Recalling his own Vietnam War record, Kerry was infuriated over the previous week's trouncing of triple-amputee Vietnam hero Senator Max Cleland in Georgia. "That is not going to happen to me," boasted Kerry. "Veterans all across this nation are ready to come to my defense."

Ironically, it was Kerry who, a decade ago, during his chairmanship of the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIAs, led a delegation to Vietnam to "inspect" a suspected POW camp.

That proved to any objective watcher that "inspections" are a total sham, whether they are in Iraq or in Vietnam. Why? Because anyone can hide anything anywhere.

The Vietnamese knew Kerry's delegation was coming – with tons of media in tow for the ever-ambitious senator–and they steered the inspection away from an underground section of the prison.

When Kerry declared the complex "clean" of U.S. POWs, it is very likely that dozens of American POWs were in fact mere feet away from the visiting delegation. (Subsequent defectors and others released from that very camp have since revealed what went on that day.)

Similarly, in Iraq, the U.N. inspectors will be snookered, lied to, and led astray. As Fred Barnes said on Fox News channel on the evening of November 8, "This U.N. process is the real quagmire."

Do you recall those classic scenes from World War II movies where the "inspecting" International Red Cross fools came to check on the condition of Allied POWs in Nazi POW camps?

Inevitably, the following would occur:  Weeks before the inspections, the German guards would feed the otherwise-emaciated POWs to fatten them up, then issue them clean clothes and new blankets. Then they would usher in the Red Cross visitors to show off these model POWs, and their wonderfully humane conditions.

Once the Red Cross visitors had left, happily ready to tell the world how wonderful the Germans were, the new clothes, new blankets, and increased rations would be removed. The POWs would go back to the horrible conditions they were used to.

That is what "inspections' are all about–in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction or in Vietnam for present-day U.S. POWs.

A total sham and a complete farce.

Saddam Hussein is chuckling his way through the new U.N. resolution. He is totally evil, and as such, he can find the weak points in what seems to be a tough plan to "disarm" Iraq. He will dodge and weave, all the while stashing his best weapons where no one would even think to look, including in the Iranian mountains to his east (where he stashed his air force during the Persian Gulf War).

The U.N. resolution does not call for inspectors to inspect Iranian territory.

Furthermore, any Iraqi personnel who might be inclined to cooperate with U.N. inspec- tors will be "removed' from the scene before the inspectors can ever even find them.

Saddam is no fool; he knows that the United States is aiming right at his regime. If he goes too far over the line, we will wipe him out. Period. But, short of that, he can maneu- ver these U.N. inspectors into proclaiming Iraq to be "in compliance" by the end of February, 2003, thus eliminating the United States' rationale for war.

Furthermore, he can then make the argument–what he has really been after for 11 years–to have the U.N. lift the sanctions that are crippling his economy.

That is his real goal.

Team Bush, so desirous to wipe the Iraqi regime off the map, has fumbled and argued and talked this issue to death. Instead of expanding the Mohamed-Atta-in-Prague link to Baghdad, they denied it. So now, after having claimed they would "never' go to the U.N., Team Bush is allowing the U.N. to decide whether Saddam Hussein stays or goes.

The betting here is that, once again, the U.N. will coddle a dictator.

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