Look, aggressive military empires always do exactly what they want to do...IF they have the power to do it.

If Saddam, for instance, had had the power to attack all his neighbours and occupy the entire Middle East, I'm sure he'd have done it. He never had such power, though. He was unable to defeat Iran in the 80s. He was able to invade and occupy Kuwait, because Kuwait was much smaller and weaker than Iraq.

The USA is strong enough to attack and occupy Iraq, and had decided it would be advantageous to do so. Therefore, they did so. In order to do so, though...they had to first convince their own public and world opinion that they were doing so for a good reason...and not just committing blatant imperial aggression.

Hence, they blathered on about supposed Iraqi WMDs. And their public bought it. But it was just a transparent excuse for doing what they wanted to do regardless....and even if Iraq HAD those WMDs, it would have presented no real danger to America. None whatsoever. Therefore it had nothing to do with the decision America made to go to war.

It was a red herring...a propaganda gambit...whether or not those WMDs ever existed. To argue about whether they existed is to miss the more cogent point that they were NOT what that war was really about.