Well, if you didn’t think it was going to happen then either "Hi, I’m amazingly naïve” is your middle name or you are doing the "ostrich” and sticking your head in the sand to avoid the truth but either way you are kidding yourself. As the United States stands poised to liberate the Iraqi people from the tyrannical regime of Saddam Hussein, in an effort to rid the world of one of its most successful terrorist enterprises, it would seem that his war has already begun. As is the "master manipulator’s” grandiose nature, and having already acquired the assistance of France, Germany, Russia and China, among others, he is now trying to make additional headway on the political front by going on the offensive with the United Nations. Yes, Saddam is now demanding things from the UN. Incredible, isn’t it? It is a testimony to his audacity and tenacity if nothing else.

 After Chief UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix and IAEA Director General Mohammed ElBaradei gave their reports to the UN Security Council last week, reports that neither confirmed nor denied Iraq’s compliance with resolution 1441 and which failed to mention the newly discovered drone aircrafts and munitions (both capable of delivering biochemical weapons to Iraqi neighbors), it appears that Saddam feels the verbiage of those reports suggests that he is in compliance with the resolution.  Remarkably, because of this assumption by the brutal dictator the Iraqi government has issued a letter to the United Nations demanding that all sanctions imposed after the Gulf War be lifted, that Israel surrender its weapons of mass destruction and remove itself from the occupied territories and that the UN brand the United States and Britain as, get this, liars. These demands are being issued in the face of the fact that he remains in material breech of UNSC Resolution 1441 and has no intension of ever complying with its demands.

 Certain things beg to be addressed here and why Blix and ElBaradei omitted important pieces of information from their reports to the Security Council is just one of them. With the glaring omissions of information on the unmanned drones and the biochemical warheads that were found one must almost certainly call into question both the thoroughness of their established reporting techniques and the requirements for what must be reported. But perhaps the most disturbing idea here is whether Blix and ElBaradei are manipulating the reporting process to slant the opinion of those on the Security Council by purposely omitting critical data. This idea should send chills down everyone’s spine but until there is an explanation from Mr. Blix and Mr. ElBaradei we can only speculate the reasoning and pray that it is not due to incompetence.

 Saddam’s assertion that he is in compliance with resolution 1441 comes amid reports of newly found evidence that he possesses drone aircraft not unlike, but much less sophisticated then our own Predator drones, which have been effective in our quest to eliminate the oppressive Taliban rule in Afghanistan. These Iraqi drone aircraft are designed to deliver biochemical weapons and could be used to inflict damage on Iraq’s neighboring nations and coalition forces should military action start. Further, it is being reported that warheads and delivery systems have been uncovered by the UN inspectors that are specifically designed to deliver biochemical weapons. These warheads are believed to have initially been imported from foreign countries (Hhmm, perhaps France, Germany and Russia?) but eventually were produced indigenously, sources reported to The New York Times and to Fox News. Both of these weapons systems are in direct violation of not only the cease fire agreement, which brought the end to the Gulf War and which everyone conveniently seems to forget about, but to every Security Council resolution that addresses Iraq’s weapons program.

 One of the demands that Saddam makes has to do with Israel. Now, when Israel became a part of UN Resolution 1441 is beyond me. Perhaps they were incorporated into the mix while I slept or while I was making my move from the radio in my car to the news on television or while I was in the shower but I completely missed it. What becomes very clear with this statement is that Saddam is trying to escalate his non-compliance issue to a level that would address the Middle Eastern problem in total. To say the least, he is in no position to demand that the UN force Israel to do anything. His obvious attempt to bring about the dual of the Arab States against the Western World serves only to validate the thought that he wants to be the icon of the Arab World, their leader, their savior from the wicked Western civilization but what it proves is his underlying hatred for Israel. To be honest, if you were the leader of a country in a region where all your neighbors wanted to kill you simply for existing, would you agree to hand over the only things that deter the bloodshed from happening? The chances of Saddam getting the UN to ask Israel to turn over their nuclear weapons is like asking Osama bin Laden to simply knock on The White House door to turn himself in. It isn’t going to happen. These two issues are completely separate and should remain so.

 Another of the demands he makes in his letter is that the sanctions that were placed on Iraq after the Gulf War be lifted. This is a ridiculous request. The sanctions were put into place in order to bring a change to the Iraqi government’s attitude toward its people and its weapons. They have changed neither. To lift the sanctions would be to reward Saddam’s regime for doing absolutely nothing. They have not ceased waging the terror war that is in place toward the Iraqi people and as the world knows they have not disarmed. In fact, they have been shooting at allied aircraft ever since 1992, which is in complete violation of the cease-fire agreement that ended the Gulf War. For those actions alone the United States is justified in going into Baghdad. For that reason alone the United States doesn’t have to ask for consensus from the United Nations.

 But what is perhaps the ultimate hypocrisy is that Saddam wants the United Nations to brand the United States and Britain as "liars”. If this weren’t so infuriating it would be hilarious. Here is a man who has done nothing but lie for the last 12 years not only to the United Nations but to the world community as well. He has hidden weapons that he has claimed he doesn’t have only to have them turn up again and again. He has claimed that missiles found by the UN inspectors were simply forgotten about and that aluminum tubes that could only be used for the development of nuclear weapons were attained for anything but. It has been lie after lie after lie and it has almost come to the point where those of a lesser attention span are starting to think that maybe he is telling the truth. It is absolutely sickening what he is getting away with thanks to those self-absorbed members of the world community, namely France, Germany, Russia and China.

 The March 17^th deadline may come too soon as the United States tries to obtain the nine-vote Security Council goal, vetoes be damned, but with the weather becoming a factor the deadline shouldn’t come too long after. The real mandate that action be taken expeditiously is the development that a connection has been established between the terrorist group Abu Sayyaf, a group with proven connections to al Qaida, and Iraq. A cell phone used in an attempted bomb detonation in the southern city of Zamboanga in the Philippines was also used to contact Iraqi diplomat Husham Husain, an Iraqi consul. He was also contacted a day after a bombing that killed 3 including an American soldier.

 The "master manipulator”, confident that his spin has worked with the lemmings of the anti-war movement and the mainstream media worldwide is starting to spin to the UN hoping that some of them are lemmings as well. Let’s hope that those who could make a difference in the outcome of this passage of history do make a difference. Let us all hope that they see through the brand of lies and deceit that Saddam Hussein chooses to shop to the world. The alternative is nothing less than brutal.

Frank Salvato is a political media consultant and the managing editor for The New Media Journal.us. He is a contributing writer for The Washington Dispatch, GOPUSA, OpinionEditorials, Men’s News Daily, Canada Free Press & AmericanDaily. His pieces are regularly featured in Townhall.com. He has appeared as a guest on The O’Reilly Factor, The Kevin Matthews Radio Show (Chicago) and The Brad Messer Radio Show (San Antonio). His pieces have been recognized by the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention and are occasionally featured in The Washington Times and The London Morning Paper as well as other national and international publications.