Since things are coming down to the wire, but the UN teams appear to want several more months to conduct their inspections, I was just curious what the US military plans to do about their presence. Do we not blow up stuff near them? Do we give them 24 hours warning? Do we send in Special Forces teams to extract them? Or do we just blow stuff up as we will, and later shake our heads and say, “It’s too bad they were in the way …” ?
They’ll inform the UNSC and allow the inspectors limited time to withdraw. (I half expect some sort of announcement along those lines during the State of the Union Address.)
The UN will prolly recall the inspectors for their own safety. But, if that wern’t the case, or the inspector(s) decide to stay, we would treat them as any allied non-combatant in a war. If we can locate them we will do our utmost to avoid them, though not at the risk to ourselves. Special forces would not be ruled out, but not necessarily a rule either.