Nate Perkins wrote:
....
As for Saddam's hypothesized intent, nobody can say for sure. Certainly
he was a bad apple. Equally certainly, he destroyed and dismantled his
WMD efforts after the first Gulf War and did not restart them. (Duelfer
report). He was economically and militarily contained by most any
measure.
....

I've resisted getting into this but...

One thing in this whole thread I've not seen mentioned wrt to WMD is
that there appears to be a likelihood that Saddam may not actually known
that he didn't have the WMDs he may have thought he had...that the
extent of compliance was more than his advisors would admit to him.

That he had previously had and used them extensively is
indisputable--that he was still harboring them and plans and making
blustering noises was certainly also true. Whether he could do anything
w/ them to us on a mass scale was debatable although a few Sarin
capsules slipped to a group of 19 in the NYC subways could be a
considerable upset in ones' day if one happened to be one of those
there...

Blix certainly wasn't satisfied w/ cooperation as I read his last report
to the UN although he would have preferred stringing it out (perhaps
indefinitely, perhaps not). Whether at any point the other Big Three
would have acquiesced in actual action is difficult to assume unless the
oil money kickbacks were to have been uncovered publicly to embarrass
them--whether that would have become evident w/ Hussein still in power
is also imponderable.

So, all in all, it seemed to me based on everything that was available
at the time there was a reasonable likelihood he did have the capability
(or at least thought he did). In the end I suspect his own belief that
there was no way the US would actually take preemptive action did him
in--he bluffed on hand too long and lost.

Personally, while I would have preferred to have avoided the precipitate
action, in the long run it well may end up being a good thing(TM).
Being fairly pragmatic in that all the "Monday morning quarterbacking"
can't change the outcome of the game, I think we simply have to do what
we can to get a reasonable outcome from where we are.