The hunt for Saddam's legendary Weapons of Mass Destruction has officially come to an end, to the smug, clucking, self-satisfaction of certain ones.

But though the situation on the ground proved to be vastly different (once we got there) from what all the world's intelligence agencies believed beforehand, we didn't exactly come up "emptyhanded," as the media wants the denoument of their story-arc to read.

SALIENT POINTS:

• Saddam retained the precursors for chemical weapons and fully planned to resume production as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Interesting but under-publicized: That's what we said before the war.
  
• Over 50 chemical weapons, including some containing Sarin nerve gas, were found by the WMD survey team. The press glosses over this fact, apparently because they were probably produced prior to 1991.
• Saddam maintained a network of secret labs -- never declared to or discovered by the astute UN Inspectors -- to research the production of such items as sulfur mustard, nitrogen mustard, and Sarin gasses. The deadly poison ricin was produced in the 1990's for use in assassination attempts on Saddam's enemies, such as the first President Bush. Because these facilities were sanitized by Iraqi intelligence or looted, it is difficult to know the full extent of their activities. However, it's worth noting that a strangely played-down ricin attack was mounted on the Senate last February and ricin was found in possession of a british terrorist cell.
• "A lot of materials left Iraq and went to Syria. There was certainly a lot of traffic across the border points. We've got a lot of data to support that, including people discussing it. But whether in fact in any of these trucks there was WMD-related materials, I cannot say." (Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, Testimony before the Senate Armed Services Commitee, October 6, 2004)
  

One other important reality to take note of:

• Saddam's in jail.