Time is not on America's side in its bid to topple Saddam Hussein. A military assault on
Iraq must be launched while the weather is cool or US soldiers will suffer inside their
anti-chemical warfare bodysuits.

It must be done in the first months of the new year, before the Iraqi summer.

The weather was just one of the hard practicalities being considered by the White House
as it stepped up pressure on its allies this week over Iraq. In two tough speeches, the US
Vice-President, Dick Cheney, made it clear the US was weighing up a pre-emptive military
strike against Saddam Hussein.

The White House is following a road map to war. President George Bush has just a few
months to persuade America's allies and the US Congress that a pre-emptive military
assault on Iraq is justified and acceptable under international law. Most importantly, he
needs to persuade them the cost is worth it.

Cheney's alarmist claims that Saddam Hussein "will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon",
and that armed with weapons of mass destruction Iraq could dominate "the entire Middle
East", was one attempt to persuade the allies that the cost of their inaction could be very
high indeed. So far, some of America's key allies remain unconvinced that Saddam is on
the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons.

One European diplomat told the Herald the claims were "American rhetoric". The head of
Israel's army, Moshe Ya'alon, said: "The Iraqi threat does not keep me awake at night."
Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter was more blunt. "When the Israeli army chief,
who is the former head of their intelligence program, says he doesn't lose any sleep over
this, that tells me Israel doesn't have any intelligence on it and Israel is the best in the
business in terms of looking at Iraq," he said.

Ritter is sceptical of the claims because he observed the destruction of Iraq's nuclear
capability when UN weapons inspectors and the International Atomic Energy Agency went
into Iraq after the Gulf War.

Before the war, Saddam had sought to get a nuclear device and got close. While Ritter
believes the Iraqis can replicate a workable design for a weapon, their problem was and is
getting the enriched fuel compatible with their weapons design. If the Iraqis had attempted
this, Ritter believes, "it would have been detected" and stopped. Russian and US
intelligence would be monitoring this.

CIA officials told the US Senate in March this year that Iraq, unconstrained, would need
several years to produce enough material for a nuclear weapon, said Joseph Cirincione,
from the Carnegie Endowment non-proliferation project this week.

Those familiar with Cheney's latest claims about Iraq's nuclear program say there is new
scientific intelligence that Saddam is trying to reconstitute his nuclear program but the
evidence is difficult to assess. The critical question is when Saddam could do this; even
Cheney admitted, "we cannot really judge".

For the Howard Government, this intelligence will be enough to convince it that leaving
Saddam in place is not worth the risk.

America's European and Middle East allies are more sceptical. They are urging the US to
go back to the UN Security Council before military action against Iraq and are pressing for
the return of weapons inspectors. An intense debate is under way in the White House
about whether to defer to the Security Council, with the hawks urging Bush to say no.

The hawks, believed to include the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, argue that Iraq
has failed to comply with nine UN Security Council resolutions calling for it to eliminate its
weapons of mass destruction and allow UN weapons inspectors free rein .

On the other side are some in the State Department who argue it is possible to get a
resolution through the Security Council giving Saddam a tight deadline to allow weapons
inspectors back in. Once Saddam rejects this, or stalls, the US could get a broad
resolution condemning Iraq, sufficient to justify military action without forcing a vote
specifically on a military strike.

Bush needs to decide this issue as early as September 12 when he is due to address the
UN. But many in Washington say whether or not the US goes back to the Security Council,
Bush will go ahead and strike Iraq after the US congressional elections in November.

Senior government officials will go to Congress in the next weeks to lay out the case for
removing Saddam. America's allies will be watching to see just how much hard evidence is
presented on Iraq's weapons program.

Iraq is believed to be working on biological and chemical weapons programs but the
evidence is difficult to obtain. According to Cirincione, the greatest threat from Saddam is
probably a biological agent, like anthrax, delivered by a crude system, either a short-range
missile or, more likely, a truck or small aircraft. The question is, does this justify a
pre-emptive military strike?

Domestic opponents of a war argue Iraqi civilians in Baghdad and other large cities will
pay a heavy price and quote estimates from a Pentagon study two years ago saying the
likely civilian death toll could be as high as 10,000.

Also, critically, many European and Middle Eastern allies are asking the White House,
what happens "the day after"? As one European diplomat told the Herald , there are deep
concerns among the allies that the costs of occupying Iraq and reconstruction will be great,
with little likelihood there would be a stable central government for some time.

The White House disagrees, arguing that Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, is a wealthy country with
10 per cent of the world's oil reserves. They claim there will be a rush of European and
Arab investment in the reconstruction of Iraq. Others paint a more bleak picture: the
possibility of a Kurdish rebellion in the north, a state inherited by the economic mafia that
now runs the black economy, and a massive outflow of refugees. All this would mean
long-term occupation of Iraq by US forces that would only deepen anti-American sentiment
in the Middle East.