Reply #51: August 1998...

[SaveElmer]

...Iraq suspended cooperation with UNSCOM on disarmament activities and also limited the commision's monitoring and verification activities. In October of that year Iraq halted all formal cooperation with U.N. inspection activities.

Iraq was trying to get sanctions lifted and was using inspections as a bargaining chip...for four years inspectors were not allowed into Iraq. They then offered a bogus conditional cooperation in August 2002, and finally under pressure of possible military threat sent a letter in which they said they would agree to allow inspections...

After 4 years of obfuscation and lying it was very hard to take them at their word.

The IWR for the Democrats that voted for it was a way to insure that this cooperation became manifest...and it worked...inspections continued after that.

If your assertion was the case, why would opponents such as Russ Feingold state his agreement with President Bush's assessment of the threat posed by Iraq...

As to your statement that Democrats who voted for the IWR were trying to prevent inspections from being completed, you have not a shred of evidence to support it...

That statement would be more accurate describing the Bush administrations later actions once the IWR had been in place, and was apparently working...It was the Bush administration that used the fig leaf of Hans Blix's final report as a justification for attacking...