[Wallaby]

>openly beg Saddam to take exile after pointing the finger at him for 9/11 seems like a non-starter to me.

I agree. I was conditionalizing on his not taking exile. Yet, the deadline for his accepting exile is only 42.5 hours away. Cheney said they shouldn't talk about state sponsorship of the anthrax letters until they were ready to do something about it. Doesn't the converse hold? They're ready to do something about it, but they aren't ready to talk about it? That just doesn't make sense to me. When they didn't want to be pressured into a premature war, it made sense to preserve ambiguity. It no longer does.

[The Great Satan]

The 48 hour thing is meaningless, IMO. What matters is the "time of our chosing." If we haven't invaded next week, Saddam will still be able to take the offer. In fact, he'll still be able to take the offer until the very day we enter Baghdad.

[nopardons]

All in good time. Just think of the laundry list, that will be made available, once this thing is over. :-)