THE 6TH & 7TH SIGNS:

War is only feasible because Iraq isn't a threat to the US: A diplomatic fix will only be acceptable if it humiliates Saddam (Martin Woollacott, September 20, 2002, The Guardian)

The odd thing here is that the more overwhelming the evidence is that Saddam has usable weapons of mass destruction, the less of a case there is for going to war, because even the the fiercest hawks would presumably agree that nothing would be worth the damage their use would cause. War becomes possible, but less justifiable in strict terms, the less likely it is that he has such weapons or could acquire them in a very short time. The illogicality of the debate on "evidence" is that wholly convincing data would rule out war, while merely indicative evidence that Saddam is struggling to maintain or restore his weapons programmes is determined in advance to be insufficient by many critics of American policy.

It is precisely because he is not now a real threat to the US, nor a real ally of al-Qaida, and nor, probably, in possession of usable weapons, that war is feasible. This is why it was shrewd of President Bush, at the UN, to make the issue not one of "proof" of possession, or of a threat to neighbours or to America, but of Iraq's refusal to abide by the bargain which the regime made with the international community in 1991, and of what this continuing refusal might bode for the future.

It is not sufficiently recognised that in going to the UN in the way he did Bush has genuinely transformed the situation. He has changed the issue and changed the context. As long as the US was pursuing Iraq on its own, the majority of other countries, including America's allies, could avoid engagement. The persistent pattern of the last decade over Iraq, long before the Bush administration came into office, has been of wilfulness on one side and irresponsibility on the other. America and Britain were isolated in policies which other nations were happy to point out were not producing either full Iraqi disarmament or a change of regime.

Yet these others offered no solutions of their own - except ending sanctions - which would relieve the suffering of ordinary Iraqis, but was also unconvincingly proposed as a means of bringing down Saddam. In other words, two countries followed an ineffective course which arguably penalised the Iraqi people without bringing the change that many of them undoubtedly craved, while other countries abdicated, denied, or fantasised.

Who dares, wins (Pat Buchanan, September 18, 2002, Townhall.com)

Whatever one may think of the wisdom of invading Iraq and opening a third front in the war on terror, President Bush's address to the United Nations was a tour de force.

The president gave it to the Tower of Babel with the bark on, as "Cactus Jack" Garner used to say. With Kofi Annan seated behind him, Bush bluntly told the U.N. what it already knew: A decade of its commands had been treated by Saddam Hussein with utter contempt. Either the U.N. acts now to enforce its resolutions, or the U.N. becomes as irrelevant as the League of Nations in the 1930s when it failed to sanction Mussolini for his invasion of Ethiopia. [...]

When the president walked off the podium, the U.N. was left with this alternative: Send Iraq an ultimatum to open up its arsenals to U.N. inspections, and authorize force to back the ultimatum if Iraq balks, or America will go it alone.

Leadership creates consensus, and the president's address demonstrated that truth. The Security Council is now beavering away on an ultimatum to Baghdad.

Henry Hyde began today's House hearings on Iraq by quoting the Chinese adage/curse: "May you live in interesting times". Well, there's interesting times and then there are times in which both the Guardian and Pat Buchanan write columns portraying George W. Bush as touched by genius. Can the Rapture be far behind? Posted by Orrin Judd at September 19, 2002 11:05 PM