The loaded gun

If U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell didn't produce a smoking gun in his case against Iraq at the United Nations Wednesday, he certainly produced a loaded gun.

The Saddam Hussein regime that was given one last chance three months ago to cooperate with U.N. arms inspectors in disarming weapons of mass destruction still has not accounted for:

Between 100 to 500 tons of chemical weapons and 16,000 battlefield rockets.

Four tons of VX nerve gas.

Whereabouts of missiles with a range of 620 miles, or more, putting Russia and other nations beyond Iraq's immediate neighbors in potential danger.

At least 15 munitions bunkers with active chemical munitions inside.

18 trucks that Iraq uses as mobile biological weapons labs.

Powell also connected the dots between Baghdad and al-Qaida operatives, showing how they are working together and that some followers of a senior associate of Osama bin Laden are currently in the Iraqi capital, with the approval of Saddam.

In his powerfully persuasive presentation, Powell displayed satellite photos showing cleanup activities at nearly 30 suspected weapons sites in the days before inspectors arrived.

He also played audio tapes of intercepted phone conversations between Iraqi military officers conspiring to hide prohibited vehicles from weapons inspectors. Another tape dealt with removing a reference to nerve agents from written instructions.

One would have to be in total denial not to conclude, in the words of British Foreign Minister Jack Straw, that "Saddam is defying every one of us (in the U.N. Security Council). He questions our resolve and is gambling we will lose our nerve rather than enforce our will."

If the Security Council permits Saddam's defiance to continue indefinitely, then as President George W. Bush pointed out last September, the United Nations will prove itself impotent and will deserve to go the way of the old League of Nations.

The prognosis is not promising. The United Nations is depending upon the likes of Russia, China and France.

That reliance is more than a little dubious, considering that neither Russia nor China share our most basic values. France presumably does, but never has shown anything resembling a backbone - and, like Russia and China and most of the rest of the United Nations, France has little to fear from a weaponized Iraq: It is America that is being threatened. Much of the world, sadly, is willing to hang us out to dry.

Two key principles are at stake: the right of a free nation to protect itself from tyrants and terrorists, and the fundamental necessity of a world body that can see to global security.

The United States can, and will, see to the first - with or without U.N. acquiescence. The second, which involves nothing less than justification of the U.N.'s existence, is very much in doubt.

Like Saddam Hussein, the United Nations has been given a last chance - by the man in the Bush administration who most wants the United Nations to succeed.

The point of Powell's presentation was that the evidence is there to force Iraq to disarm and that time is running out. It also may be running out on the United Nations.