ELEVEN weeks after the U.N. Security Council unanimously passed a resolution demanding -- yet again -- that Iraq disclose and disarm all its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs, it is appropriate to ask, "Has Saddam Hussein finally decided to voluntarily disarm?" Unfortunately, the answer is a clear and resounding no.

There is no mystery to voluntary disarmament. Countries that decide to disarm lead inspectors to weapons and production sites, answer questions before they are asked, state publicly and often the intention to disarm and urge their citizens to cooperate.

The world knows from examples set by South Africa, Ukraine and Kazakhstan what it looks like when a government decides that it will give up its weapons of mass destruction. The critical common elements of these efforts include a high-level political commitment to disarm, national initiatives to dismantle weapons programs, and full cooperation and transparency.

In 1989, South Africa made the strategic decision to dismantle its covert nuclear weapons program. It destroyed its arsenal of seven weapons and later submitted to rigorous verification by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Inspectors were given complete access to all nuclear facilities (operating and defunct) and the people who worked there. They were also presented with thousands of documents detailing, for example, the daily operation of uranium enrichment facilities as well as the construction and dismantling of specific weapons.

Ukraine and Kazakhstan demonstrated a similar pattern of cooperation when they decided to rid themselves of the nuclear weapons, intercontinental ballistic missiles and heavy bombers inherited from the Soviet Union.

With significant assistance from the United States -- warmly accepted by both countries -- disarmament was orderly, open and fast. Nuclear warheads were returned to Russia. Missile silos and heavy bombers were destroyed or dismantled -- once in a ceremony attended by the American and Russian defense chiefs. In one instance, Kazakhstan revealed the existence of a ton of highly enriched uranium and asked the United States to remove it, lest it fall into the wrong hands.

Iraq's behavior could not offer a starker contrast. Instead of a commitment to disarm, Iraq has a high-level political commitment to maintain and conceal its weapons, led by Saddam and his son Qusay, who controls the Special Security Organization, which runs Iraq's concealment activities.

Instead of implementing national initiatives to disarm, Iraq maintains institutions whose sole purpose is to thwart the work of the inspectors. And instead of full cooperation and transparency, Iraq has filed a false declaration to the United Nations that amounts to a 12,200-page lie.

For example, the declaration fails to account for or explain Iraq's efforts to get uranium from abroad, its manufacture of specific fuel for ballistic missiles it claims not to have, and the gaps previously identified by the United Nations concerning more than two tons of the raw materials needed to produce thousands of gallons of anthrax and other biological weapons.

Iraq's declaration even resorted to unabashed plagiarism, with lengthy passages of United Nations reports copied word for word (or edited to remove any criticism of Iraq) and presented as original text. Far from informing, the declaration is intended to cloud and confuse the true picture of Iraq's arsenal. It is a reflection of the regime's well-earned reputation for dishonesty and constitutes a material breach of Resolution 1441, which set up the current inspections program.

Unlike other nations that have voluntarily disarmed -- and in defiance of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 -- Iraq is not allowing inspectors "immediate, unimpeded, unrestricted access" to facilities and people involved in its weapons program.

As a recent inspection at the home of an Iraqi nuclear scientist demonstrated, and other sources confirmed, material and documents are still being moved around in farcical shell games. The regime has "free and unrestricted" use of aerial reconnaissance.

The list of people involved with weapons of mass destruction programs, which the United Nations required Iraq to provide, ends with those who worked in 1991 -- even though the United Nations had previously established that the programs continued after that date.

Interviews with those scientists and weapons officials identified by inspectors have taken place only in the watchful presence of the regime's agents. Given the duplicitous record of the regime, its recent promises to do better can only be seen as an attempt to stall for time.

Last week's finding by inspectors of 12 chemical warheads not included in Iraq's declaration was particularly troubling. In the past, Iraq has filled this type of warhead with sarin -- a deadly nerve agent used by Japanese terrorists in 1995 to kill 12 Tokyo subway passengers and sicken thousands of others.

Richard Butler, the former chief U.N. arms inspector, estimates that if a larger type of warhead that Iraq has made and used in the past were filled with VX (an even deadlier nerve agent) and launched at a major city, it could kill up to 1 million people. Iraq has also failed to provide U.N. inspectors with documentation of its claim to have destroyed its VX stockpiles.

Many questions remain about Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and arsenal -- and it is Iraq's obligation to provide answers. It is failing in spectacular fashion.

By both its actions and its inactions, Iraq is proving not that it is a nation bent on disarmament, but that it is a nation with something to hide. Iraq is still treating inspections as a game. It should know that time is running out.

THE window of legitimacy -- that interval during which the United States could mass its forces around Iraq and prepare for war, ostensibly in the name of the United Nations -- is now officially closed. In November, we obtained, at a price, a unanimous U.N. Security Council resolution demanding Iraqi disarmament. Today, Germany and France and Russia and China have declared themselves opposed to war so long as Hans Blix can run around Iraq merely "containing" Saddam.

The lull is over. Germany, which has declared its opposition to war under any circumstances, assumes the presidency of the Security Council in February. France has just threatened to veto any resolution authorizing the use of force. The Security Council break with America is now open. Colin Powell, architect of the administration's U.N. strategy, is described as "caught off guard " by this utterly predictable turn. As a result, the president now faces the moment of truth.

The one advantage of Resolution 1441 was that it gave us a window of legitimacy during which to mobilize, position equipment, launch carriers, line up bases -- in short, create the infrastructure for disarming Saddam. However, now that the "world community" has shown that it never seriously intended to disarm Iraq, we are back on our own. This is the moment. There is no turning back.

The president cannot logically turn back. He says repeatedly, and rightly, that inspectors can only verify a voluntary disarmament. They are utterly powerless to force disarmament on a regime that lies, cheats and hides. And having said, again correctly, that the possession of weapons of mass destruction by Saddam is an intolerable threat to the security of the United States, there is no logical way to rationalize walking away from Iraq -- even if the president wanted to.

Nor can the president turn back politically. He began the march on Iraq with his State of the Union address a year ago. He identified the axis of evil as the single greatest threat to America and the world. To now admit that he can and will do nothing to meet that very threat would not just leave him without a foreign policy, it would destroy his credibility as a leader.

Most importantly, there is no turning back geopolitically. After the liberation of Afghanistan, the United States made disarming Iraq the paramount American security objective in the post-9/11 world. To now pass off Iraq to hapless Hans for "containment" 1990s-style would shatter the credibility of post-9/11 American resolve that was achieved by the demonstration of American power and will in Afghanistan.

Credibility matters deeply in a world of enemies -- and of fence-sitters who must decide which side to choose. Particularly after the collapse of our position on North Korea, which can only be explained away as a temporary necessity while we gird ourselves for Iraq, the entire Bush Doctrine, which sees the conjunction of rogue states, terrorists and weapons of mass destruction as the great existential challenge of our age, would collapse.

Since there is no turning back, and since the president is in any event committed to act, it is critical to act quickly. Delay will cost us every day.

Part of the reason is military. You cannot forever keep troops on alert, carriers on station, regional allies committed.

Part is geopolitical. Our distraction and delay on Iraq has emboldened enemies elsewhere. (And not just France.) The North Koreans have grown so brazen during this year of American hesitation that they have kicked out weapons inspectors, withdrawn from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, threatened to resume missile testing and reopened their plutonium reprocessing plant.

And there is a price to be paid at home. The country is in malaise, a combination of economic slowdown and psychic apprehension, a state of phony-war suspension as we await the inevitable conflict.

The window of legitimacy having closed, delay has no upside. There will be no talking our way out of the opposition of France, Germany and others. The only tonic for that will be an American victory that changes the landscape of the region.

France will be speaking very differently of the United States when a decent, democratizing, pro-American government in liberated Baghdad begins its rule -- and opens bids for oil contracts. Our cynical sometime-friends will astonish us with their, umm, flexibility as they accommodate themselves to the reality of a Middle East without Saddam, without his weapons of mass destruction and with its first chance since decolonization for a real birth of freedom.



Krauthammer is a Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist based in Washington, D.C.

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For more full debate on this Condi Salvo, see

http://dc.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=47540&group=webcast

(oh, and B.A., you might want to go over there because you'll find a few people like a dude named "Soldier" and someone going by Pat Kincade, and it would be far better for your health if you actually bonded with real people, not your alter-ego, Simple Simon - talking to yourself is dangerous to your health)