Hawks won't stop with Baghdad

Despite Iraq's sudden invitation to renew UN weapons inspections, American hardliners will keep up the pressure for war. Regime change might be achieved under cover of disarming Baghdad. But without a serious debate on the objectives of force, there will be no opportunity to consider what could go wrong or how to handle the competing interests.
After all, the rationale for launching a war on iraq ought to determine how it would be waged. If the goal is a change of regime, the options range from sending assassination squads to target key individuals, to amassing a vast invasion force to take over the country. If the idea is to persuade the Iraqi military to perform a coup d'état, the officer corps would have to be persuaded that the only way to save their own skins would be to take out the government themselves. Heavy handed use of air power would be counterproductive if it killed the very people expected to assume power, or turned the public against the invading forces.

There is also the question of what kind of regime change is required. Will a replacement of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his Takriti clan be sufficient if whoever takes over is prepared to relinquish the weapons of mass destruction, or does there have to be a representative government pledged to democratic norms to justify military intervention? In the first case, a timely coup could be sufficient to avert an invasion. But in the latter, a full-scale occupation would probably be necessary to transform the country from a dictatorship to a functioning democracy.