"a fantasy land where the UN is willing to blockade the Gulf and risk their own troops" - but the UN doesn't have any troops of its own anyway.

The issue is whether America and Britain are going to stick by the principle they signed up to all those years ago under which no nation will go to war without the direct approval of the UN SEcurity Council, unless they are defending themselves against an attack.

At the very least it ought to be accepted that any decision that the inspections have been obstructed, or that they have identified weapons of mass destruction which have not been destroyed, must be made by the inspectors themselves, not by some warlords sitting on the opposite side of the planet.