It's always interesting to read Sen. John Warner's take on what is going on in Iraq today. But missing from the piece is exactly what George Will would do (not just what he wouldn't do) now in Iraq. After all, before the war he advanced straightforward arguments making the case for removing Saddam from power. Some examples:
[O]pposition to the war against Iraq rests on and sometimes does not rise above a truism, the fact that war costs lives. Opponents say if we leave Saddam in power but continue today's policy of containment, lives will be saved. But that is not true…. Under the UN sanctions, Saddam is allowed to sell enough oil to purchase food and medicine to meet the basic needs of the Iraqi people, but Saddam uses the money to fuel his war machine and lets the babies die. So another ten years of containment would involve the slaughter of at least another 360,000 Iraqis, 240,000 of them children under five. Walter Russell Mead says those are the low estimates. If the UN's numbers are right, another decade of containment would kill one million Iraqi civilians, including 600,000 children. So as Americans debate the morality of the war against Iraq, remember these numbers and remember this picture of an Iraqi child suffering the effects of the current policy of containment.
And:
[T]he demonstrators must know that if they turn President Bush into "the noble Duke of York" (who "had ten-thousand men, he marched them up to the top of the hill, and he marched them down again"), Saddam will bestride the Middle East, and emulators -- and weapons of mass destruction -- will proliferate....