PRESIDENT BUSH’S MESSAGE to Iraqis on Sunday was deliciously absolute: “You will not have to fear the rule of Saddam Hussein ever again.” Kanan Makiya’s message to Iraqis does not convey the same sense of finality, but it rings just as true: You can never forget Saddam.

Last Friday–just a day before American soldiers found Saddam hiding in an eight foot, camouflaged “spider hole” near Tikrit–Makiya, an Iraqi-born professor, architect, and author, spoke to a small audience of journalists and policy experts at the Capitol about his plans to document life under Saddam’s brutal dictatorship, from 1968, when the Baath party took power, to 2003.