And if Saddam did not have the WMD and the means to produce them on very short notice why would he refuse to reveal them or lack of rather than have his country invaded and himself removed.
No question that Saddam had the capability to produce bio/chem weapons but here's my thinking as to why stockpiles haven't been found--Saddam couldn't afford the chance that the weapons would be used against him/ his regime. He wasn't the most popular guy in Iraq and coups/ coup attempts are a fact of life. Not that SH would have been all that concerned if a Baath party convention had been annihilated, but he would have been concerned about the damage to his aura of ''invincibility'' w/in Iraq. Which leads me to the second point--The bio/ chem weapons were a means of controlling the Iraqi populace; the citizens of Iraq had to believe that Saddam had these methods of intimidation/ control & he could not afford for Iraqis to believe, even erronously, that he did not have those weapons. And finally, in Saddam's mind, it was imperative for his neighbors to believe that he had these weapons, most especially because Iraq's defense capabilities were considerably degraded post Desert Storm. The biggest potential threat to Saddam in the region was from Iran but Saddam had used bio/ chem weapons against Iran in the Iran/ Iraq war--a fact that would seriously hamper military recruitment/ retainment efforts in Iran. In short, the so-called WMD's, in truth or myth, were too powerful & too necessary a psychological weapon for Saddam to relinquish.