As war with Iraq nears, the chorus of those claiming Saddam Hussein is contained, the United Nations process is working or the U.S. must address other, more pressing problems, grows louder. Some hate war or mistrust any expression of American power, but by far the largest group of naysayers is well intentioned. Their mantra, if they had one, would be: "Why now?"

Why now? After all, Osama bin Laden remains at large, al-Qaeda is recovering from the Afghanistan strike, and North Korea's regime has run amok. But these are not reasons to defer action. They are reasons for the U.S. to act now and remove Saddam from power. Only then will al-Qaeda's followers grasp that the U.S. is a power to be reckoned with, committed to destroying its enemies. Only then will North Korea step back and assess the fate of dictators committed to amassing weapons of mass destruction.

Iraq is not a problem that cropped up after Sept. 11, 2001. It has festered for more than a decade, and reviewing that decade should remind some of the folly of a job half done. Since 1991, there have been repeated "full, final and complete" disclosures of Iraqi weapons programs, each of them incomplete. There were repeated threats to inspectors, escalations, retreats and entreaties for cooperation. There were 16 U.N. resolutions demanding compliance, none satisfied. We have now begun that process anew.

When President Bush addressed the U.N. last September, he made clear that the international community could not stand idly by, a cat's paw to some tin-pot dictator. And when the U.N. Security Council responded to the challenge with Resolution 1441, it stated that "false statements or omissions" or less than full cooperation would constitute a further "material breach" of Iraq's obligations to comply with the resolution.

Last week, in a briefing to the Security Council, U.N. weapons inspections chief Hans Blix stated that there was nothing new in Iraq's last "full, final and complete" declaration; in other words, answers to key questions were omitted. Blix and Mohamed El-Baradei, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency, also stated that Iraq had provided an inadequate list of weapons scientists to the U.N. and that Iraq was not cooperating in providing access to those scientists. In other words, Iraq has already met the U.N.'s standard for a "material breach."

This is not a game, with endless do-overs and second chances. This is not a hunt-and-peck mission by which 100 inspectors scour a country of 24 million for weapons of mass destruction. This is about the disarmament of Iraq based on information from Iraq's government. Saddam has missed his chance, and 12 more months or 12 more years won't solve the problem. 

For as long as Saddam is in power, he will threaten the U.S. and the rest of the world. There is no benefit in waiting; the danger must be met head-on.