Iraq - make the case

I'm not a "foreign policy expert". But I may now understand the Iraq debate - and whether we should attack Saddam Hussein.

A logical case can be made for attacking Iraq. It says that Saddam has, or is about to get, weapons of mass destruction, and is intent on using them. Only if Iraq is attacked soon can we stop even worse devastation.

If the evidence for this could be produced at the United Nations, the international community might reluctantly agree on military action. Just as it did for the Gulf War and Afghanistan.

However, no-one is making that case. Indeed, at the moment, opportunities to garner evidence are deliberately rejected.

Instead, people who argue for sending new teams of UN weapons inspectors back to Iraq are denounced as "naïve".

Well, maybe. World leaders don't come more dangerous and slippery than Saddam.

But what is the sudden hurry? Either there's new evidence Saddam is gaining deadly weapons - so, let's see it. Or it's a guess - so why not inspectors? Or the hurry is due to other deadlines, like the mid-term elections for the US Congress.

The only "case" President Bush has yet made is for "regime change". Well, everybody would like to see Saddam gone - just as we'd like to see Zimbabwe's Mugabe and many other brutal dictators go. But since when did we allow one country to decide who should govern another?