In a great column, Stanley Kurtz lays out the terrible truth about Iraq, and why we simply cannot afford to wait any longer.

Let me tell you the truth about our reasons for invading Iraq. We are not invading Iraq to protect the credibility of the United Nations. We are not invading Iraq to bring democracy to the Arab world. We are not invading Iraq to save the Iraqi people from poverty and oppression. The reason we are invading Iraq is to prevent Saddam Hussein from obtaining nuclear weapons.

It is true that Saddam’s defiance of the United Nations is important. That defiance does help to undermine the credibility of international agreements. But what really destroyed the credibility of our multilateral agreements was the willingness of countries like France, Russia, and China to violate international trade sanctions against Iraq that they themselves had agreed to. Quite simply, these countries — supposed pillars of multilateral legality — allowed themselves to be bought off by Saddam’s oil. The real importance of Saddam’s defiance of the international sanctions is what it reveals about Saddam’s intentions. In fighting the sanctions, Saddam Hussein has sacrificed $180 billion dollars in oil revenue, thrown his people into impoverishment, and even allowed his conventional military forces to deteriorate, all in an effort to obtain a nuclear bomb.

Kurtz argues that the reason we’re seeing so much resistance to invading Iraq is that political considerations have contributed to an air of confusion, and that the public does not clearly understand what’s at stake.

There are several reasons for this. Had the president gone to the United Nations and spoken openly of the need to prevent Saddam from moving on the Gulf and subjecting the United States to nuclear blackmail, he would have been derided as a paranoid, oil-hungry cowboy willing to sacrifice the peace of the world to his nation’s selfish interests. (Even though, in truth, the entire world, and not just the United States, could easily be plunged into a lengthy depression by Saddam’s aggressive schemes.)

So instead the president, in a judo move, turned the U.N.’s own multilateral principles against its hesitations. That worked brilliantly for a while, but at the cost of the whole truth about our reasons for invading Iraq. And the desire of many Democrats to frame our attack in terms of international law, rather than national interest or balance of power calculations, continues to make it difficult for the president to place the real issue before the country.

Another problem is the connection between the need to remove Saddam and the war on terror. The truth is, the need to remove Saddam is both related to, and independent of, the war on terror. If Saddam believed that he could pass weapons to al Qaeda for use against American cities, then he just might do so. And as I argued in “Beyond Deterrence,” Saddam has every reason to think that detection of his role might fail. So the connection between the need to oust Saddam and the war on terror is real.

I agree with Kurtz’s premise, but I think there is also another factor at work. I think some of the resistance to invading Iraq springs out of a genuine failure of imagination; confronted with the terrifying possibility of nuclear blackmail, otherwise intelligent and rational people are undone by their “fight or flight” instinct, retreating into denial. Their critical faculties simply shut down, and they become willing to accept transparently foolish arguments because the problem is simply too frightening to look at honestly. But we can’t afford to indulge this intellectual paralysis much longer.

Last Saturday, Turkish police reportedly seized a cache of weapons-grade uranium from two men smuggling the material — perhaps into nearby Iraq. We need to understand that time is running out. Saddam knows that we are coming for him. No doubt he has stepped up his effort to commandeer material for a bomb. Even if these smugglers were not headed for Iraq, or if the uranium turns out to be less threatening in quality or quantity than feared, Iraqi agents with greater prospects for success are certainly in the field. The hour grows late. Our lives, quite literally, are at stake. Even the risk of isolated wartime chemical or biological attacks by Saddam’s agents on U.S. territory is nothing compared to the danger of a fight after Saddam has obtained his bomb.

The Democrats are right about one thing, though. We must now put party aside. But to do so, we must unite around the president and unite against Saddam Hussein. History will judge harshly those who hesitated at this moment. We must arm ourselves with the truth — and strike quickly.