The Endgame
EDITORIAL The Endgame President Bush has a keen sense of timing. When support slackens for the war on terrorism and regime change in Iraq, Bush strikes. After the liberation of Afghanistan, he...
...The president has met every one of their demands...
...Jeffrey Goldberg of the New Yorker, for one, has reported voluminously on the al Qaeda connection...
...The president has cleared a better path—for action that removes Saddam and liberates Iraq...
...Bush and Powell have complied, with Powell offering copious and highly specific details...
...The time for wooing those predisposed to distrust the president and America is over...
...Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle repeatedly insisted that the American people "need to know more," and that the president must present the evidence about Iraq to the public before going to war...
...Especially Iraq...
...And the time for waging a full-scale campaign for a new U.N...
...Fred Barnes, for the Editors...
...Senator Edward Kennedy wants a new congressional resolution, but that's a non-starter...
...Those inspections have failed, according to Bush and Powell and also Hans Blix, the U.N...
...It's hard to see the point of devoting much time or effort to securing a second resolution...
...He got one...
...Indeed it is, and the Bush administration is right to act accordingly by accelerating war preparations...
...The time for inspections is over...
...The unpersuaded are beside the point now...
...War is the next step...
...Meanwhile, Saddam is already making concessions to U.N...
...Bush backed that up the next day by declaring, "The game is over...
...Now, against the threat of never-ending U.N...
...Here, the administration should be careful...
...When criticism of going after Iraq mounted last summer—former national security adviser Brent Scow-croft's attack was the most damaging—the president answered with a scorching speech at the United Nations...
...Surprisingly, Bush has said he would welcome such a resolution and may actively seek one...
...Next was repudiating unilateral military action...
...inspectors, who will probably report they're finally making progress and urge that inspections be continued for months more...
...Bush has eluded all such traps except the question of the second resolution...
...That's 34 countries, and no doubt more are to come...
...One providing U.N...
...And a resolution that says Iraq is further in material breach of the earlier resolution would be superfluous...
...The time for waiting to see if Saddam's Arab neighbors will convince him to go into exile is over...
...inspections chief...
...Yet few have endorsed deposing Saddam—columnist Mary McGrory of the Washington Post is the exception—and many more have come up with new demands...
...Enough, enough," Powell concluded...
...Finally there's the demand that Bush take his case to the U.N...
...Their first requirement for Bush was to seek a congressional resolution approving war with Iraq...
...His State of the Union last month made the case for removing Saddam Hussein from power...
...approval for war with Iraq is unlikely...
...inspections in Iraq and delaying tactics by France and China and Russia, Bush has struck again...
...What else...
...Security Council last week for stockpiling forbidden weapons of mass destruction and forging links with al Qaeda terrorists...
...Bush should ignore their pleas...
...To this, the response of the nay-sayers is that before moving against Iraq Bush should seek a second resolution from the U.N...
...Fussing over inspections, the U.N., and what might entice the French to join the anti-Saddam alliance leads to inaction...
...This is supposedly needed to develop still more international backing for war with Iraq...
...It's global: Albania, Angola, Australia, Bahrain, Britain, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Chile, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Guinea, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Oman, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Yemen...
...After the liberation of Afghanistan, he used his 2002 State of the Union address to broaden the goals of the war and target Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as "the axis of evil...
...It was reinforced by Secretary of State Colin Powell's irrefutable indictment of Iraq at the U.N...
...But consider the alliance of countries that now supports Bush in one form or another...
...resolution against Iraq is over, too...
...The French, the Chinese, and perhaps theRus-sians are bent on constraining Bush by quibbling over the resolution for as long as possible...
...But even before they did, Saddam's acquisition of weapons of mass destruction and his ties to terrorists weren't exactly secret...
...He did that, too, gaining a tough new resolution on inspections in Iraq last fall...
...Of course the United States was never going to act alone, if only because Prime Minister Tony Blair ensured Great Britain would stick with us on Iraq...
...The demand for another resolution is simply another in a seemingly endless series of traps designed to delay the day of reckoning...
Vol. 8 • February 2003 • No. 22
