10088

08/25/2002
EDITORIAL NUMBER=0-10088

IRAQ REGIME REPLACEMENT

U.S. President George W. Bush has again made it clear that Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq must be replaced.

Speaking at an August 21^st news conference, President Bush said Saddam Hussein remains a threat and that removing his regime is "in the interests of the world." The Iraqi dictator, President Bush said, has done nothing to show that he is willing to forgo weapons of mass destruction, that he honors the Iraqi people, or that he values human life. Mr. Bush said that while the issue of how to achieve Saddam’s removal would be a matter of "consultation" and "deliberation," the U.S. is convinced that the Iraqi dictator represented a threat and would remain one as long as he holds power.

U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice recently delivered the same message. In an interview August 15^th with the British Broadcasting Corporation, she called the Iraqi dictator "an evil man who, left to his own devices, will wreak havoc again on his own population, his neighbors and, if he gets weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them, all of us." The prospect of Saddam Hussein acquiring such weapons, Ms. Rice said, "is a very powerful moral case for regime change," adding that "[w]e certainly do not have the luxury of doing nothing."

Ms. Rice’s comments echoed those made earlier this year by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to members of the U.S. House of Representatives. "We still believe strongly in regime change in Iraq," Mr. Powell said, "and we look forward to the day when a democratic, representative government at peace with its neighbors leads Iraq to rejoin the family of nations." Regime change, Secretary of State Powell said, "is something the United States might have to do alone."

Saddam Hussein’s regime has attacked Iraq’s neighbors, murdered Iraqi citizens, and defied the United Nations in continuing to pursue the development of weapons of mass destruction. Failure to thwart aggressive dictators has, as National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said, cost millions of lives in the past. "History is littered with cases of inaction that led to very grave consequences for the world," she said.

That is why President Bush has made it clear that Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq must be replaced.