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Don't recall hearing that Iranians had or used gas. But after Gulf War I, inspections and sanctions were used to rid Iraq of chemical weapons. During much of Clinton years, Saddam insisted he had ended his weapons program, but the West refused to end sanctions. Neocons came into Washington in 2000 already drooling to invade Iraq (see PNAC statement around 1998, Clark's book, O'Niel's book, etc. etc.). After 911 Rumsfeld wanted to go into Iraq. Someone said, "but the plotters are in Afg." Rummy said "better target's in Iraq". Finally, 2002, BushCo ramped up the war fever (after secretly trasferring 100 millions from Afg war to Iraq planning/preparation). Blix and the rest of the world kept saying "the inspections are working, Saddam is complying, even if he's hiding something, we will find it." BushCo kept insisting AGAINST ALL EVIDENCE that Saddam had chemical weapons and was in the process of making nuclear weapons. A famous, and telling, quote was "If Saddam doesn't have WMD, why doesn't he show us the WMD he doesn't have?" Another telling event was when BushCo issued the 'ultimatum' that Saddam must turn over complete documentation of his weapons program through the decades. When Saddam actually DID turn over some 17,000 (as I recall) pages, the US promptly CONFISCATED those records before anyone else could see them, then, after a remakably short time (I think about 10 hours) claimed to have thoroughly studied them, and said they were insufficient and inaccurate. Also, the telling penultimate act was when BushCo actually FORCED the inspectors to leave Iraq, then said Saddam had kicked out the inspectors, and then began bombing.
After going to war on what every reasoning person on the planet knew were false pretenses, surprise surprise, no weapons are found. Then, after 5 years of having COMPLETE power to search, interrogate, torture, bribe, STILL no weapons or shred of evidence. Of course, it is possible that BushCo found some kind of evidence but just kept it secret so that the entire PLANET would see them as duplicitous lying assholes, but it sort of defies logic why they would do that, or at least my limited form of logic.
It basically comes down to Occam's razor: if A is a straight-forward theory which actually predicts observed reality, and B is an elaborate, contrived theory which disagrees with observed reality, then it's likely that A is true and B is false.
To sum up, most reasonable people (including me, for example) have concluded that it is well over 99.9999% likely that Saddam had ended his WMD program, that BushCo had every reason to suspect that Saddam had ended his program and that BushCo went OUT OF THEIR WAY to trump up the story that there might still be WMD's and used this story as an EXCUSE to invade; and It is well under 0.0001% likely, or 1 chance in 1,000,000, that Saddam actually HAD WMD's (despite all evidence) and that, sumultaneously, not only Blix and the UN failed to find them all those years, but even after invading and having COMPLETE ACCESS AND CONTROL PLUS TERRIFYING LEVERAGE TO USE FOR INTERROGATION, said BushCo either failed to find the existing weapons or, perhaps, did find such weapons but, for reasons unknown to any mere mortal, decided to keep that find secret, despite massive damage to what little might be left of their credibility.
Of course, if one prefers to ignore observable reality and/or prefers to avoid logic and reason, then in fact ANY theory can be considered as valid as any other, and one can create a fun fantasy world where anything you want to be true is true. Funny thing, though, when you do that: reality keeps popping up and biting you in the ass!
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