David Parsons, Feb. 18, 2003

"Hide-and-seek" is a game so simple, so rooted in human nature, youngsters everywhere seem to pick it up by instinct.

But when grown-ups play it with the deadliest of germs and poisons, it is no longer an amusing child's game.

In his recent address before the UN Security Council, US Secretary of State Colin Powell barely scratched the surface of the mounds of solid intelligence - documents, satellite images, electronic intercepts and the credible testimony of numerous Iraqi defectors - verifying and cross-verifying that Saddam Hussein is hiding his weapons of mass destruction and his ties with radical terrorist networks.

And yet many world leaders want to continue playing his diabolic games, insisting - as a matter of principle, no less - that military action to disarm the dangerous Iraqi regime is unjustified at present.

And they seem to have the support of multitudes worldwide, taking to the streets to decry the horrors of war and plead for "peace, love and understanding", while assigning ill motives to those wanting to neutralise Saddam.

But wait! Has anyone else noticed? How odd that many world leaders now demanding "show me the missiles" were also refusing not so long ago to believe that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was still engaged in terrorism.

And how peculiar that the mass demonstrations against war in Iraq are packed with scores of protesters who flooded the very same streets in recent times to agitate for war - against Israel. Not exactly the "flower power" generation.

Indeed, the deceptive games of both Saddam and Arafat are eerily similar, and there are legions foolish enough to play along.

Recall that when the Palestinians launched the violent intifada in September 2000, their claim that it was a "spontaneous" uprising found wide acceptance. This despite clear signs to the contrary, such as the summer camps run by Arafat's own Fatah movement (prominently exposed in The New York Times), where children were being trained months in advance for the coming military confrontation.

Even as late as last winter, many simply could not fathom that Arafat had authorised that shipment of Iranian weapons captured aboard the Karine A, though it was piloted by a Palestinian naval officer instructed to steer for the Gaza coast.

Then came the shocking Passover seder bombing late last March and Israel's broad anti-terror sweeps into the heart of the Palestinian terror havens - including Arafat's presidential compound in Ramallah. There, the IDF harvested an overabundance of evidence directly linking Arafat to the carnage in Israeli streets, including "terror invoices" signed by the rais himself.

It was enough to sway the Bush administration - despite Washington's interests in nurturing the Palestinian cause - to call for an end to the Arafat era and the emergence of a new leadership untainted by corruption and terror.

Nonetheless, some remain unconvinced to this day. Thus the special Middle East envoys for the United Nations, European Union and Russia all huddled with Arafat recently in his Ramallah holdout, still putting trust in a discredited peace partner.

Little wonder then that the leaders of France, Germany, Belgium and Russia, among others, are pressing to "contain" Saddam through more UN dialogue and weapons inspections.

Sadly - as with Arafat - it probably will take a decisive thrust into downtown Baghdad to come up with the sort of irrefutable evidence on Saddam that is being demanded, but even then do not expect everyone to be satisfied. At some point, you have to suspect wilful blindness. The irony is that in their efforts to block an American-led military campaign against the Iraqi regime, these nations have rendered the prospects of war much more likely.

Ignoring its better instincts, the Bush administration agreed to address the Iraqi menace within the UN framework. The result was the unanimous adoption of UNSC resolution 1441, which gave Iraq "a final opportunity" to peacefully disarm while making clear that anything short of "full cooperation" at "any time" would have "serious consequences".

For that UN decision to carry any weight with the defiant Iraqi regime, it needed shoulder-to-shoulder international support, backed by the credible threat of force. But by undermining that wall-to-wall unity and the attendant threat of force, France, Germany and their cohorts have relieved the mounting pressure on Baghdad that the US and its most stalwart allies labored so hard to build.

This is by no means an unrestrained call to rush off to war with Iraq - a war that will have serious repercussions for everyone. But letting Saddam off the hook once again will have even more serious repercussions. For one, he has already shown his fellow rogues in Iran and North Korea that duping the world can be child's play.

David Parsons is the director of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) News Service.