I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Saddam Hussein is a menace to world security, and he must be removed from power.

I’ve been a close observer of Iraqi politics since the first Gulf War. But my support for President Bush’s plans to go to war with Iraq stems from a conversation I had with Connecticut senator Joseph Lieberman last March. Lieberman, who has wanted to rid the world of Saddam since 1991, when he called for "total victory" against the Baathist dictator, describes Hussein as a "ticking time bomb" and offers a three-part test to demonstrate the rationale for removing him from power. First, we must ask if Hussein is working to develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Second, we must determine if he has demonstrated a propensity to use these weapons. And third, we must assess whether Hussein has a motive to use these weapons against America and our allies in the Middle East. The answer to each and every one of these questions is yes. And the evidence is there for anyone unwilling to be confused by reflexive antiwar rhetoric.

Is Hussein developing weapons of mass destruction? Hussein has tried at least once to build a nuclear facility. In 1981, it was bombed by the Israeli Air Force and destroyed. Two high-ranking Iraqi defectors — including Khidhir Hamza, who worked on Hussein’s nuclear program throughout the 1980s and 1990s and authored Saddam’s Bombmaker: The Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi Nuclear and Biological Weapons Agenda (Scribner, 2000) — confirm that Hussein is desperate to develop his own nuclear-weapons program.

Is he willing to use such weapons? In 1988, Hussein used chemical weapons against his own people — the Kurds of Halabja and Goktapa. Thousands died. The effects of the nerve gas linger today among the survivors in the form of high rates of infertility, birth defects, and cancer. (To truly grasp this horror, read Jeffrey Goldberg’s March 25 New Yorker piece on Hussein’s nerve-gas attack against the Kurds. It’s available online at www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?020325fa_FACT1.)

Is Hussein willing to attack the United States or its allies? In 1990, he invaded neighboring Kuwait. In 1991, he launched 39 Scud missiles at Israel. In 1993, he plotted to assassinate former president George H.W. Bush. His rhetoric repeatedly denounces America, Israel, and, often, the other Arab states.

One thing antiwar activists don't seem to realize is that it’s been the official policy of the US government to work for Hussein’s demise since 1998, when President Bill Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act, which mandates that America work with the Iraqi opposition to remove the dictator. The act also authorized funding of $97.5 million for the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the main Iraqi opposition group. Since then, however, a combination of bureaucratic bungling, quasi-official opposition from the CIA and the State Department, and inertia resulted in the government’s failure to send those funds to the INC. My suspicion — developed through numerous interviews with INC head Ahmad Chalabi — is that factions within the US government, perhaps under pressure from other Arab regimes, would prefer to deal with Hussein in Iraq than with the unknown possibility of a relatively democratic opposition movement. Count this as yet another in a long line of devastating foreign-policy mistakes our government has made.

Opponents of the war with Iraq may believe that they occupy the moral high ground because they advocate nonviolence. But there is such a thing as making a just and moral case for war. President Bush may not be communicating it as effectively as he could, but such a case exists. If, five years from now, Hussein successfully arranges for a terrorist cell to detonate a nuclear bomb, killing 100,000 innocents, we will be guilty of not having stopped him when we could have. Didn’t we learn anything from World War II? There is a special place in hell reserved for those whose willful blindness permits evildoers to do harm.

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