What if there are no WMDs?

No WMDs have been found in Iraq. It's quite possible that the lorries so far
found were not for generating chemical weapons but simply hydrogen for
weather balloons. Maybe, as secretary Rumsfeld suggests, the Iraqi's had
destroyed all WMDs before the war commenced. Perhaps even, the reason why the
arms inspectors couldn't find any WMDs was because there were none there to
be found, despite the suggestive intelligence accrued by the west. However,
the threat on the Iraqi nation was great. If any scientist was found to have
led the inspectors to believe that there was a weapons programme, there would
have been grounds for attack, surely that would be good reason for those
scientists to be sure that they had on record what they had said so that
their words couldn't be taken out of context, and to be castigated for that
by a notoriously strict regime - I'd want to have a recording of what I said
in interview in such circumstances. What if the Al-Samoud 2 couldn't actually
fly further than 186 miles? We only have third party calculations to suggest
otherwise.

Let me paint a picture: following the apparent carte-blanche to invade Kuwait
given by April Glaspie, at a point when Iraqi-American relations were pretty
good, Saddam Hussein loses patience with one of the funders of his defence of
the Arab nations from Iran after they refuse to stop charging interest on the
money lent to fund the war which is destabilising the Iraqi economy, and
continue to drain oil from disputed fields on the border. Receiving backing
from the US, Kuwait stands by it's position, and resultantly gets invaded.
Saddam has overstepped his mark, and the US completely lose interest in him.

After being fought back to the original territorial positions, Saddam easily
manages to contain an uprising instigated by the US unfortunately at a huge
cost to life. Faced with a harsh UN charter of weapons inspections, the
regime in typically totalitarian fashion issues an edict that all traces of
WMD programmes should be eradicated to avoid any further recrimination.
Anyone letting be known any WMD activities would face harsh consequences from
the regime, so an air of frightened secrecy abounds. In 1995 the chief of the
weapons development project defects after life has become intollerable in
Iraq and confesses to western intelligence that all WMD research has ceased
and all materiel evidence destroyed. However, he has some personal research
papers stored on his home farm, which the west pounce on as evidence of
continued weapon development.

Having followed a very successful programme of weapons destruction, some of
the inspectors become increasingly suspicious that not all of the programmes
which were active have been disclosed (in fact largely because a number of
them were secretly wound up). After discovering for example that VX gas had
been produced, this having previously denied by the regime (since it was part
of their secret programme of renunciation), the suspicious inspectors
increasingly turned their attention to the records of state, which were
understandably very sensitive to the regime. After refusal to open all
records to the inspectors, the inspectors were removed by the UN and Iraq was
severely bombarded by cruise missiles. It had appeared to the Iraq regime,
and was subsequently corroborated, that the UN inspectors had an element of
military spying producing targets for the subsequent attack.

Amongst the increasingly hazy intelligence view of the situation, it was now
very hard to verify the veracity of facts extracted from the country, and was
easy to produce a dossier damning the country for continuing to produce WMDs.
The on going secrecy of the regime only hindered its image, and the fact it
had been so secretive in the past made it look all the more guilty, to the
extent that despite not having UN mandate, there was sufficient public
backing for the US and UK to invade and topple the regime.