The reaction of Senator Kerry and other leading Democrats to the Duelfer Report on Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq is alarming to say the least. Leaving aside the fact that a majority of them obviously either didn’t read the report or are intentionally distorting it, there’s another alarming issue has been raised: if you read closely between the lines, it becomes very clear that the Democrats, had they been in power during the last few years, would probably have given Saddam Hussein everything that he was seeking.

Suppose John Kerry has been President during the period after September 11th. Under irresistible domestic pressure, he’d probably have had to make some moves towards a serious confrontation with Iraq and those moves would have almost certainly consisted of a trip to the UN and a return of UN weapons inspectors to Iraq. John Kerry keeps talking about how, if the UN inspections had gone on, “we’d have learned what we now know” (that Iraq “had no weapons of mass destruction”). So here’s the question that must be asked: if John Kerry had been President in 2003 and if the inspectors had, let’s say sometime in the summer of that year, come back with a report saying, “we find that Iraq has no stockpiles of prohibited weapons”, what would President Kerry have done then?

Think about it. Suppose we’re back in May of 2003 with President Kerry sitting in the Oval Office. Hans Blix is on CNN telling the world that his report concludes that Iraq has fully disarmed. What would the French, the Germans, the Chinese, and the Russians cry for next? Why, of course, they’d want the sanctions lifted, wouldn’t they? And what would President Kerry have to say to the “united will of the world” on such an important matter? And, even if he remained in support of the sanctions, would it really matter at that point? Sanctions in the name of the United States alone tend to do little good, especially against countries which lie upon rivers of oil: we’ve seen that in the case of Iran.

Does anyone think that the UN sanctions on Iraq would have, in the atmosphere of 2003, survived a report from the weapons inspectors which cleared Iraq of possessing weapons of mass destruction? I certainly don’t. In fact, given Senator Kerry’s long-standing penchant for trusting America’s enemies (the Vietnamese Communists, the Soviet Union, the Sandinistas, Iran, North Korea, etc.), I suspect that he’d have taken such a report as an opportunity for “reconciliation” and, even if he didn’t, I can’t imagine the French, Russians, or Chinese even bothering to pretend to abide by the sanctions at such a point. After all, they had much money to make and remarkably little to lose. It’s not like the UN would be able to do anything about it. Neither, for that matter, would John Kerry.

Consider this for a second given what we now know. Once sanctions were put in place, they weren’t going to be going back on short of another Iraqi invasion of some other nation in the Middle East. A year and a half would have now passed since the end of sanctions. We know now, thanks to interviews with most of the top officials of the regime, that Saddam planned on resuming his WMD programs once the sanctions were lifted. Former Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz estimated that, once the sanctions were lifted, Iraq would have a WMD stockpile again within two years. Others estimated that the time would be even shorter then that. Since, according to the Duelfer Report, the rapid reacquisition of WMD was the “guiding theme” of Saddam’s regime, I think it’s fair to estimate that he’d have gotten those weapons sooner rather than later.

The Democrats are fond of claiming that, prior to the invasion, the United States had “Saddam in a box.” That may well be true, but if it is so, it was a wet cardboard one. A few wrong steps (the same wrong steps, incidentally, that John Kerry now retroactively indicates that he’d have taken) and we’d have been back in 1990 again, with an unsanctioned Iraq vigorously pursuing WMD’s as well as supporting terrorism. Moreover, the unsanctioned Saddam of 2004 would be much more powerful than the Saddam of a 1990, since he would be universally accepted in the Moslem world (and probably much of the rest of the world as well) as having “beaten” the United States.

There was no reasonable alternative to the decision that President Bush made in March of 2003. Until the problem of Iraq was solved, no other problem in the region could be dealt with. How could the United States pressure Saudi Arabia to crack down on al-Qaeda within its own borders when the United States might still need Saudi bases to act against Saddam Hussein? How could the United States deal with Iran’s nuclear program and sponsorship of terrorism so long as Saddam lay on Iran’s Western border, always ready to make trouble?

In truth, the problem of Iraq stalled all forward progress anywhere in the Middle East. So long as the business of 1991 remained unfinished, then nothing else could be done. In some cases this was a result of geography, in others strategy; but in all the result was the same: paralysis. Operation Iraqi Freedom was a shock to the system of a region of the world which desperately needed one.

All of this raises a very real question: just what would John Kerry do if elected President of the United States about three weeks from now? Does anyone actually know? Most debates of the actual policies of John Kerry, were he to be elected, remind me of the debates of the old Kremlinologists who used to attempt to analyze who was in and out of favor within the Soviet hierarchy by deciphering tiny hints available in official photographs. “Well,” I’ll say, “if you hold this policy paper of his upside down on a 45 degree angle, it seems to indicate that he’ll…” This, of course, is a product of an environment as information-free as the Kerry campaign.

Would Saddam still be in power if John Kerry were President today? “Not necessarily” is the answer that John Kerry gave in the most recent debate. I take that to mean, “probably, but it’s always possible that he could have slipped in the shower and broken his neck.” So, let’s take that as a yes.

Now, as to the second question: if UN Weapons inspectors had come back with “what we now know” would UN Sanctions on Iraq have been lifted, especially under a President Kerry? Not necessarily, by which I mean, of course, “Yes, unless Aliens invaded the Earth and forced the French, Chinese, and Russians to cooperate in maintaining the sanctions.”

Would an unsanctioned Iraq have rapidly reacquired weapons of mass destruction? Not necessarily. Saddam might have converted to Buddhism and dedicated himself to finding Nirvana instead.

One begins to believe that that is how Senator Kerry thinks: not in terms of probabilities, but in terms of possibilities. “Sure, Saddam sought to defy the world for twelve years, but maybe he means in this time!” “Ok, this is Hitler’s eleventh “last demand”, but maybe this time it’s true!” “The North Koreans didn’t bother with the nicety of obeying the last treaty we signed with them, but maybe they’ll abide by the terms of the next one!” “Of course the Iranians are sitting on more oil then they’ll need for the next thousand years, but maybe they really do want nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Let’s give them nuclear fuel to find out!”

Perhaps Senator Kerry was right when, after some focus group told him to do so, he started telling everyone not put to sleep by his droning that, after a year of offering the most pessimistic assessment of the state of the nation possible, he was an optimist after all. He’s always optimistic that America can trust its enemies. Perhaps Lenin was only partially wrong about capitalists. Under John Kerry’s wise leadership, the American people won’t sell our enemies the rope with which they hang us: we’ll ship it to them in exchange for their promise not to.