If not now, when?

Before I go on, let me welcome ChicagoGuy to our merry band. Pajama Guy and I met in Chicago before we went our separate ways, so it's good to see the Hog Butcher For The World represented.

I have a friend with a five-year old. The boy will misbehave and my friend gives him a "last chance." The boy keeps misbehaving and the father keeps giving him last chances. Sooner or later, however, there has to be a last "last chance" or the concept is meaningless.

I sometimes feel the same way about our invasion of Iraq. Iraq had defied us for years. We had gone the extra mile, gotten a unanimous UN resolution threatening consequences if Saddam didn't comply. He didn't and we invaded.

My friends reply couldn't we have waited just another six months? Sure, we could have waited six months. And then another six months. We could have given last chance after last chance, and Saddam would laugh at us while our credibility crumbled along with the sanctions. I told them you have to be pretty naive to think we'd have gotten more support if we'd just waited.

It seems to me the Duelfer Report supports my view. If it wasn't clear before, it sure is now that France, Russia and China were playing us--they were stringing us along, making meaningless statements against Iraq while secretly (and not so secretly) opposing any intervention. Ultimately, they wanted the sanctions to be lifted.

Much of the opposition was funded by Saddam, who spent billions siphoned from the UN Oil-for-Food Program to bribe politicians and others to see things his way. And now we know, falsely assured the US would not invade, Saddam was planning to quickly reconstitute his WMD programs as soon as he had the chance.

Imagine if we had waited. The pressure to drop sanctions would have increased, making any invasion impossible. (If you think it was hard after Saddam defied a U.N. resolution, imagine how hard it would be when relations with Iraq were being normalized.) Saddam would still be a powerful, loose cannon in the center of the Middle East, perhaps hoping to go out in a blaze of glory.