A United States led attack on the government of Iraq in March 2003 looks almost inevitable. The only way a large-scale invasion of Iraq by US troops before March could possibly be avoided is either if a section of the Republican Guard stages a pre-emptive coup, the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein dies or if the government of Iraq agrees to United Nations demands for the supervised destruction of its remaining weapons of mass destruction capability. For different reasons none of these options looks very likely. The alternative will be a short but intensive air war of up to three weeks, followed by an invasion of up to 350,000 troops from Kuwait and Turkey.
