The nature of the threat Saddam Hussein posed to Iraqis, geographical neighbors, America and the world is so highly politicized in these last days of the election season that I take news of the fallen dictator's murderous aims quietly. I'm either preaching to the choir or a brick wall: for those who, like me, accept what is, I have nothing to add; for those who, in their support of the Democratic Party, qualify reality, I have nothing to gain. But as we continually learn of the lengths to which a Stalinist butcher would go to grow and consolidate his own power — as the facts accumulate — there is an obligation to the truth. From the Wall Street Journal's George Melloan this past Tuesday (emphasis mine):

[N]on-news in the Duelfer report got most of the press coverage, but a member of the study wondered on these pages last week if anybody had bothered to read anything else the report had to say. Richard Spertzel, a former UN biological weapons specialist, had just returned from Iraq. He wrote:

While no facilities were found producing chemical or biological agents on a large scale, many clandestine laboratories operating under the Iraqi Intelligence Services were found to be engaged in small-scale production of chemical nerve agents, sulfur mustard, nitrogen mustard, ricin aflatoxin, and other unspecified biological agents.

He noted the report's disclosure of plans to produce and weaponize nitrogen mustand in rifle grenades and to bottle sarin and sulfur mustard in perfume sprayers and medicine bottles for shipment to the US and Europe:

Are we to believe this plan existed because they liked us? Or did they wish to do us harm? The major threat posed by Iraq, in my opinion, was the support it gave to terrorists in general, and its own terrorist activity.

A friend of mine, a screenwriter, was recently tapped by the Pentagon to participate in a focus group. He's to brainstorm the unimaginable in an attempt to anticipate which aspects of democratic modern life a violent fanatic would try to exploit. The answer, of course, is simple: all of them. Certainly, some methods are more popular, easier or otherwise preferable, and therefore require immediate counterterrorist attention. But the allure of a mystery comes from the intrigue, complexity and obfuscation built up by the perpetrator's cherished sense of self-preservation. There is no such love of life with the terrorist; and when killing does not involve one's own survival, it becomes very, very easy. The lesson beneath all this, indeed one of the three justifications for removing Saddam Hussein forthwith after defeating the Taliban (tyranny, weapons and the terrorist nexus), is that a free society is forever vulnerable to an active enemy who enjoys the support of cultures and nations. Was Saddam engaging terrorists and their conduct? Probably, and yet in the finest technical terms — given the nature of intelligence and the regrettable public division on the subject — only "probably." But the debate is now confined to what Saddam and his probable terrorist allies probably would have done and, now that a democratic society awakens in the old regime's place, will never do together.

EVERYWHERE YOU LOOK BUT THE NEWS: More here.