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December
5, 2002, 8:45 a.m. By NR Editors, from the December 23, 2002, issue of National Review |
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he December
8 deadline for Iraq to reveal its atomic-, biological-, and chemical-weapons
programs comes after we go to press, but before most readers will get
this issue. Think of it as the bank of the Rubicon.
The U.N. monitors have brought to their work an air of what would be farce, if the stakes were not life and death. As the Washington Post reported, Hans Blix, executive chairman of the U.N. team, kept experienced hands off his team because the Iraqis found them too tough. "We just knew too much," complained Richard Spertzel, who once headed biological-weapons inspections for the U.N. "They couldn't pull the wool over our eyes." Instead, Blix has been beating the bushes and trolling the cathouses — in one case, literally, for the Post found on his team a Marine vet from Virginia whose munitions experience is 20 years old, and much of whose time in civilian life has been spent running an S&M sex club. Blix's Keystone Kops drive from their Baghdad hotel in Toyota Land Cruisers, shadowed by their hosts, who radio ahead to the relevant death factory as soon as they guess the destination. Not surprisingly, every time the Blixens have showed up, the Iraqis have been prepared.
Will President Bush be bound by such a charade? In a Pentagon speech, he was laconically threatening. "So far," he said, "the signs are not encouraging." Iraq had fired on British and American planes patrolling the no-fly zones, and answered U.N. questions with "protests and falsehoods." The declaration Iraq makes on December 8 "must be credible and complete — or the Iraqi dictator will have demonstrated to the world once again that he has chosen not to change his behavior." This put the emphasis where it belongs: not on the details of an inspector's checklist, which depend on what the meaning of "weapon" is, but on the character of the regime and its leader. Saddamistan is a bellicose, secretive tyranny, murderous to its citizens and threatening to its neighbors and the world at large.
Iraq is in a curious position. Unfriendly aircraft patrol its skies, while U.N. bureaucrats, however inept, have formal carte blanche to visit its military installations and question its personnel. One of the only remaining shreds of Iraqi sovereignty is the survival of its dictatorial leader, who is considered sacrosanct.
Iraqi weapons don't kill people; Saddam Hussein and his thuggish minions do. Removing them is the only thing that will remove the problem. No doubt the Bush administration will take time to digest Iraq's report. But if it does not act soon thereafter, it will have failed. As Bush himself said at the Pentagon, "The temporary peace of denial and looking away from danger would only be a prelude to broader war and greater horror."