Assuming Saddam did not have WMD, the fact that Saddam's generals thought they did have them makes it preposterous to expect that our intelligence services could get behind that and determine the truth of the matter before hand.
You are EXACTLY correct.
We know he HAD them, We KNOW he USED them. It is IRRELEVANT at this stage of the game to hypothesize what happened to them. But if we must I find the simple explanation to always be closest to the TRUTH.
So we have two possibilities.........He destroyed them and lied about it to his Generals or he HID them and lied about it to the WORLD.
Which scenario is MOST likely?