His competitors for the Democratic nomination, not to mention Republican apparatchiks, were livid. Despite the rain of denunciations, Dean has been proved right: "The capture of Saddam does not end our difficulties from the aftermath of the administration's war to oust him."

Hussein's capture was good news, especially for the Iraqis. A monstrous brute will now face justice. People in undemocratic countries will see another dictator held accountable for his crimes.

But the seizure of Hussein has not made America safer. Just consider the elevated terrorism alert over the holidays. The parade of security forces on streets and rivers. And the delayed and cancelled airline flights.

The point goes deeper, however. "Saddam Hussein is a homicidal maniac, brutal dictator, supporter of terrorism and enemy of the United States, and there should be no doubt that America and the world are safer with him captured," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Ct.). Actually, Hussein was all of those things.

But if Hussein threatened America's security, it was as a brutal dictator dedicated to wreaking revenge on America whose country was making weapons of mass destruction and trafficking
with terrorists. Perhaps Sen. Lieberman missed it, but Hussein was ousted as Iraq's president months ago. The pitiful thug hiding in a small, underground chamber had no ability to threaten
the U.S.

With but two bodyguards and no satellite phone, he wasn't even the center of the resistance. Some arrests were made based on intelligence gleaned from papers in his possession, but they
didn't seem to change the fight on the ground. Americans and Iraqis continued to die in guerrilla attacks.

His capture may have disheartened some occupation opponents, but evidence so far suggests that most insurgents are not fighting for him. Moreover, the U.S. may face increased pressure from Iraqis who, freed from any fear of a Hussein restoration, begin pushing the U.S. more forcefully to hold elections and yield control.

In short, as Dean argued, the serious problems facing the U.S. in Iraq will continue, perhaps unabated.

Ironically, Hussein's arrest highlights the fact that he doesn't appear to have ever threatened America's security. For all of the pontificating that his capture justified the war, it appears that he never possessed the kind of weapons that would have endangered America.

Embarrassed by the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction, the administration has simply attempted to shift gears. Now, officials emphasize, Hussein is a bad guy--true, along with North Korea's Kim jong-il, Iran's passel of Mullahs, and quite a few other dictators around the world.

But President George W. Bush's claim that Hussein's capture "means America's a more secure country" presumes that Hussein was capable of threatening America. And even before he was ousted that depended on his possession of WMD, since Iraq had no serious conventional capability--as evidenced by its quick collapse when attacked by the U.S.

Before the war, President Bush said that "the threat from Iraq stands alone," since that nation's "weapons of mass destruction are controlled by a murderous tyrant." Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz pointed to WMD as the critical issue--in contrast to human rights or terrorism--about which the entire administration could rally around.

Secretary of State Colin Powell's was quite specific in his lengthy presentation to the UN Security Council. "Saddam Hussein could have produced 25,000 liters" of anthrax and had accounted for none of it. "Saddam Hussein has never accounted for vast amounts of chemical weaponry: 550 artillery shells with mustard [gas], 30,000 empty munitions and enough precursors to increase his stockpile to as much as 500 tons of chemical agents."

Added Secretary Powell, Washington estimated that Iraq had stockpiled "between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough agent to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets."

Secretary Powell calmly asserted "Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons" and asked: "when will we see the rest of the submerged iceberg?"

Probably not soon, since we haven't yet seen the visible part of the iceberg. Alas, not one thimbleful of these materials has turned up.

Same with the "large, unaccounted-for stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons--including VX, sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas; anthrax, botulism, and possibly smallpox," of which Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke. None of these biological and chemical weapons have been discovered. Reported David Kay, who headed America's Iraq Survey Group, which has been searching for WMD: "information found to date suggests that Iraq's large-scale capability to develop, produce, and fill new CW munitions was reduced--if not entirely destroyedóduring Operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox, 13 years of U.N. sanctions, and U.N. inspections."

President Bush claimed "we found biological laboratories." But where are they? ìWe have not yet been able to corroborate the existence of a mobile biological weapons production effort," admitted Kay. "Technical limitations would prevent any of these processes from being ideally suited to these trailers."

Finally, Secretary Powell pointed to unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, which "are well suited for dispensing chemical and biological weapons." In fact, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fl.) says that the administration used a classified briefing to claim that Iraq had the capability of hitting American cities with UAVs. A threatening weapon, to be sure, but hardly more frightening than thousands of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles topped with nuclear weapons. In any case, no ocean-spanning UAVs have been discovered.

Of course, maybe someone will eventually find something. But with this much time, seizure of Iraqi government files, capture of hundreds of Baathist officials, and a professed willingness to pay big bucks for information, the cupboard has remained surprisingly bare.

Hussein seemed to preserve program elements in the hopes of a future revival, but that isn't the same thing. Said Kay: "It clearly does not look like a massive, resurgent program, based on what we discovered." Charles Duelfer, former deputy director of the UN inspections program, said: "It will probably turn out, in my judgment, that there are no existing weapons in Iraq, and that mildly surprises me."

President Bush has taken a different tack. When pressed by ABC's Diane Sawyer on the issue, Bush responded that there was a "possibility" Hussein could acquire them. "So what's the
difference," asked Bush? It's a big difference. Any number of governments on earth could do any number of bad things. That doesn't mean that you have to bomb them today.

Nevertheless, the administration has never retreated from its claim. In July, after the war had ended, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz testified that what the U.S. had done was "remove a regime that was a threat to the United States." But in a unipolar world dominated by the U.S., which possesses the military capacity to destroy any antagonist, and especially in impoverished, isolated Iraq, Saddam Hussein threatened what exactly?

Even if Iraq had WMD--a reasonable assumption, actuallyóno one explained why Saddam Hussein could not be deterred, just as Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, the two greatest mass murderers in human history (based on simple numbers) had been. In fact, Gen. Waffic al Sammarai, head of Iraqi military intelligence during the first Gulf War, reported that implicit U.S. nuclear threats deterred Hussein from using WMD: "the warning was quite severe, and quite effective. The allied troops were certain to use nuclear arms and the price will be too dear and too high."

However, it turns out Iraq apparently had no WMD. It is impossible to deny that the war was based on an error, if not a lie. There apparently weren't any WMD. So Hussein wasn't much of a threat when he was dictator of Iraq. He certainly wasn't much of a threat while running from occupation authorities.

The world is a better place with Hussein out-of-power. It's even better with him in custody, facing trial. But that doesn't retrospectively justify the conflict. In fact, we may have to wait years to discover whether America really is safer after having loosed the Dogs of War in the Mideast.

Doug Bandow is a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy and a former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan.