Duelfler: Saddam Cultivated Ambiguity on WMD

He told the council that there were intelligence failures on both sides. The United States couldn't discern Saddam's true motives, while he miscalculated just how much U.S. attitudes had changed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

"There really was this element of mutual misunderstanding," Duelfer said.

Saddam likely feared renewed conflict with Iran in the years after a brutal 1980-88 war between the two neighbors in which 1 million people died, Duelfer said. In the 1990s, intelligence reports from elsewhere had also begun to raise questions about whether Iran was developing weapons of its own.

"Saddam was certainly aware of the WMD assessments of Iran and he created a certain ambiguity about what his capabilities were," Duelfer said.

U.S. officials may have also underestimated how much it offended Saddam to have weapons inspectors "poking around their most secure areas."

Duelfer's comments were reminiscent of those made by former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, who said in 2003 he believed Iraq had destroyed most of its weapons of mass destruction years before, but kept up the appearance that it had them to deter a military attack.

Duelfer speculated that under the U.N. oil-for-food program, which began in 1996 and ended in 2003, Saddam came to believe that he could divide the U.N. Security Council and possibly bring an end to sanctions imposed after his 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Note that Blix states that he believed Iraq had destroyed most of its WMD years before. Problem is that Iraq was not allowed to be in possession of any WMD. That means a single vial of anthrax or a canister of mustard gas was illegal. And there have been sporadic finds of such items since the US invaded Iraq.

There also continues to be speculation that Iraq managed to transfer technologies or even weapons to the Syrians, hiding the weapons and technologies in the Bek'aa Valley, which doubles as a terrorists haven.

Also, it is interesting that Duelfer suggests that it was a fear of renewed conflict with Iran that fed his desire to keep up appearances. Currently, Iran is speeding along towards developing a nuclear weapon of its own, having obtained the technology and means to produce highly enriched uranium. The appearance of Iraqi WMD would be a cost effective means to balance power with Iran, though it would mean running afoul of the inspection regime. The Iraqi fostered-notion that it was in possession of WMD meant that the US and the rest of the world believed Iraq was in possession, setting off a chain of events.