Speaking of odds....it looks like the chance of war with Iraq have just shot up to 99%

From the Washington Post about an hour ago:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 9 -- The top U.N. arms experts said tonight that they were unable to reach agreement with Saddam Hussein's government on several key weapons issues they had traveled here to resolve in a bid to build support for continuing inspections.

The two chief U.N. inspectors, Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, failed to come away with the top three items on their wish list during meetings with high-level Iraqi officials on Saturday and today: significant amounts of new evidence about Iraq's past weapons programs, safety guarantees from Iraq for reconnaissance aircraft they want to fly over the country; and a high-level declaration criminalizing the production of nuclear, chemical or biological arms.

What will the defenders of continuous inspection (I'm looking at you, France) say now? What justification is being cooked up to buy Saddam Hussein more time - always more time - to build his arsenal? Now that the U.N. inspectors have been rebuffed again, what will Kofi Annan say? Tom Daschle? Jacques Chirac? What can they possibly say?

In today's NYT, Tom Friedman noted (talking about France): "How the World of Order deals with the World of Disorder is the key question of the day. There is room for disagreement. There is no room for a lack of seriousness." And I'll leave it at that.