Posted on: Wednesday, March 3, 2004

EDITORIAL
U.N. gains credibility on weapons debate

A new report from U.N. weapons inspectors contending there were no weapons of mass destruction of any note in Iraq post-1994 will undoubtedly generate a fresh round of "I-told-you-so's" by critics of the Bush administration.

But the real significance of this latest report, which confirms assertions made by U.S. chief inspector David Kay, is that it should reinforce the importance of full U.N. involvement in the postwar rebuilding phase.

Administration officials had been dismissive of previous U.N. efforts to find weapons of mass destruction, suggesting they were either inept or possibly even tainted by a political agenda.

It was one of the elements that pushed the Bush administration to keep the United Nations at arm's length during the launch of the Iraq war.

This latest report lends strong credence to the conclusion that the U.N. inspectors were simply reporting the truth of what they found. And it lends weight to the rejected U.N. position that there was no need to rush into war.

Recently, the United States has been working more closely with the U.N. on the difficult task of rebuilding Iraq and establishing a stable government. This latest report gives the United Nations fresh credibility, credibility that the United States could sorely use on the ground there today.