Logically Toad, you are absolutely correct. He likely could have stopped the invasion by completely buckling under. Resistance linked to a WMD program would be a logical conclusion to draw. Now, the US was in no mood to take yes for an answer, but had he started the ball rolling at the earliest stages Bush might not have had much of a choice.
I suppose though, just to speculate, that a scenario involving not having WMD but still resisting inspections could be seen as an internal or regional power/weakness issue. Perhaps it was better to risk the resolve of the US rather than risk appearing weak to a potential rival or to the people, who had been suffering but somewhat united in an “us against them” kinda way (remember, Iraq didn’t lose the 1st war according to SH). He also wanted to be a regional leader of the Arab world at some point (apparently), and weakness does not play into that very well. I’m sure there is some degree of ego involved too. Perhaps, he’s just a lot better at understanding how to rule Iraq than how to operate in the international realm, made some very poor assumptions and gross miscalculation on the US and the UN and had no one around to disagree with him.
It’s also hard to imagine him giving up WMD for those very reasons. But, it’s also similarly hard to imagine him developing nukes then giving them to some Islamic fundamentalist group, instead of using them as regional leverage in his future goals. I suppose at some point down the road we will know what happened.
Charon
