At war: Closing the Case.(Brief Article)

For weeks, both supporters and opponents of war with Iraq have urged that the administration "make the case" for the military action it is presumed to favor. From the opponents, the demand was mostly disingenuous: No case can be made that would win their support. But supporters reckoned that the administration was unwise to sit out the debate that it had spawned by talking about "regime change." By signaling that he was unsure of what he wanted to do, President Bush had given opponents of war -- abroad, in Congress, and within his own administration -- an incentive to hold out and, indeed, to lobby against a war. Public support for war with Iraq, as measured in polls, has fallen over the course of the year (although a small majority still favors it).

In late August, the administration entered the debate in a substantial way. Vice President Cheney made a speech claiming that Saddam Hussein is intent on developing deliverable weapons of mass destruction and that he might be close to achieving that goal. He echoed the president's contention that "time is not on our side." Cheney argued, against some critics, that it would be irresponsible to wait until the regime had those weapons before moving against it. It was not enough, he said, to insist on the Iraqis' compliance with weapons inspections. They had worked around such inspections before. ("We often learned more as the result of defections than from the inspection regime," Cheney noted, and Saddam tested missiles "almost literally under the noses of the U.N. inspectors.")

War against Iraq ...