“No WMD was embarrassing, but he made the right call, IMO — every creditable intelligence agency in the world believed Saddam had the WMD.”
Even Saddam’s General’s couldn’t figure out why Saddam didn’t use the WMD’s against us in the initial days.
IIRC, what Saddam told interrogators was he dismantled but was prepared to quickly re-start WMD as soon as sanctions were gone - which they were on their way out thanks to UN.
However, he wanted everyone to *think* he had them, so he made it look like he did, to even his own people. He thought this would help protect him, but it backfired.