The Smoking Gun?

This morning, The Independent broke the story, to much ballyhoo, about three silent, rogue Iraqi cargo vessels floating around the world's oceans since inspections began in November. Is it the smoking gun, or isn't it? -- that's the question that Britain's been pondering all day. For the moment, and because I can, I'm going to remain rather suspect. In a follow-up article in The Guardian, The International Maritime Organisation is reported as saying, in essence, there's nothing really all that suspicious about the ships' behaviour thus far. That doesn't mean there aren't weapons there, of course; but, I would like to think that if their content is the smoking gun Bush, Blair, et al really want and need to justify a war (and damn good justification it would be, really), this would've been big news by now.

However, that said, this could also be regarded as the decisive piece of incredibly ambiguous intelligence they need to sway swing votes in the Security Council, and that leaking it now is very strategic. The fact -- and perhaps the purpose -- is: who knows!? At this point the U.S. is not looking for decisive, convincing proof, but rather for a reason to believe (this ain't a court of law, after all), so that fence-straddling Security Council countries can justify either their abstention from voting or their reluctant acquiescence.

God, I hate this feeling of being cowed into looking for and expecting a propagandistic ploy around every corner, but has the run up to this war provided much reason to not do so??