Shooting fish in a barrel
If Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, why did the Iraqi regime behave exactly as though they did? Including going to war instead of fully cooperating with the U.N.?
Ego. Possibly an attempt to avoid war through intimidation.
Possibly, seeing Bush's determination to go to war no matter what Saddam did, a shot at a Pyrrhic victory by making Bush look foolish when no weapons are found.
Or, as we've discussed elsewhere, perhaps it was deception up the chain of command. Perhaps Saddam actually thought he had WMD. Who in the regime would behave otherwise knowing that their head would be mounted on a pike if the deception were discovered? The deception, if it existed, must have been going on for a long time, meaning that it was too late for anybody to come clean. It took on a life of its own.
How we doin?
--Robert