I still believe, based on people I have talked to who were in country, that the WMD were there and the “good” stuff was taken to Syria. There were caches found of older chemical weapons, particularly mustard gas, that no one ever talks about.
The biggest mistake in the prosecution of the war was we didn’t commit more troops at the get go and deal immediately with insurgents using looser ROE. We had already been soft shoeing it a while before the surge. Which would never have been required if we had sent a larger force to begin with and prosecuted more forcefully.
The vast majority of Iraqi’s are not adverse to allying with the U.S., had we stayed on they could have become as strong an ally as Japan, Korea, and Germany have been. But the ‘bamster wouldn’t allow that so now we have this mess.
My two cents
And 550 metric tons of yellow cake found was sold to a Canadian company.