The agreement does in fact allow inspections of those palaces. In line with what was the policy supported by the USA back in 1998 there's an agreed procedure involving having diplomats along. The people who know most about this, the inspectors themselves, have indicated that they see it as satisfactory - in line once again with the US government back in 1998.

Maybe there is extra work to be done - extra guarantees that there won't be delays and dirty tricks, and a procedure for effective ways of dealing with any that were attempted.

But for the government of one member state in an instant kneejerk reaction to denounce all this and to threaten to "thwart" any kind of inspections is... not exactly helpful.

Bush is trying to keep the pressure up so as to ensure that there are effective inspections, and that any "weapons of mass destruction" are destroyed? Or he's trying to ensure that there are no effective inspections, because he is frightened that they will in fact either demonstrate that there aren't such weapons, or succeed in destroying them, and in the process depriving him of the excuse for making war?

I'm sure there are some people who will persuade themselves that the first explanation is the true one. Or in the case of people close to positions of power, such as maybe Colin Powell and Tony Blair they might even be desperately trying to manoeuvre things so that it becomes true, in spite of all the people working in the opposite direction who seem to be making the running in the White House at present.

And isn't it all going well for the calculating fanatics who planned September 11th, for whom a unilateral war by an isolated USA is surely the next move in a gameplan in which Iraq is merely a chess piece to be sacrificed? (And not even a friendly chess piece.)