The topic of Saddam's biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs needs hardly any introduction. Iraq was not, in fact, found to be liberally littered with sarin gas tucked into shells or missle payloads (illogical, but that's besides the point). The small, one-room "dishwashers" used to enrich uranium have gone undiscovered. While two mobile biological labs have ostensibly been recovered, neither truck exhibits signs of contamination with the necessary substances. Ba'athists who were willfully prosecuting Saddam's search for non-conventional weaponry and now in Allied custody reportedly refuse to diverge from a stance of complete denial. Iraqis on the ground are, reportedly, still so saturated with fear - unhelpfully exacerbated by Ba'athist elements still harassing the 3rd Infantry Division - that they, too, have not withdrawn from their threatened silence.

The Left in America and abroad, proved completely wrong about everything up until this point - from the strength of the Ba'athists to the precision of the Allies, the reaction of the Iraqis and the so-called "Arab street" - could not consider themselves rhetorically defeated, and thus most certainly clambered onto this piece of driftwood to launch barrage after barrage of specious accusations. Tony Blair risks politically charged investigation from Parliament, indeed his own party; and while the majority of Americans understand both the underlying principle of the war (it wasn't the weapons as much as it was who controlled them) and the circumstances (Saddam had eight months before Security Council Resolution 1441, five months after that), liberal Democrats and smarting, isolationist Republicans are trying to chip away at the administration's credibility. The CIA meets with Congress next week to answer the insulting charges that their intelligence was flimsy where it wasn't browbeaten.

None of us who lack classified information have any substantive leads - and one could bet that if the White House is sure of to where the weapons were schlepped away, diplomacy and strategy demands it be kept close to the chest.

So we're left with a mystery that invites, in its vacuum, loss of confidence on the Right and mercenary opportunity on the Left. The two questions asked are either What did Saddam do with his weapons? and, more egregiously, Did he ever have weapons to the extent suspected? Then come the suppositions that action taken might have been either premature or wrong altogether, simply because expectations - cultivated by the White House or not - were not immediately met. Additionally, because the matter is so large - encompassing one-and-a-half decades, two United Nations disarmament programs, three administrations and eighteen Security Council resolutions - we can come to believe the absurd by isolating one element from the other.

Newsanchors and pundits alike have come to the rescue of reason in the past week by emphasizing the disreality into which one must wade to accept the idea of some massive, deceptive conspiracy on the parts of Messrs. Blair and Bush. I present my own six absurdities along with their dispelling, in ascending order of logical esophoria:

1. The nature of Saddam, the Ba'athist Party and its relationship with the people of Iraq alone are illegitimate reasons for regime change.

Though with stern qualification, this is technically subjective and therefore the least of the abjectly ludicrous. Isolationists, pacificists, anti-American squalls and pro-authoritarian groups could make a case that the suffering of a people is absolutely no concern to them. From here, however, each argument can be picked apart and destroyed.

Pro-authoritarian groups like the crypto-Stalinist Workers World Party, whose activist arm, ANSWER, organized a majority of anti-liberation marches in America, are by definition morally bankrupt. The WWP's inception was borne on the back of the Hungarians' bloody defeat by the Soviets in 1956 and it has since supported totalitarian regimes on a questionable basis of "Socialist" or otherwise anti-American ideology, including China, North Korea and Kosovo. Genocide and mass slaughter has little effect on these groups' loyalty to a statist credo - need more be said?

Pacifists abhor war, presumably because property is destroyed and people are killed. How do they justify, however, a state apparatus that largely prohibits private ownership and murders systematically, yearly and audaciously, with numbers in Iraq alone climbing into the millions? How could one justify that position now, with civilian deaths from Operation Iraqi Freedom below one thousand and the Iraqis now finally freed from their attrition? If help can be offered, withdrawal from human affairs on principle is not virtuous.

Isolationists remain in a pre-1916 state of early industrial autarchy, refusing to believe in the interdependence and relative proximity of all nations - free or otherwise - in modernity. Thus, they would prefer that biological, chemical or nuclear threats be voiced by dictatorial or terrorist entities before action is taken; unfortunately, one is left with two dismal possibilities of either a ruined urban center and millions of casualities or a totalitarian armed with effective deterrence and thus greater means to esurient ends. The fact that neither Germany nor Japan have given the world any military trouble since their democratization seems lost on isolationists, especially in light of the change that will soon be undertaken in Iraq.

My still-in-progress essay on this particular topic addresses the vital paradigm shift that free nations must take - insofar as mounting an irreconcilable, ideological opposition to authoritarianism in all forms, where the mere presence of dictatorship would offend liberally democratic humanity enough to immediately seek out and destroy the dictator.

2. Iraqi defectors lied to discredit Saddam or were misled.

Though possible that one would lie for attention, this is unlikely. Fear of reprisal is practically a genetic tendency of Iraqis even when living in the West. Why invite harm to oneself by casting aspersions on Saddam and putting the Americans on a false trail? If suitably protected, why risk credibility?

In fact, qualifying one's exposition in favor of Saddam seems in fact to be a tactic used in the hopes of being welcomed back to the Ba'athist Party without punishment. General Hussein Kamal, fugitive son-in-law of Saddam Hussein, while being interviewed by Western entities in Jordan in 1995 after defecting earlier that year, discussed the breadth of Iraq's bio-chem-atomic studies and possessions, and reportedly claimed to have signed an order to destroy all unconventional weapons at the end of the Gulf War - and called premier scientist and fellow defector Dr. Khidir Abdul Abas Hamza a "liar."

Contrary to Kamal's claim, as of February 1998, the following stockpiles were destroyed under supervision of the United Nations Special Commission:

38,537 filled and empty CW munitions 480,000 liters (690 tons) of CW agents 3000 tons of precursor chemicals 8 types of delivery systems The al-Hakam BW production facility 48 Scud missiles 6 operational mobile launchers 28 operational fixed launch pads 32 fixed launch pads under construction 30 chemical warheads 14 conventional warheads Other related equipment

Kamal returned to Iraq in 1996 and was promptly murdered.

Hamza, who never returned to Ba'athist Iraq, described Kamal - who took command of the nuclear program in 1987 - as an Iraqi general clearly as ruthless as his father-in-law, who was indeed "crazy, but he managed to produce in a month things that would normally take a year," adding, "fear works well."

In any case, the descriptions both men offered as to Saddam's weapons programs, at least up to the Gulf War, can be corroborated. Which brings us to the next absurdity.

3. All proceedings in the United Nations Security Council on Iraq, from 1991 to 2003, in light of Saddam's lack of possession or research for bio-chem-atomics, were unwarranted and therefore farcical..

One could call the Security Council's efforts fruitless and toothless. But groundless? This is intensely difficult to prove, barring a lone dash to claim a massive conspiracy against the hapless Tikriti-born Stalinist. Russia, who supplied Iraq with more than half of its conventional weaponry and France, who attempted to nuclearize Iraq and succeeded as far as the 1981-bombed Osirak reactor, spent their Security Council tenure during the 1990s hedging, abstaining and in general objecting to Iraq's indictments. But the record is weighty and damning:

UNSCR 687 - April 3, 1991: The creation of UNSCOM, the United Nations Special Commission; demands that Iraq "unconditionally agree" to suspend all production and possession of nuclear, chemical and biological weaponry in diplomacy and deed.

UNSCR 707 - August 15, 1991: Condemnation of "serious violation" of the prior resolution, UNSCR 687, "which constitutes material breach" by way of incomplete disclosure, obstruction of UNSCOM, and general "attempts to conceal, move or destroy any material related to its nuclear, chemical or biological weapons or ballistic missle programmes, or material or equipment relating to its other nuclear activities, without notification to or prior consent of the Special Commission."

UNSCR 715 - October 11, 1991: Another admonition demanding full compliance with disarmament verification inspectors.

UNSCR 949 - October 15, 1994: Another admonition demanding full compliance with disarmament verification inspectors.

UNSCR 1051 - March 27, 1996: Demands for reports of dual-use equipment to possibly be used for weapons production, further admonition insofar as ordering Iraq to "allow immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access."

UNSCR 1060 - June 12, 1996: Further admonition that "deplores" Ba'athist obfuscation. A second demand for Iraq to "Allow immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access."

UNSCR 1115 - June 21, 1997: The Security Council "condemns repeated refusal of Iraqi authorities to allow access." A third demand for "immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access."

UNSCR 1134 - October 23, 1997: An extension of the prior resolution which adds the prior resolution to the list of resolutions defied by Iraq.

UNSCR 1137 - November 12, 1997: Further admonition of Iraq, including a phrase that "Reaffirms the responsibility of the Government of Iraq under the relevant resolutions to ensure the safety and security of the personnel and equipment of the Special Commission and its inspection teams." Additionally, the Security Council decided to remain "seized of the matter."

UNSCR 1154 - March 2, 1998: Warning to Iraq that noncompliance risks the "severest consequences for Iraq."

UNSCR 1194 - September 9, 1998: Condemnation of Iraq's decision to refuse cooperation to UNSCOM. Further repetition of the appeal to Iraq for "immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access."

UNSCR 1205 - November 5, 1998: Further admonition of Iraq for intransigence in its noncompliance.

UNSCR 1284 - December 17, 1999: Creation of UNMOVIC, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspections Commission. "Immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access" demanded once more.

UNSCR 1441 - November 8, 2002: The final resolution against Saddam Hussein and Ba'athist Iraq, with similar demands to the previous thirteen resolutions explicitly concerned with its unconventional weapons research and possessions. "Serious consequences" to Ba'athist Iraq given as a warning.

In addition, thirty statements on Iraq's noncompliance were delivered from the President of the UN Security Council between 1991 and 1998.

Which delivers us to the next level of illogical conclusions.

4. In spite of repeated United Nations Security Council resolutions against him, Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist Iraq was wrongfully accused.

Between his immediate violations of disarmament protocol beginning in 1991 and the subsequent discovery and destruction of supposedly nonexistent weapons through 1998 presented above, Saddam's duplicity is rather obvious. Indeed, the following weapons were never accounted for before UNSCOM's demise (from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute source as cited for the list above):

Scud missile components, warheads and propellant 17 tons of growth media for the production of BW agents Items of CW production equipment 4,000 tons of CW precursors 750 tons of VX precursors 100 al-Hussein missiles 31,000 CW munitions 20 R-17 Scud-B -type missiles 40-70 CBW-capable missile warheads Significant quantities of biological warfare agents Significant quantities of 155-mm ammunition rounds

Further, if innocent, why would Saddam risk sanctions against his internationally robust oil exports? Or limited military action from President Clinton in 1998? Or the buildup of overwhelming, Allied military force for an impending deposition that was finally executed in March of this year?

Sociopathy, not complete irrationality - nor a lack of a sense of preservation of life and rule - was Saddam's.

5. The United States Congress, some of whose members are now claiming deception, were complicit in this deception through the last decade.

Markedly absent from these weeks of histrionic accusations are members of intelligence committees in either the House or Senate - those who would actually be in contact with intelligence. A bipartisan deception, from liberal and conservative alike, spanning three administrations and changes of control in Congress?

6. George H. W. Bush, William Jefferson Clinton and George W. Bush, along with their democratically elected counterparts abroad, are all less trustworthy than Saddam Hussein.

This is the height of mindboggling, lunatic delusion; it encompasses the previous five absurdities and in fact somewhat brings us full-circle. Only those who have historically supported totalitarian states over liberal democracies boast this, overtly or implicitly, as a platform of their politics. Do those who carelessly flirt with the possiblity of Anglo-American deception in the last eighteen months seriously wish to consider themselves allied with those who support despotic, marauding regimes? The Earth may as well be at once flat and the center of the universe.

Returning again to the realm of seriousness: So where have the weapons gone? Four years passed between the dissolution of UNSCOM and final warning (when UNMOVIC could actually find its way "appreciably" into Iraq), and Saddam would have been a fool not to have worked to perfect his already tenacious scheme of deception and evasion; and as stated above, Saddam was given over a year's notice that George W. Bush intended consequences from noncompliance to be carried out. Reports speak of Libya, Syria and Syria's puppet Lebanon as possible caretakers for the Ba'athist's highly frangible bio-chem-atomic enterprise.

This is indeed a crossing point if those reports prove accurate. The point of the war on terror and the war for freedom is that lawlessness and the rule of force will breed wherever they are given land; like tumors, they will use every last inch of habitation to exist. Saddam was the conventional military keystone of the Near East culture of death, but he is the first step in destroying Islamofascism, not the last. As long as corners remain dark to liberty and free thought, terrorism and its use of modern weapons will be able to play a deadly shell game, and continue to threaten civilization. Thus, the prosecution must follow the trail Islamism's cowards have set for us, and continue the search for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons - into the places where they have been secreted away.