Instead of repeating myself throughout, I will state the assumption that WMD actually existed.
Now let's see if I can make myself more clear........

A major rationale for this war was that Saddam possessed the proven capacity for building weapons of mass destruction, had built large quantities of them, and probably had existing stockpiles of chemical and biological ones.

Probably? slightly revised, no?

And that given his past behavior and policies, would be very likely to pass them along to chosen terror groups, or use them again himself.

Does not necessarily follow. There is still no evidence that he was cooperating with any terrorist groups (other than the widely known moolah for Palestinian SBs' families).
Bearing in mind his erratic behaviour in the past, you cannot say with any likelihood of certainty that any WMD he had would be given to others.
However, that was indeed one of the prime motivators for the war.

Given the assumption that these stockpiles DID exist, since the terrorists cannot very well run off now with weapons that were never there, you have to convince me that leaving Saddam in power was a better solution, and that somehow these stockpiles would never have found their way to terror groups or hostile nations.


Why do I have to convince you of this?
Prime directive - Keep WMD out of terror groups reach
Result - WMD in hands of terror groups.
Not sure why you dont get this, and why the what-if scenario machine has to come out instead.
What Saddam would have done is unknown and unpredictable.
And in the face of this uncertainty we took him out.
And in doing so, possibly put WMD into the hands of terrorists.
Not sure how I can make this any clearer.........Anybody?


The U.N. example I gave is germane because the U.N. is continously invoked as the solution that would have kept Saddam in check, and his weapons (if any) out the hands of terrorists in perpetuity. In point of fact, the U.N. inspectors have screwed up royally over and over again, including missing the second nuclear weapons program in Iraq (before the Gulf War,) missing Libya's WMD program, missing much of what North Korea was doing, and missing the Pakistan nuke ring. Naturally, we have no idea what they may have missed that we don't know about, but that's meaningless speculation.

Agree (though glad at least you refrained from re-asserting Chalabi's third nuclear program assertions).
The UN has to get a lot better at this. The whole NPT has to be revamped, but that is another story.

As I type this, Iran is cheerfully building bombs under the U.N.'s nose, knowing damn well there's nothing they can or will do about it.

News to everyone else. Go to the UN with your proof, since they seem to have missed it.
here



But the U.N. would have restrained Saddam for the next thirty years. Right.

Never claimed that for a second.
But I'm sure your what-if scenario maker could come up with a couple of options if you tweaked the programming. Try giving it a kick to the left a bit.