From my November 2004 obit on NRO:

For the last week of his life, the scuttlebutt about the Palestinian movement’s centrifugal force concerned whether his impending demise was driven by AIDS, likely contracted, according to leaked foreign-intelligence reports, by his omnivorous, orgiastic sexual appetite. This as if, after three quarters of a century’s worth of megalo-sadism, additional indicia of Yasser Arafat’s throbbing depravity were somehow necessary. And so, evidently, they were. Thus is reflection on his life, a signal emblem of the late 20th century’s triumph of terror and fraud over security and reason, as instructive about our times as it is about him.
About him, while there is much to say, there is little to glean. He was a thug. One of the most cunning of all time for sure, but quite simply a ruthless, thoroughly corrupt, will-to-power thug.

After that, I see now that I did finally stop sugar-coating it …