Imagine if, several months ago, when the United Nations was trying to get inspectors back into Iraq, President Bush had said, "My good friend Saddam, if you do not allow inspectors into your country, then we will . . . hold your murderous nuclear-tainted hand and snort anthrax while we dance around your pyre of innocent Iraqis in a joyful chorus of kumbaya."

Now, would Mr. Hussein have allowed those inspectors into his country?

Yet with the threat of war and the pressure of America's military, look at all the concessions, however phony, he has been making of late. Of course, Saddam's supposed conceptions have been superficial, because he believes he can dupe the world.

During the wave of protests over the weekend, a few particular occurrences stand out. One, Saddam was gloating. He was happy, not because he enjoys a rollicking good day of festivities, nor because he is a pacifist. He was happy because he loves waging war on mankind, and he hates it when others try to interfere, and he thinks his tricks are succeeding.

Two, anti-war protesters in the Middle East were carrying portraits of Saddam because they wanted to support him in the face of the evil American dictatorship. So now, Saddam is the oppressed victim, and America, namely Bush, is the evil tyrant. If Saddam is the victim of Bush, then what does that make the Iraqi people?

Remember the protests against American action in Afganistan, and consider how the citizens of that nation are now free of the oppressive rule of the Taliban. Now consider the hundreds of thousands of Kurds and others slaughtered by Saddam's regime. Ponder the millions who have escaped Iraq in search for freedom. Think about how Saddam allows women to be raped, children to starve, and how he forces families to pay for the unjust executions of their relatives.

Refusing to consider war means standing by while the Iraqi people suffer these evils and while Saddam and his cohorts (e.g., Bin Laden) make plans to inflict similar evils on the entire word. Sitting this one out would be a sin of omission.

The Bush administration was blamed for not taking any action-any preemptive strikes-before the 9/11 attack. Now, Bush is threatening a preemptive strike, in order to prevent the same sort of thing from happening again. Yet, the selfsame critics from a year ago now are vehemently opposed to the notion of prevention as a cure. This conjures memories of Winston Churchill trying to persuade Neville Chamberlain and the British populace that Hitler was not only an evil man, but a threat to the world.

There are times when it is necessary to minimize hazards, times when it is necessary to use force to set an oppressed people free, times when it is necessary to strike the bully before he blows up the neighborhood, and times when one must courageously fight for the God-given human rights of life and liberty. The Saddam cancer is quite malign, and quite willing to spread throughout the word via terrorist arteries. It is time for an experienced surgeon to step in, to root out the disease that has already claimed many lives, and strike it before it transforms from a local malady to one of monstrous proportions.

• My view on Iraq