According to this article in the New York Sun, Saddam Hussein was using a secret oil voucher distribution system to bribe countries to support Iraq's bid to eliminate sanctions AND raise money for the purchase of prohibited weapons. The article also notes that Saddam was only 6 months away from having mustard gas, and significant quantities of nerve agents within two years. He also had the brainpower within his dictatorship to assemble a nuclear bomb.

The piece makes several things abundantly clear. John Kerry and other Democrats want Americans to believe that, before the war, Saddam was somehow "contained" or "in a box." The terms are misleading, as they imply inactivity. As information continues to trickle out, it's becoming increasingly clear that Saddam was VERY active -- he was engaged in a secret bribery campaign to get the sanctions lifted, so that he could, indeed, purchase or reconstitute his weapons programs as soon as no one was looking. And some of these weapons could have presented a significant threat pretty quickly (especially if the mustard gas or nerve agents were passed on to terrorists to be used in, say, Manhattan during the Thanksgiving Day Parade or some event like that).

If the US had allowed the status quo to continue -- and don't forget that Saddam's army was firing on our planes almost daily -- it would have become very difficult politically to resist the call for sanctions to be lifted, especially if no WMD were found by the credulous Mr. Blix and his happy gang. And six months later, Saddam could have provided terrorists with mustard gas.

But it's the "wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time." Right. Remarks like that show Kerry and Edwards are not only opportunists and flip-floppers (remember that Edwards, too, voted for the war and then against the $87 billion appropriation -- and called Saddam an "imminent threat"), they are deeply unserious about America's safety.