Keywords

Inspectors

Politics

We were all wrong,” says weapons inspector David Kay. Actually, no. There was one group whose prewar estimates of Iraqi nuclear, chemical and biological capabilities have turned out to be devastatingly close to reality—the U.N. inspectors.

This is an important point, not just for understanding what went wrong in Iraq, but also as the President turns his attention to the problem of nuclear proliferation. International organizations and treaties are essential to this endeavor. Unfortunately, Bush spent the first three years of his term doing his best to undermine just those institutions.

Moreover, Bush’s proposals involved an essentially ad hoc U.S. program rather than a carefully formulated international effort backed by treaties and international organizations.

The only reasonable conclusion is that –

the United States — with its overwhelming military advantage in the world, conventional and nuclear — seems bent on continuing to create, and threaten the use of, nuclear weapons.

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