Over the past few weeks there has been an epidemic of epiphanies. There's a long list of pundits who previously supported Bush's policy on Iraq but have publicly changed their minds. None of them quarrel with the goal; who wouldn't want to see Saddam Hussein overthrown? But they are finally realizing that Mr. Bush is the wrong man to do the job.

You have declared yourselves to be shocked, appalled, startled, puzzled and above all disappointed by what you thought was a defection to the hawk side. "I'm Persuaded," said the headline, which went a little beyond the story.

But it was my fault. I did not make it clear enough that while I believed what Colin Powell told me about Saddam Hussein's poison collection, I was not convinced that war was the answer. I guess I took it for granted that you would know what I meant.

A little more than a month ago I set to work on an article about how attacking Iraq -- once a hobbyhorse of right-wing think tank intellectuals -- had moved to the center of the American foreign policy debate. Clearly, President Bush's election and 9/11 had a lot to do with the change. But neither development completely explained the shift to my satisfaction. So I launched into the project eager to skewer the various propagandists and ideologues who've used all manner of underhanded methods and cheap media ploys to hustle the country into a second war against Saddam Hussein.

But along the way I came to an unexpected and for me troubling conclusion. I decided that the hawks were right. By that I mean that containment isn't working and that what the right-wingers like to call 'regime change' really should be our national policy. And, if necessary, we should do it by overwhelming military force.

Need I point out that North Korea, not Iraq, is the clear and present danger? Kim Jong Il's nuclear program isn't a rumor or a forgery; it's an incipient bomb assembly line. Yet the administration insists that it's a mere "regional" crisis, and refuses even to talk to Mr. Kim.