Monday, 17 March 2003  8:30 am
Today is the "moment of truth for the world" in President Bush's words, or "the time when we have to decide" in Prime Minister Blair's words.  Everyone will be deciding what actions to take in the next few days - not just President Bush and the UN Security Council delegates. Iraq and the US will have to decide whether a pre-emptive strike is in their best interests.  Iraq will have to decide whether to take hostages of, say, the UN weapons inspectors.  

If Iraq does, in fact, posses operational nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons of mass destruction, it will have to decide how, when, and where to use them - they will not be of any value in defending Baghdad. If al Qaeda and Iraq are indeed cooperating militarily, this will be the week to demonstrate it is a convincing way. There will be no further advantage  to be gained by hiding the weapons, deceiving the world of their existence, and keeping the links to terrorists secret.

On the other hand, if the US and UK conquer Iraq without encountering any weapons of mass destruction, and no evidence is subsequently unearthed of their existence, the disturbing lack of necessity of the war and its casualties and destruction will be revealed.  

Either way, the aftermath is almost impossible to imagine.  Yet, that is exactly what we have to do.

Starting today, virtually all decisions will be correlated with events related to Iraq.  I have argued in the past that the widely reported correlation economic, business, and market reality with "geopolitical uncertainty" did not hold water.  But today, that all changes.