Will the Powell report pave the way to war or just reveal classified U.S. intelligence?

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Colin Powell will deliver what may be the most anxiously awaited briefing to the UN Security Council since Ambassador Adlai Stevenson presented the United States’ damning case against the USSR during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

The conventional wisdom holds that such success will depend on the degree to which the Administration parts the veil on sensitive American intelligence. In a new paper the Center for Security Policy questions whether such revelations will make any difference to Saddam supporters in the UN.

Indeed, it argues, Saddam has gotten away with defying the United Nations for the past twelve years precisely because France, Russia and China have consistently run interference for him.

More importantly, what are the risks of compromising not only the intelligence itself, thereby affording the Iraqi regime an opportunity to relocate prohibited weapons and/or cover its tracks, but something even harder to come by: the means that permitted such intelligence to be acquired?