As for what I believe...I believe that Iraq possessed stores of chemical weapons into the late 1990's. But I also believe Iraq got rid of them after Clinton bombed Baghdad in 1998. I suspect that Saddam Hussein continued to convey the impression he still had these weapons in order to deter the Kurds and Shiites. Therein probably lies the source of his documentation problems.

Unlike some others I have heard, this is at least a slightly plausible scenario, although one can see that if Saddam was making an effort to "convey the impression he still had these weapons," one must admit that these same efforts might also have convinced the world's intelligence forces that he still had them.

If true, this was a very dumb move on his part, the equivalent of sticking your hand in your pocket, poking a finger out to look like a gun, and holding up a bank filled with armed policemen. And one would not normally blame a cop for shooting such a person.

I have no idea why Saddam would have thought his conventional forces would not be enough on their own to deter the Kurds and Shiites, which didn't exactly have a huge military to field.

Given our past tendencies to respond to terror and threats with feeble military attacks and nasty letters, it may be that he was convinced that there was nothing he could do or say that would precipitate an actual invasion. In light of what we did to Afghanistan, this also seems unbelievably stupid.

I fielded a theory a while back that Saddam was being duped by his own weapons people, and that he thought he had a lot more weapons than he really did. This is also plausible--slightly--but there is no evidence for it. Note that this theory is not incompatible with your theory either.

My current best guess is that Saddam had some chemical and biological weapons stockpiled from previous years, although probably nowhere near enough to field militarily. These could have been easily hidden. At the time he let the inspectors back in, he had been developing research and manufacturing facilities for future use (which is what we were observing in our intelligence photos), but during the inspections concealed them or palmed them off as "dual use," and was not planning on actually firing them up until long after the U.N. heat was off. This could explain why suspected facilities we found hidden had no traces of weapons material on them yet. They were intended for future use.

As for nuclear, I doubt that there are hidden nuclear research facilities on a par with what the U.N. uncovered after the Gulf War. I do not doubt that plans, equipment and personnel were being hidden and reserved to start up such a program again after the U.N. gave up and went home. Also, Saddam must have noticed that it would be easier and more circumspect to construct warheads with someone else's uranium, and probably was waiting for an opportunity to import some. Ideally, this would have been already refined, not in the "yellowcake" form.

Best of all, of course, would be to have some other nation do all the work. I haven't the slightest doubt that if Saddam was still in power, once North Korea eventually started assembling warheads, some of them would have found a home in Iraq. Lord knows Korean missiles did.

Obviously, Iraq would not be the only customer for such things, which is why stopping North Korea right now is a high priority. I wish China would help handle it--most of their country is within easy missile range too.