AT WAR: Against Farce.

The December 8 deadline for Iraq to reveal its atomic-, biological-, and chemical-weapons programs comes after we go to press, but before most readers will get this issue. Think of it as the bank of the Rubicon.

The U.N. monitors have brought to their work an air of what would be farce, if the stakes were not life and death. As the Washington Post reported, Hans Blix, executive chairman of the U.N. team, kept experienced hands off his team because the Iraqis found them too tough. "We just knew too much," complained Richard Spertzel, who once headed biological-weapons inspections for the U.N. "They couldn't pull the wool over our eyes." Instead, Blix has been beating the bushes and trolling the cathouses -- in one case, literally, for the Post found on his team a Marine vet from Virginia whose munitions experience is 20 years old, and much of whose time in civilian life has been spent running an S&M sex club. Blix's Keystone Kops drive from their Baghdad hotel in Toyota Land Cruisers, shadowed by their hosts, who radio ahead to the relevant death factory as soon as they guess the destination. Not surprisingly, every time the Blixens have showed up, the Iraqis have been prepared.

Will President Bush be bound by such a charade? In a Pentagon speech, he was laconically threatening. "So far," he said, "the signs are not encouraging." Iraq had fired on British ...