"IRAQ TODAY represents a threat to no one."

It's hard to imagine that argument coming these days from anyone other than Tariq Aziz, or another of Saddam Hussein's propagandists. But those are in fact the words of Scott Ritter, former chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq. This represents an astonishing conversion. Ritter, after all, abruptly quit that job in frustration three years ago, complaining of Iraqi obstructionism and U.S. acquiescence. At the time, he had quite a different view of Baghdad: "Iraq presents a clear and present danger to international peace and security."

But Ritter has lately been hawking his Iraq-as-a-lamb theory to everyone who will listen--from his perch as a Fox News analyst, in regular appearances on NPR, to reporters at newspapers across the country. When his former U.N. supervisor, Ambassador Richard Butler, suggested that Iraq might be responsible for the spate of anthrax attacks in the United States, Ritter told a Boston Globe reporter that such speculation is "irresponsible." Asked on Chris Matthews's Hardball whether Saddam Hussein has anthrax, he equivocated: "Well, there's--you know, we, as weapons inspectors for United Nations, destroyed Iraq's biological weapons program. There's a lot of things that are unaccounted for such as growth media, which allows them to--to grow these germs. But the basic factories, the fermentation units, etc., had been destroyed. So, you know, the--the chance of Iraq having something like this is--is slim to none. We won't ever know until we get weapons inspectors back in. But Iraq's not on the top of my list in terms of, you know, places we should be worried about."

Obviously, Ritter's views on Iraq have changed over the past three years. Indeed, they've basically flipped. Then, Iraqi leaders were inveterate liars; today, they are victims of American "propaganda mills." Then, Saddam Hussein was hell-bent on building his deadly arsenal; today, he wants to feed Iraqi children. Then, the key to Iraq's future was overthrowing Saddam Hussein; today, Hussein is a "viable dictator."

The Scott Ritter of 1998 would have some fierce debates with the Scott Ritter of 2001. But the Scott Ritter of 2001 doesn't even admit to having changed his mind. "That's a common criticism," he says, but "I just ask people to take the time to review the record. When I first resigned, which was in August of 1998, I spoke out--and I said this to the Senate--that I'm speaking out as an inspector, even though I'm not an inspector. And what that means is, I'm speaking out in defense of the resolution, 687, that the Security Council passed that the United States endorsed. And this called for 100 percent disarmament, and we have less than that."

So does Ritter believe, as he wrote October 12 in the Los Angeles Times, that Iraq really "represents a threat to no one"?

"From a conventional standpoint, I'd say that Iraq represents virtually a zero-sum threat," he insists. On weapons of mass destruction, Ritter hedges a bit. "I'll always maintain that we never got 100 percent of the weapons, but I will maintain--and the facts speak for themselves--that we got 90-95 percent of it," he says. "In the past three years, we just don't know what's been going on. And that should be put on the table right off the bat. But what we do know is that using 1998 as a benchmark, Iraq, frankly speaking, hasn't had the time or the resources to effectively reconstitute its weapons of mass destruction program."

Among the former arms inspectors, Ritter is unique in his benign views of the Iraqi threat. Butler has referred to this as "Ritter's crap." Iraqi leaders, needless to say, are thrilled with what the Washington Post's Colum Lynch called Ritter's "bizarre turnaround." They now "seem to view their erstwhile enemy as an asset in the propaganda war against the United States." But don't take the Post's word for it. On Iraq's official website--www.uruklink.net--after a few words of token criticism of the former weapons inspector, there is a tribute to Ritter, in a rather fractured translation from the original Arabic.