THE QUESTION OF WAR.

UNITED States; IRAQ; UNITED Kingdom; FRANCE

POWELL, Colin, 1937-2021; CHIRAC, Jacques, 1932-2019; BLAIR, Tony, 1953-

As war looms in Iraq, those of us who first started paying attention to world affairs during the bloody zenith of the Vietnam War are doing a lot of soul-searching. Nearly 30 years after it ended, Vietnam still looks to us like an appalling, unjustified, tragic waste of human life. But what about this new war on terrorism and what some are touting as its latest front--regime change in Baghdad, by brute force if necessary? Why is it that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and British Prime Minister Tony Blair (we'll discount U.S. President George W. Bush because of his unfortunate swagger and bluster) often seem more credible to some of us than, say, French President Jacques Chirac? Critics scoffed when Powell, in an impassioned address to the United Nations, raised the possibility of the damage that could be wreaked on America and its allies if Saddam Hussein's chemical and biological weapons fell into the hands of terrorists.