Powell Makes the Case

Mary McGrory may be convinced, but "The Nation" editor Katrina vanden Heuvel is not. Her editorial in USA Today declares that "Powell fails to make the case". Here is an example of the force and quality of her editorial:

"To justify U.N. Security Council authorization for war, the administration would need to show that Iraq's brutal dictatorship poses such a serious and immediate threat to U.S. security and world peace that it must be overthrown by force. It has failed to do that. Containment and robust inspections have worked in the past and can in the future."

In fact, Resolution 1441 nowhere mentions U.S. security, nor does it requires anything like she describes for a material breach to be declared and serious consequences to be invoked. It's embarrassingly apparent that Katrina has not read the resolution and has little idea what it says. Anyway, it is not true that inspections have worked in the past. Saddam from the beginning concealed his weapons programs, continued their development, and finally kicked the inspectors out of his country altogether. The recent Blix report depicted in damning detail the Iraqi regime's continuing and largely successful efforts to frustrate the current inspections regime. The massive build-up of US military forces around him is the sole reason that Saddam has agreed to allow inspectors to be reintroduced at all. That kind of containment is extremely expensive and cannot be maintained; the notion that the US military should be indefinitely tied down serving as a babysitter for Saddam Hussein, in the process becoming a hated presence in the region and a permanent target for Islamist attacks, is an absurdity.

Byron