Secretary of State Colin Powell accomplished his mission today. In his presentation to the UN Security Council, he established beyond a reasonable doubt — at least for anyone who has a reasonably open mind — that Saddam Hussein remains unwilling to disarm. That being the case, he has exhausted the “last chance” to do so that he was offered last Fall by President Bush, the U.S. Congress, and the Security Council.
Whether Hans Blix and his colleagues choose to acknowledge it or not, they have also completed their mission. They were to confirm Saddam’s voluntary and full compliance with Resolution 1441 and found him wanting. It is, at best, disingenuous to suggest that their job was to find the weapons of mass destruction and related technology that he remains determined to conceal — let alone that it could be accomplished if only they were allowed more time to seek needles in Iraqi haystacks.
Now the civilized world must fulfill its mission: to disarm Iraq in the only way that has any chance of being effective — by helping, through force of arms, the Iraqi people liberate their country from Saddam Hussein’s despotic and dangerous misrule. President Bush has properly promised to do so even if the U.N. is paralyzed into irrelevance. It’s time for him and a coalition of the willing to get the job done.
— Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is the president of the Center for Security Policy and a contributing editor for NRO.