Last week, tens of thousands of Americans took to the streets to voice their opposition to any war against Iraq. And how could one not stand in solidarity with these objectors given the undeniable logic of their argument: do we not, after all, base our legal system on the presumption of innocence? Would it not be wrong to flout due process to sate the public’s predilection for petrol? Can we presume Saddam guilty when we have no proof?

Well, the wait is over. The smoking gun is here. And if we do not act, there will be blood for oil, but not the blood of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians but that of those who dare to resist a Saddam with The Bomb.

On Jan. 19, U.N. weapons inspectors confiscated classified documents detailing the progression of Saddam’s supposedly nonexistent nuclear program. This discovery, made during a routine search of an Iraqi scientist’s residence, should satisfy any conscientious objector that Saddam is not only developing weapons of mass destruction, but The Weapon of Supreme Destruction, all in blatant disregard of the United Nations Security Council and his own declarations.

And yet, spectacularly, the media has decided not to report this critical find. From CNN to CNBC, from the New York to the Los Angeles Times, the purveyors of news have become its censors, maintaining a uniform silence on this revelation. They have opted instead for the shrill cry of “No smoking gun,” repeated with such mind-numbing and unchallenged frequency that Americans not only turn away from their televisions but from the prospect of war itself.

Hans Blix understood this inevitability and carefully refrained from mentioning the discovery to the Security Council. He, too, is a crusader for peace, and his position is only a means to that end. Appointed to inspect, he equivocates. Designated to uncover, he prevaricates. And if not for a lonely exposé by Britain’s The Telegraph, he would have buried it. Now that task falls to the American news networks.

We have a smoking gun, from no less an authority than the internal reports of the Iraqi government. Yet if the media does not report it, does it really exist? Never before in American history has such a monolithic, ideologically uniform cohort of mega-conglomerates had such control over the dissemination of information. Hundreds of thousands of protestors rally in our Capitol and in our hometowns, at universities and at bookstores, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Texas to Alaska, but they protest only the distortions the media has shamelessly peddled. The smoking gun they seek is cocked, loaded and pointed at the head of the free world.

Now what would Saddam do with a nuclear weapon? Perhaps the same thing he did with chemical and biological agents: suppress his people and coerce his neighbors. Would Kuwait resist a second invasion if doing so meant nuclear annihilation? What about Iran or Saudi Arabia? Would the United States intervene to rein in Saddam knowing that the price for peace would be several American cities? If not now, when? Are the same protestors who savage our President for his nefarious intentions to rape Iraq for its oil as disturbed by the prospect of Saddam holding a nuclear trump card over the entire Middle East with regional dominance the price for his restraint?

Blix’s interest is in prevention, not inspection. What discoveries he makes are haphazard and, worse yet, promptly concealed. If Hans were not as shoddy a propagandist as he is an inspector, CNN and Company would have been spared the burden of reinforcing the façade. As it is, the shrieks of “No smoking gun!” will continue ad nauseum and beyond. But the time has arrived for Americans to decide, as one, in the streets or in their homes, who we would rather see in Iraq: a U.N. administered provisional government or a Saddam Hussein with his finger on the trigger.