How to win hearts and minds

Saddam Hussein’s mountain of documents now awaiting analysis by UN experts has temporarily flummoxed those in hot pursuit. It has thus bought a little more time before a final reckoning is visited upon him. He is playing a weak hand with customary tactical adroitness.

But the underlying realities have not changed. Despite seasonal injunctions to moderation by respected generals, ambassadors and bishops here, we should not allow ourselves to fall prey to the liberal illusion that, so long as no clear or present danger from Iraq is seen to threaten directly the national security of the UK or the US, international inaction is a cost-free option. The evidence of Iraq’s proscribed mass weapons programmes during the 1990s was compelling. The litany of Iraq’s defiance and deception of the UN over more than a decade has set a new standard of cynicism for unscrupulous world leaders. It bodes ill for law and order in the years ahead.