.

The idea of a middle-east WMD-free zone is great, but naive.

>>>To be fair, it is not JUST about the UN resolutions - any or all of them. If that were the case, we would have done something about Israel long ago. Instead, since Israel is not a threat to U.S. National Security (this is a big issue with Iraq, not JUST the resolutions) we not only allow them (as does the UN and everyone except the Palestines) to ignore UN resolutions, but we fund them.
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>>I think the Iraq and Israeli cases are very different. SNIP
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>Yes they are, as TracyH herself said! Israel is not viewed as a "threat" to the U.S. All it does is suck in US$$$$, and you both win!
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>Do you know why it was that the U.S. didn't like the idea of a middle east WMD-FREE ZONE?... because then Israel would have to give up its WMD! And you wonder why Arab countries see a double-standard?