CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: The White House is monitoring today's developments at the United Nations very closely, as President Bush plots his next step in a standoff with Iraq. CNN White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux has that.</s>SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: The U.S. has entered what the White House calls its final phase with Iraq, now that U.N. weapons inspectors must report their findings to the U.N. Security Council. Sources say in the weeks to come, President Bush will make the decision of whether or not the United States must go to war. But Americans are still split. A new CNN/USA Today/Gallup Polls shows that while 52 percent of Americans approve sending U.S. troops to Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Americans are equally split on who they trust to make the right decision: the United States or the United Nations.</s>SEN. BARBARA BOXER (D), CALIFORNIA: We don't have to, it seems to me, go around beating the drums for war. The real test of our leadership is bringing the world together as we did after 9/11.</s>ANDREW CARD, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: He's not anxious to go to war. He'd like to see Saddam come clean, disarm, bring those weapons of mass destruction into a parking lot and allow them to be destroyed.</s>MALVEAUX: But many now are skeptical that that will happen; that they believe that war now is inevitable. Tuesday, President Bush will make his case to the American people, when he delivers his State of the Union address. White House officials say he will not declare war, but rather outline a broad and detailed case against Saddam Hussein, that this is the last diplomatic phase with Iraq, that time is running out, and that the prospect for war is very real. Suzanne Malveaux, CNN, the White House.
White House Preps for Possible War With Iraq