One thing they were not finding were recently manufactured WMDs, perhaps that is the reason. Frankly, they should have known that as some of the shell enclosures and precursers for the WMDs came from the WEST. So, since the basic elements had not been sent to IRAQ since about 91, why would they have expected to find currently made stockpiles? Makes no sense to me as to why this was a partial basis for this war. Why they did not want to point out they found old degraded WMDs anyway can be explained as political BS.
Since the time Bush I did not wish to take out Saddam while he had the machine to do it in place, this whole Iraq thing has been one giant fiasco. It is the perfect example of what happens when you loose the dogs of war. We last won a war when we left occupation forces on the ground in the loser country. We withdrew from Vietnam and Iraq and the result is going to be the same. The best our Nation had to offer was wasted over PC and BS.
In order to contain Iran we had to take down Iraq. Don’t forget the Qadeer Khan proliferation network was very active right up to the war in Libya, Egypt, Mali, Malaysia, South Africa etc., and while the press named SOME of the nations involved in it they deliberately did not name them all. Two went unnamed at least. Syria and Iraq most likely.
It was in Libya where we found Iraqi scientists working- in fact Obeidi worked there - the scientist in whose rose garden in Iraq we found a prototype for an enrichment centrifuge along with reams of docs and specs for the nuclear program.
You can’t understand the last thirty years of proliferation and IRaq without understanding the Qadeer Khan network, whose scientists were also involved directly with al Qaeda. This network allowed collaboration among various rogue states and enabled states under sanction to dodge inspectors by outsourcing elements of their weapons programs.
ONe of the binaries that insurgents tried to use as an IED thinking it was conventional was from French circa 1996. Last I checked they come in larger packages than just one per pallet.