The question is whether they'll actually wait until the UN inspectors come back and report that the Iraqis cooperated completely in the inspection process, and they found nothing. That's due to be on 27th January.

It could be a bit embarrassing, especially for Blair, so I'd be inclined to suspect they won't wait for that but that they'll find some pretext to jump the gun, such as a fake attack, supposedly carried out by Iraqi forces on a US Navy Boat, on the lines of the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

What days that State of the Union stuff address supposed to be anyway? Surely not until a couple of days after Blix is due to report back.

My guess would be that the crucial date might be Friday 17th January, which would give a bit longer to enable it to be claimed that the inspectors hadn't completed their mission when Saddam disrupted it, and avoid the risk they might slap it in a day or so ahead of schedule; and after all Friday is a holy day for the Muslims.

There seems a certain irony-detection deficit around on this thread.