It certainly seemed compelling to me. Here's the transcript for the first half.

Some excerpts:

Let me begin by playing a tape for you. What you're about to hear is a conversation that my government monitored. It takes place on November 26 of last year, on the day before United Nations teams resumed inspections in Iraq.

The conversation involves two senior officers, a colonel and a brigadier general, from Iraq's elite military unit, the Republican Guard.

(BEGIN AUDIO TAPE)

(Speaking in Arabic.)

(END AUDIO TAPE)

POWELL: Let me pause and review some of the key elements of this conversation that you just heard between these two officers.

First, they acknowledge that our colleague, Mohamed ElBaradei, is coming, and they know what he's coming for, and they know he's coming the next day. He's coming to look for things that are prohibited. He is expecting these gentlemen to cooperate with him and not hide things.

But they're worried. "We have this modified vehicle. What do we say if one of them sees it?"

What is their concern? Their concern is that it's something they should not have, something that should not be seen.

The general is incredulous: "You didn't get a modified. You don't have one of those, do you?"

"I have one."

"Which, from where?"

"From the workshop, from the Al Kendi (ph) Company?"

"What?"

"From Al Kendi (ph)."

"I'll come to see you in the morning. I'm worried. You all have something left."

"We evacuated everything. We don't have anything left."

Note what he says: "We evacuated everything."

We didn't destroy it. We didn't line it up for inspection. We didn't turn it into the inspectors. We evacuated it to make sure it was not around when the inspectors showed up.

No doubt there will be those who say this tape is a fake. There's simply no convincing some people.

Powell plays another segment from another tape as well, then:

We know that Saddam Hussein has what is called quote, "a higher committee for monitoring the inspections teams," unquote. Think about that. Iraq has a high-level committee to monitor the inspectors who were sent in to monitor Iraq's disarmament.

Not to cooperate with them, not to assist them, but to spy on them and keep them from doing their jobs.

Regarding the "declaration" of weapons from Iraq:

Dr. Blix pronounced the 12,200-page declaration, rich in volume, but poor in information and practically devoid of new evidence.

Could any member of this council honestly rise in defense of this false declaration?

Well?

And:

Thanks to intelligence they were provided, the inspectors recently found dramatic confirmation of these reports. When they searched the home of an Iraqi nuclear scientist, they uncovered roughly 2,000 pages of documents. You see them here being brought out of the home and placed in U.N. hands. Some of the material is classified and related to Iraq's nuclear program.

Tell me, answer me, are the inspectors to search the house of every government official, every Baath Party member and every scientist in the country to find the truth, to get the information they need, to satisfy the demands of our council?

I like the way Powell continually, pointedly asks questions of the council. His tone is urgent and not a little defiant. They need to be able to answer these questions. Thing is, they can't.

Really, it boils down to this:

The issue before us is not how much time we are willing to give the inspectors to be frustrated by Iraqi obstruction. But how much longer are we willing to put up with Iraq's noncompliance before we, as a council, we, as the United Nations, say: "Enough. Enough."

If the French and Germans had their way, if the anti-war crowd was in charge, the answer would presumably be: indefinitely. We've let Iraq make a mockery of the U.N. for over a decade. When will they say "Enough"?