Mainstream media notices something, finally

From Instapundit, a link to a US News and World Report article about the Duelfer report, in which Mort Zuckerman writes:

"The Duelfer report confirmed that Saddam had no stocks of weapons of mass destruction, no active programs of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. In short, Saddam was a diminishing threat. But there is more to this simple headline. There is, in fact, a much darker side, and here it is:

"Saddam wanted to re-create Iraq's banned weapons programs, including nuclear weapons.

"Saddam was determined to develop ballistic missiles and tactical chemical weapons when the U.N. sanctions were either lifted or corroded.

"Saddam retained the industrial equipment to help restart these programs, having increased from 1996 to 2002 his military industrial spending 40-fold and his technical military research 80-fold. Even while U.N. weapons inspectors were in Iraq, Saddam's scientists were performing deadly experiments on human guinea pigs in secret labs.

"To what end? The overlooked section of the Duelfer report could not have put it any clearer: 'Iraq would have been able to produce mustard agents in a period of months and nerve agent in less than a year or two.' While Saddam had abandoned his biological weapons programs, he retained the scientists and other technicians 'needed to restart a potential biological weapons program,' and he 'intended to reconstitute long-range delivery systems [that is, missiles] and . . . the systems potentially were for WMD.' These conclusions were based on interviews with Saddam Hussein, his closest advisers, and his weapons scientists, along with the kind of industrial equipment the Iraqi government imported and maintained."

The real question here is why so many are trying so hard to ignore the evidence of Saddam's, and the UN's, wrongdoings and intentions. What is gained by such efforts?