LAST THURSDAY, Secretary of State Colin Powell finally called a spade a spade. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he said the atrocities–including murder, rape, and village razing–committed in the remote Darfur region of western Sudan qualified as genocide.

“The government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility,” Powell declared. (The Janjaweed are Arab militias–almost certainly armed and supported by Khartoum–that have been ethnically cleansing black Africans in Darfur.) And “genocide may still be occurring.”