The New Year Quote by Henry Waxman

Waxman’s sentence is built like a prosecutor’s closing argument, and that’s the point: not to persuade you Saddam is dangerous in the abstract, but to make danger feel documented, procedural, overdue. “Systematically violated” turns policy into pattern; it’s not a one-off breach but a method. The time stamp - “over the course of the past 11 years” - is doing quiet work, implying patience has already been spent and delay is itself irresponsible. This isn’t the language of panic; it’s the language of a file folder thick enough to justify whatever comes next.

The appeal to “every significant UN resolution” wraps the claim in institutional legitimacy. It signals that this isn’t merely an American grievance; it’s a rules-based order being thumbed in the eye. The phrasing “demanded that he disarm and destroy” emphasizes obligation and compliance, not negotiation. “Chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity” is a rhetorical escalation ladder: from weapons you can imagine to a capability that evokes catastrophe. “Any” is a deliberately expansive net, collapsing distinctions between possession, intent, and infrastructure.

Then comes the clincher: “This he has refused to do.” It’s blunt, almost moralistic, turning a technical dispute into a matter of willful defiance. The subtext is less about Iraq’s arsenal than about the credibility of enforcement: if resolutions can be ignored for 11 years, what are they worth? In the post-1991, pre-Iraq War political climate, that logic was a lever - converting uncertainty about facts into certainty about consequences.