You are speaking as if "He has stockpiles of WMD" was the only Reason for the war. That's simply not true.
According to the report all it took to keep a lid on Hussein's WMD program was UN santions.
Does the report mention how the hell "sanctions" were going to contain anthrax? If not, it ain't worth the paper it's printed on, and that conclusion is meaningless. (Do *you* know where the 2001 (Daschle) anthrax came from?)
Does the report mention that countries like Germany and Russia were cheating on the sanctions? How does that work exactly, we trust in "sanctions" even though everyone's cheating on them?
Does the report mention things like the AQ Khan nuke network, uncovered only after the war?
Does the report mention that all indications are that the political momentum was pushing toward ending the sanctions sooner rather than later? If not, it's even more worthless.
If the report mentions none of these things, it's junk. If it mentions some of these things, but STILL has a conclusion like "all we need to contain Saddam's WMD is continue sanctions" then it is self-contradictory. Another possibility is that you are summarizing that conclusion falsely.
For just how many decades, pray tell, do you think we should have kept the nation-state of Iraq under siege? Keeping in mind that this siege-state would be helping keep the Hussein Dynasty in power.
How many generations of Husseins, for how many decades, were we supposed to help keep in power over the people of Iraq?
Wouldn't keeping those in place have been cheaper than the invasion?
Depends for how long. There are two possibilities:
1. We keep the sanctions in place indefinitely, for decades. (You know, because it's "cheaper" than ousting Hussein.) Unfortunately, in this case I believe the cumulative cost of doing this far outweighs simply removing Hussein.
And what is this talk of "cost"? Is it all about money? That is very simple minded. Are you counting the *propaganda* cost incurred (for Al Qaeda types) by the fact that we were being so Mean to the Iraqi People? Remember, the Iraq sanctions killing Iraqi babies etc. (along with Troops in Saudi Arabia - ANOTHER direct byproduct of the "contain Hussein with sanctions" effort) were a primary grievance of Al Qaeda. Frankly, as part the Cost of containing Saddam I'm afraid we ALREADY have to count... 9/11 and all its aftereffects.
Still think it's "cheaper"?
2. Something happens politically (a (D) President is elected? France produces some weepy documentary about the effect of sanctions?) and the support for keeping up a "sanctions regime" (i.e. holding Iraq and its 25 million people under siege indefinitely) collapses, so they are dropped in some face-saving deal. IMHO this was bound to happen sooner rather than later. In that case your whole premise that we can "contain" Saddam with sanctions vanishes.
You tell me, which was going to happen, 1 or 2? Either way it's not worth it. And IMHO this is precisely the calcualtion Bush saw on his table.
Please, show evidence for your claim that Germany were cheating on the sanctions. This is not true. The German government never authorized exports to Iraq which were not allowed by the UN.