I was watching the News Hour with Jim Lehrer last night and the showed a clip from some of the speeches being given by U.N. ambassadors from some of the Security Council members.

I believe it was the Chilean ambassador who said something like this:

We have a strong desire to see Iraq disarm. However, we also have an obligation to insure that all diplomatic efforts have been exhausted before we go to war.

Much like the phrase "serious consequences", I'd like to know what the Security Council members consider "exhuasted". Maybe something is being lost in the translation here.

We've tried 12 years of diplomatic and economic pressure on Saddam Hussein. He hasn't lived up to cease-fire agreements from the end of the Gulf War, not a single day. The U.N. has now passed 17 resolutions condemning Iraq's behavior and calling for compliance, and they've all been ignored to various degrees.

If this is not the result of an "exhausted" diplomacy, what is?

Can somebody put a damn ballpark figure on it? 20 years? 50 resolutions? Can somebody just give me a rough idea (doesn't have to be down to the day) of when you finally say diplomacy has run its course?