In his Sept. 12 speech to the United Nations, President Bush challenged that body to either come up with immediate decisive action on Saddam Hussein’s blatant, decade-long violations of previous U.N. resolutions or be deemed “irrelevant.” In light of what has transpired over the past week, it is clear that the lifelong diplomats assembled in New York have no idea of just how irrelevant they have already become.

On Monday Tariq Aziz, Hussein’s deputy prime minister, conveyed a letter to the U.N. declaring that Iraq would submit after all to the unconditional return of U.N. weapons inspectors, who have been barred since 1998. Although many of our jittery European and Arab allies pounced on that glimmer of hope, it is clear they are once again being misled—and that, as both Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have said, they are being fooled by a Hussein “ploy.” Following Bush’s speech, world opinion had slowly begun turning back in America's favor, to the point where Saudi Arabia had said that we could use their bases to launch military attacks and several European nations had voiced their support for future military intervention. Following Iraq’s release of this letter, some of those countries have jumped right back on the fence—which is exactly where Saddam wants them.

Nobody should be fooled. Iraq’s definition of “unconditional” is not at all what either the U.S. or the U.N. inspectors mean. In fact, Monday’s letter already contained a caveat: U.N. inspectors should respect the “sovereignty” of Iraqi lands, which means that once again Hussein, Aziz, et al will try to keep them out of palaces, bunkers and the like. When that happens and the U.S. tries to go back to the U.N. and ask for a Security Council resolution to use force, it will mean there has been only further delay and the Iraqi coalition-splitting tactics will have proved successful.

Bush is correct in not being content to watch the entire play when he knows what is going to happen in the last act. No matter what any so-called expert says about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, no outsider has been able to collect any evidence to verify their assertions since 1998. In addition to thumbing his nose at almost every U.N. resolution since 1991, which ought to anger our European allies, and his efforts over the last 20 years to build nuclear weapons and support worldwide terror, Hussein has amassed a brainwashed following in Iraq and parts of the Middle East, and is one of the last modern war criminals still running his country. There is enough moral and political justification for U.N. military action, which surely means that there is plenty for Anglo-American intervention but we should not have to do this alone.

Many Americans, as well as citizens worldwide, may wonder about the timing of this discussion, coming in the midst of America’s unfinished war on terrorism, but since little has been achieved over the past 10 years on the Iraq issue, earning support could simply be a matter of shaking the body politic out of its complacency. Thanks to the Bush and Blair governments, the world is closer than ever before to removing weapons of mass destruction from the hands of Iraq’s madman dictator. Gung-ho for war? More like gung-ho for international peace and safety.

Those who disagree, including our usual European allies, still believe that Saddam Hussein is the type of leader who can be deterred from using all weapons at his disposal, or be “contained in a box” like the former Soviet Union. But all Hussein has showed over the last 10 years is that, in a box, he can still build weapons of mass destruction—which means he will never be irrelevant.