UN did not cause this war. UN did nothing constructive to stop it – but did not cause it. To think this war was caused by anyone other than Hussein and his government is to deny reality. History shows there is no shortage of people willing to deny reality.

Was it the responsibility of “the invaders” to produce WMDs?

No. Not at all. That is equivalent to saying that police have a responsibility to find evidence every time they have a search warrant. That’s just not true.

Much more to the point, it was Iraq’s responsibility to cooperate with the UN inspectors – which Iraq had every opportunity to do over a lengthy period of time. Iraq’s responsibility was either to produce their WMD or produce compelling evidence that their WMD had been destroyed. Iraq did neither.

Some people assert that Iraq never had WMD. But that is false. Hans Blix – the UN chief responsible for WMD inspections – reported to the General Assembly in 2003 that Iraq had failed to account for thousands of litres of chemicals used in manufacture of poison gas and biological weapons, which Iraq was known to have possessed prior to 2003. Iraq of course actually used poison gas on the Kurds, so it’s clear that Iraq also possessed the means to weaponize the constituent chemicals. Iraq never accounted even for those chemicals. Instead Hussein chose to play a high-stakes cat-and-mouse game with UN inspectors.

Keep in mind that Iraq ignored 17 UN resolutions in all. Complying with the UN resolutions, especially as regards WMD, might have avoided this war. We’ll never know, because of Hussein’s decision to flout the UN resolutions, for which the blame lies with Hussein, no one else.

Hussein assumed correctly that UN had not the backbone to enforce its own resolutions. Unfortunately for him, he assumed incorrectly that US would be deterred by UN cowardice. Of course, Hussein’s defiance of the UN and his miscalculations were his own responsibility, not that of “the invaders”.