BRING BACK BLIX

Why is the United States so afraid of Hans Blix, the soft-spoken Swedish weapons inspector? Rather than burnishing its international image by cooperating with the other members of the United Nations Security Council, the Bush administration remains determined to find any weapons of mass destruction on its own in Iraq. Despite devoting thousands of soldiers to this effort, it has found no proven chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. It has not found the makings for these arms either.

This winter, Mr. Blix said his inspectors needed more time to find WMD or evidence that they were being made, in contravention of U.N. rules. The administration suggested the inspectors were incompetent and that the banned weapons – tons of them – certainly existed in Iraq. Now, after much looking around – and U.S. forces have more freedom to search than did Mr. Blix – no weapons have been found. The U.S. inspectors need more times, maybe months, President Bush and his military commanders are now saying. Maybe the looting mobs celebrating Baghdad’s liberation took the weapons with them, administration members have speculated.

Maybe. But letting Mr. Blix and his team join the search will increase the efficiency and credibility of the weapons hunt. Having more people, some of them experts in this field, looking for the banned materials will increase the chances of success. In addition, if weapons or other incriminating materials are confirmed, the U.N. stamp of authenticity will quiet fears that the United States is so desperate to find WMD in Iraq that it planted evidence.

Determining whether the weapons were in Iraq is important because the war was fought on theory of pre-emption. The public deserves to know further whether the White House had evidence that the types of weapons it described – the president referred to a mushroom cloud, a clear nod toward nuclear weapons – was in fact accurate for this theory of war to be credible.

Ridding the world of a leader who ruthlessly killed his own people was a welcome result of the war, but it was not the primary reason stated for the war. An inquiry could help dispel fears that the invasion of Iraq was about oil or empire building. Or, it could show that billions of dollars was spent to topple a horrible dictator whose army was equipped merely with AK-47s and aged Russian tanks. Either way, the public should know whether a mushroom cloud was a real possibility or just part of the fog of war.