Stopping the Cycle

Christopher Hitchens, via RCP, refreshes our memory on Iraq. Key point on nukes:

To call for serious and unimpeachable inspections was to call, in effect, for a change of regime in Iraq. Thus, we can now say that Iraq is in compliance with the Nonproliferation Treaty. Moreover, the subsequent hasty compliance of Col. Muammar Qaddafi's Libya and the examination of his WMD stockpile (which proved to be much larger and more sophisticated than had been thought) allowed us to trace the origin of much materiel to Pakistan and thus belatedly to shut down the A.Q. Khan secret black market.

And this:

The Bush administration never claimed that Iraq had any hand in the events of Sept. 11, 2001. But it did point out, at different times, that Saddam had acted as a host and patron to every other terrorist gang in the region, most recently including the most militant Islamist ones. And this has never been contested by anybody. The action was undertaken not to punish the last attack—that had been done in Afghanistan—but to forestall the next one.

Now Iran has barred the IAEA, another escalation on their part. But this time, instead of being an appeaser and worse, as they were with Iraq, perhaps the Russians are serious about stopping Iran. Maybe the US will get some help in stopping the next threatened cycle of states and terrorists with nukes.

UPDATE: Latest with Gen. Petraeus on the surge in Iraq, why it's working so far.

UPDATE: Interesting analysis of some Iraq polling at Powerline. And, in case you missed it, this poll with the largest sample we've seen yet.