REMOVING SADDAM HUSSEIN from power would eliminate the direct and growing threat he poses to the United States. That alone is justification for war against Iraq. Our security is at stake. Yet we wouldn’t be the only ones to benefit from Saddam Hussein’s demise. So would the Iraqi people.

President Bush made that point last week in a speech in which he contemplated life in Iraq after Saddam Hussein. Iraqis, he said, now “live in scarcity and fear, under a dictator who has brought them nothing but war, misery and torture.” Not to mention death: Hundreds of thousands have been killed since Saddam Hussein took office in 1978.