For Bush, rising bar on Iraq war

But some observers say the impact of the report is not so clear cut. "It would have been easier for the administration if the Iraqis had failed the first inspections test, but instead they got a kind of pass-fail extension. That complicates things for Bush considerably," says Thomas Henriksen, an American foreign-policy specialist at the Hoover Institution in Palo Alto, Calif.

To a certain degree, the Bush administration is in a spot similar to where it was last summer, when it was debating internally whether to largely "go it alone" against Iraq, or to take the time to try to bring the international community along. Bush decided then to follow Secretary of State Colin Powell's advice and take the international path.

But some key countries are even more resolutely opposed to war now than they were then. Turkey, for example, has yet to decide on opening its bases to US troops, in large part because of a public overwhelmingly opposed to war next door.

"Once again, we're at a point where the US has to show leadership if it wants the world to follow down a certain path, but it's going to take some intense diplomatic work," says John Hulsman, a European-relations specialist at the Heritage Foundation.

A Bush speech is one direction the US could take. The US could also demonstrate through a diplomatic offensive that it is willing to meet allies' concerns in some ways - for example, by expressing an openness to a second UN resolution authorizing force.

Hoover's Mr. Henriksen says everything from the unrelenting military buildup, to a tip-off by Mr. Powell that a US "presentation" is coming, tells him the US has some "dramatic" evidence to play against Hussein at the right time. "They'll play their hand at the right time, which I assume will be when the military is fully ready to go," he says.

At the same time, some observers say that signals Powell is sending to play down the importance of Jan. 27 as a crunch date could mean the administration is preserving the option of deciding not to wage war this spring.

Mr. Quandt, now an international studies professor at the University of Virginia, says his hunch is that Bush will stick with the "hawks" in the administration. But Bush could yet douse the war fires - claiming, for example, that it was the American threat of war and the no-bluffs military buildup that put Hussein in a safe box "where he could be watched," Quandt says. "The conservative pundits and hawkish wing of the administration would protest," he says, "but they'd have to go along with the president."

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