From a Nov. 26, 1998, Los Angeles Times editorial, responding to Iraq’s refusal to hand over documents pertaining to its weapons programs after it had agreed to fully cooperate with UNSCOM inspectors:
How many more times will the United Nations Security Council, with American concurrence, sternly admonish Iraq that it must live up to its often given and just as often broken promises to cooperate fully with U.N. inspectors as they try to find the weapons of mass destruction Saddam Hussein continues to hide?… The case for taking military action does not have to be justified again. It derives from Iraq’s record of the last seven years… That is all the justification the president needs to order punitive airstrikes.
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